USA

My trip was from 6th June 2026 to 16th June 2026. The USA part of the trip was mostly around San Francisco and the Bay Area.

The trip was an office trip (June 8 and 9), with me keeping a few days separately for personal travel.

So my overall trip ended up being these flights:

• 6th June: Delhi to Tokyo
• 6th/7th June: Tokyo to San Francisco
• 15th June: San Francisco to Tokyo
• 16th June: Tokyo to India

Oh btw, I had carried 300 USD in cash.

Flights

Delhi to Tokyo flight:

1. I was with 3 colleagues.
2. Had a funny moment at Encalm lounge in Terminal 3 when trying to get lounge access for one of the colleagues. I couldn't remember my HDFC MPIN, tried resetting it, and all 3 attempts at new MPIN told me that "MPIN cannot be the same as your last 3 MPINs" lmao.
3. Bought a neck pillow out of peer pressure for INR 2800 at the airport right before boarding the flight.
4. The airplane was Boeing 787-8, had a huge wingspan. Leg room seemed lesser than 33 inches. The seats were cushiony though.
5. Was able to sleep, the neck pillow was worth it (?).

Tokyo to SF flight:

1. I was with 1 colleague.
2. It was Boeing 787-9.
3. It had more legroom than the previous one, seemed like this one had the 33 inch legroom.
4. Premium economy was super good, so much legroom! Next time on my own money!
5. Seats were less cushiony though, had back pain by the end of this flight, couldn't really sleep properly.

Both flights had free Wi-Fi for 1 hour each. Had to connect to Japan Airlines Wi-Fi and then go to jal-wifi.com. 3-hour and full-flight Wi-Fi options were paid.

SF to Tokyo flight:

1. Same as before. I was down with cold though which sucked. When the flight was descending for landing, I had eye pain, likely sinus pain.
2. Had a layover for 6 hours in Tokyo. First thing I did was try to find chewing gum as Google suggested it is supposed to help with sinus issues during pressure changes in the airplane during ascent or descent.

Tokyo to Delhi flight:

1. Same as before. Reached Delhi early morning on 17th June.

Day 1 (6th June, 2026)

Reached SFO. The first thing we noticed even before stepping out of the airport was HOW INSANELY WINDY IT WAS!!!

Anyway, we took an Uber XXL to the accommodation provided by the company: Hyatt Regency San Francisco. It cost 67 USD, one of the colleagues paid, and would've gotten it reimbursed by the company.

Hyatt took a 400 USD security deposit hold on my credit card.

The immediate thing to buy was a jacket lmao, because I had gone trusting Google's "15 degrees, feels like 15 degrees" forecast for SF. Utter lie.

Anyway, we went to the ferry area for lunch and I ate some random sandwich. Then I went to Sausalito Boardwalk via Uber.

Random bridge knowledge:

1. Bay Bridge connects SF to Oakland.
2. Golden Gate Bridge connects SF to Sausalito.

Sausalito Boardwalk was amazing! Amazing architecture, amazing calm, just amazing!

Then I went to Battery Spencer viewpoint for Golden Gate Bridge view. The driver who took me from Sausalito to Battery Spencer was amazing. He was a Filipino guy named Efren, and he was ending his shift at 6 but still took me to Battery Spencer, waited for me to click pictures, took me to another viewpoint, clicked my pictures, waited again while I clicked more pictures, and then took me to a restaurant outside of Uber at half the cost. He dropped me off and told me to just add tip on the earlier Uber ride. Amazing guy!

Random notes from the day:

1. Horizontal green board signs indicated left-to-right street name.
2. A lot of street names in SF are also present in San Jose and other cities.

Day 2 (7th June, 2026)

Went to Lombard Street in an Uber, which is called the "crookedest street in the world". We drove down, which was fine, and then I walked back up through the stairs.

Then I ordered a Waymo to go to Starbucks near Fisherman's Wharf. I ordered it from one end of Lombard Street, it came to me, went past me, and went into Lombard Street 🤣. Then it might've detected that oh Akshat is behind me, so then it tried taking a U-turn INSIDE THE LOMBARD STREET 🤣, struggled (while I was of course making a video of it struggling), gave up, and went and sat on the other end of Lombard Street.

A "traditional/older" cable car was approaching around then, so I ended up taking the cable car from Lombard Street to Powell and Hyde Street I think, for 9 USD through MuniMobile. The cable car was super fun!

