The worst journey of my life is travelling alone to a new country and getting lost at the airport. It was my maiden trip but I went all alone, obviously to satisfy the adventurous streak in me and thinking that nothing worse could possibly happen but I was wrong.
I was a 25 year old Asian and that was the first time I took an airplane. I did not know what I was supposed to do once I had boarded off the plane, so I just followed the stream of people walking in front of me. All I know was I had to catch another plane to another city in 3 hours and I pray that I know where to go to catch my connecting flight so that I would not miss it. I had my passport stamped and knew I had to collect my luggage but I did not know where I had to go to collect them. I asked a fellow tourist and he showed me where the collection point was. It was rather traumatic as I was feeling rather lost and helpless at that time. I retrieved my luggage and was then directed to join a queue which I did and then an airport officer asked me to step off the queue and beckoned me to another direction. That got me more confused because I was new to the airport and rather oblivious to what was going on around me and I was just following the directions of the officers on duty. I saw a few other queues in the direction he was showing me so I took a wild guess and went in line in one of the queues. After queueing for 15 minutes, I felt uneasy so I asked the lady whom was standing in front of me what the queue was for. She told me if I had brought in food and wanted to have them declared, then I should be in the queue. I did not have anything to declare so again, I was frantic. I got my way out of the queue and after checking with an officer there, I finally got into the right queue. I had to have my bag checked and screened and the officer asked me several questions before I was let off. That was quite a relieved moment because I did not anticipate that customs at Immigrations can be quite strict, which of course I understood that they were just doing their job.
In my confused state and trying to understand where I had to go throughout the whole time at the airport, a lot of time was already wasted. However, I managed to hurry and ran to catch my connecting flight and was thankfully in time to board the plane. It was indeed a harrowing experience and while it was quite an ordeal being lost and alone and trying my best figure things out, I still made it to my destination.
I Khatoo