Walked to Starbucks Coffee Company and ordered some mocha thing of size venti using my free birthday month drink. It otherwise would've cost 6.95 USD.

Some no-name shop near Fisherman's Wharf had good t-shirts, hoodies, fridge magnets, etc.

Then I came to Wharf Central. Lots of souvenirs, hoodies, t-shirts, etc.

Walked around Fisherman's Wharf. I really liked the whole area and the vibes and everything. I roamed there for a few hours!

Under The Golden Gate was great! Bought a t-shirt for 44ish USD and an A-Z booklet thingy for 19ish USD.

Then I ate 7 mini donuts at Trish's Mini Donuts for 6 USD. They were freshly baked out of a robotic machine thing, tasted pretty good as well.

Roamed Fisherman's Wharf, saw sea lions, and came to Ghirardelli Chocolate Experience. Tried the mint bliss hot fudge sundae - it was good but it was too much, so I had like 70% of it. Bought a LOT of chocolates from there - some for my sister, some for cousins, some to ship to Bangalore.

Went to Patagonia store after that. The jackets were nice but it was 289 USD lmao. The lady there was super sweet, I had a decent length chat with her. She recommended Chestnut Street Gap store, Goodwill for second-hand Patagonia etc brands, and also said Chestnut Street is good for dinner places.

I wanted to go to Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center but it closed at 6 PM. So I went to Chestnut Street / Goodwill for jacket hunting. Cab driver was from Eritrea (some country I hadn't heard of ever before then).

Went to Ross Dress for Less. The driver told me that they buy items from other brands in clearance sales and sell them for cheap. But I didn't find many options in jackets, so I went to nearby Target - but couldn't really find the things (facewash and Clipper card) I was looking for there.

Had dinner at Once Upon a Dosa.

Then I came to Montgomery Street BART Station, got a Clipper card, paid 6 USD, got 3 USD balance, and took the yellow line to Antioch for Embarcadero BART station. BART was delayed that day, had to wait for 15 minutes.

Earlier I tried getting the Clipper card from a blue machine, but it seemed BART-specific and didn't have Caltrain. Then I asked the lady sitting in the booth, she said try the orange machine. I did that, it didn't have any BART/Caltrain specificity, so got the Clipper card from there.

Observation: BART train was long af. It wasn't metro length, it was train length.

Embarcadero BART station was very near to Hyatt hotel, 3-4 minutes walk. Pretty cool!

Anyway, I tried adding Clipper card to Google Wallet, it kept taking me to Google Play Store where Clipper app is restricted to US accounts only. Downloaded Clipper XAPK from some random website, installed an XAPK installer from Google Play Store, then installed Clipper XAPK from the XAPK installer. Creating account in Clipper was asking for a US number, so I uninstalled the app. Sigh.

Tried adding funds to a new Clipper card in Google Wallet, but no credit card or debit card seemed to work. It kept saying "Can't be used for this purchase". Sighs only.

Day 3 (8th June, 2026)

This was the 1st day of the company offsite.

I had breakfast at Devil's Teeth Baking Company with a few colleagues.

We did the ferry to Angel Island at 9:25 AM. The ferry was really good. I was afraid I might feel cold but it was mostly covered on the sides so cold winds weren't an issue.

We played Survivor games on the island. I was in team Angelic Crabs lmao. Chicken Banana team won, we came second. I wasn't doing that crab dance thingy so the host made me the treasurer lmao.

Then did a small hike on the island with some colleagues. We returned on the 2:30 PM ferry.

I went to Salesforce Tower / Park after that. It was fine, did the Salesforce gondola thing to ground floor as well, it was also meh.

Then took a Waymo from there to Apple Store. Waymo took 15-20 minutes to arrive. It took 30 minutes to take me to the destination which would've taken Uber 10 minutes, because it rerouted 3 times like an idiot.

Anyway, returned from Apple Store to have dinner with Imply folks at Sens at 5:30 PM. Then returned to hotel room.

Watched WWDC then in the hotel room on my phone, which had happened earlier that day.

Day 4 (9th June, 2026)

We had presentations in the morning, then lunch at Yank Sing, which was great. Then we had in-person roundtable Q&A with the company founders - I really enjoyed that. Then I rested in the hotel.

Then I left for company dinner at Tropisueno. We reached late lol, most of the starters etc were done. It was a Mexican place, I had a taco and some tortilla chips.

After that, I had plans to go walk on the Golden Gate Bridge. But other people were walking back to Hyatt so I accompanied them.

From there, I went to Golden Gate Bridge. I walked and ran across the Golden Gate Bridge. That was insanely fun!

Sausalito story time:

1. I reached the other end by 8:45 PM, and lmao I didn't know that they "had gates", let alone that they close those gates. Anyway, the police guy there was like you can't go to the other side, it's closed. I couldn't take a U-turn and walk back to SF side of the bridge as that was closed as well by then. But surprisingly, they open the gate for cyclists, so while I was panicking for 15 minutes, a cyclist came by and they opened the gate for him, so I also went past the gate.
2. So now I'm on the Sausalito end of the bridge. Now I tried doing Uber but they kept cancelling on me, likely because they'd have to take a complete U-turn of the Golden Gate Bridge to pick me up, because of course I'm an idiot who ran across the bridge on the right side of the bridge. And there was no way for me to cross the road, since it was like a highway road with cars speeding at 100+ kmph if not more.
3. Time is like 9:30ish already, darkness has started to set in. I walked towards Sausalito in hopes of finding a way to cross the road, I ran, for a while. But it was complete darkness so I decided to get back to the "closed" gate since at least there was light there, as I wasn't sure of safety in the darkness in a forest region (animals etc). So I came back to the closed gate. On the way back, a police van from the other side of the road threw a spotlight at me and shouted "Don't run on the main road, be on the side road". I immediately acted upon it but was shit scared lmao.
4. I called my Yugabyte colleague with whom I had plans to visit Alcatraz the next day. He gave me moral support lol, as unfortunately it wasn't possible for him to come pick me up. Anyway I found a restroom sort of a place (like an inn of sorts), the colleague also suggested going to that place and then trying out Uber from there. So I did that. Ubers still kept cancelling. Ultimately I found an Uber with the driver name "Dharminder" so I called him and said "Dharminder paaji aa rahe ho na?" lol, and told him how I'm stuck here for the past 3 hours and everyone keeps cancelling and that I'd happily pay him a few bucks in tip etc etc. Anyway, he assured me that he's coming, and I waited and waited, and he came, picked me up, dropped me to my hotel, and sighed in relief.
5. I was hungry because of course I didn't have a proper dinner and the last thing I had eaten was a few tortilla chips what felt like 10 hours ago. So I just made some coffee in the hotel room's coffee machine.

And slept. Interesting day in hindsight but definitely shit scary in the moment lol.

(Oh also, before sleeping off, I also booked Computer History Museum ticket for Thursday, 11th June, for 21.50 USD. The museum timings were from 10 AM to 5 PM PT.)

Day 5 (10th June, 2026)

Checkout from Hyatt was quick. They said the 400 USD was a hold on the credit card, not a debit, and it would take 2-3 days to release that hold - which it did, no issues on that front.

Dropped off my bags at the Yugabyte friend's place, then took an Uber to Golden Gate Bridge Welcome Center. Bought 2 t-shirts, 1 notebook, and a keychain, all together for 81 USD. T-shirts were 28 USD each.

Then I went to Alamo Square Cafe for resting and something to eat/drink, and then went to The Painted Ladies which was near that cafe. Then back to the colleague's home, then lunch.

The colleague/friend had booked the Alcatraz Day Tour tickets for 105.49 USD in total, so around 52 USD per person. We boarded the ferry to Alcatraz. It was a nice experience overall. We went on the 3:20 PM ferry and returned back on the 5:15 PM one.

Then we went to Salt & Straw for ice cream. I took one with double scoops and damn the portion size was massive. Had to sit down in a park and eat half of it, threw away the other half.

Then we came back to the colleague's place, then went to Civic Center BART station to take the direct BART on the green line to Milpitas station. The green line train was to Berryessa.

My college batchmate picked me up from the Milpitas station. The plan was to stay at his place for the remainder of my trip. We had a nice dinner and then came back to his place. He had recently moved to this new place so a lot of things were still in boxes, including his custom gaming PC. We decided to unbox it and set it up, and so we did, and played Forza Horizon 6 a bit on it. It was fun!

First impressions of his home:

1. Damn it the cushiony stairs were ❤️!!!
2. Had a proper garage on the backside like we see in the movies.
3. Had a proper pantry area behind a sliding door.

Day 6 (11th June, 2026)

Woke up, had oats for breakfast at home, and then went to the Computer History Museum. That was GREAT.

They had a screening room where Apple products were displayed. The guy at the reception told me that they keep changing things up in the room. Before Apple stuff, IIRC it was video games / retro games and stuff like that. After Apple, it would be some Google networking stuff. He told me that they had to reach out to some senior Google person who then had to fly here and there in the country to find stuff they could display. The reception guy also said that what they display is like 2% of the stored collection, which is insane.

The exhibition itself had a lot of sections. I came out to the cafe to eat something, then joined the tour at 12 PM.

The 12 PM tour was awesome, it went for 1.5 hours. A 60+ years old guy, Jim Coleman/Coltman maybe, gave us the tour. He worked at Bell Labs for 23 years and then at other places.

Mind-blowing moments:

1. Gordon Moore, the guy behind Moore's Law, is one of the founders of Intel.
2. Xerox PARC invented so much stuff: laser printers, Ethernet, GUI, etc.
3. Before 1945, if you looked in the dictionary, "computer" meant "a person who computes". Insane.

Computer History Museum was awesome. I punched "Akshat Jain" on a couple of punch cards and brought them back with me. The shop didn't have good t-shirts. Bought a pen and a fridge magnet. Saw Apple I and Apple II and Lisa and Macintosh in the exhibition area, yay!

I spent like 6 hours at CHM. It was insanely fun.

Then went to Peet's Coffee, and IIRC had a croissant and some cold coffee which was good!

From there, I booked an Uber to Apple Park Visitor Center. But I realised I could also go to Steve Jobs' garage on the route, so I added an intermediary stop for that.

So we stopped at Steve Jobs' garage, the driver guy clicked a few photos of me, then we came to Apple Park Visitor Center.

The moment I entered Apple Park Visitor Center, there was an area with an Apple campus model. Looking at it through the given iPad gives the whole Apple Park AR experience. That was insanely cool. It allowed changing the time of the day as well.

There were t-shirts, hoodies, pens, caps, notebooks, etc exclusive Apple merch. But it was ridiculously expensive.

I bought:

1. 3 t-shirts, 2 XL and 1 M, 40 USD each. (1 for myself, 1 each for a couple of my Bangalore friends)
2. 3 pens, 3 different colours, 35 USD each. (1 for myself, 1 each for a couple of my Bangalore friends)

There was a developer meetup area, also called the rooftop of the visitor center. Went there, but Apple Park wasn't visible at all. There was a cafe as well, I drank some iced hazelnut coffee there.

Then went to Mirage. It was meh. Pointless crap tbh. But it was one of those things that I can see in the B-rolls of a lot of WWDC footages on social media lmao.

My friend (who works at Apple) picked me up from the Apple Park Visitor Center, and we went to the Apple Infinite Loop campus to pick up some food he had ordered. I also went in. It was surreal to be in the campus where Steve Jobs was and worked at!

Right at the entrance of the building was this quote:

Day 7 (12th June, 2026)

I went to the Google Bay View office, met a Googler college junior there. She took me inside and took me through some of the visitor places. Then we cycled on G-bike to Charleston office / Google Store.

I bought YouTube hoodie and an Android figurine, 70 USD + 18 USD. She was able to use employee discount of 20%, and she paid by her credit card. The final bill was around 76ish USD.

Then she had to go for some meeting. I walked to Googleplex and clicked some pictures outside. That's all.

Then went to some random place called Bambu Dessert Drinks. I had Vietnamese traditional iced coffee with boba topping. It was GREAT!!!! I also had a bubble waffle with whipped cream and 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream. It was decent. The boba was so good and in plenty quantity, love it!

From there, I went to Intel Museum. It was kinda meh.

Then I went to NVIDIA HQ. Was told by a security guard that even the roads are NVIDIA property and that I can't walk there, so had to step out.

Then I went to Stanford University campus. First thing that surprised me was how big it was. I thought my 500 acre college was big but Stanford is 8000+ acres lmao, INSANE!

I walked through the hallways, realised there's something called Hoover Tower, so stood in the waiting line for that. Paid 8 USD for the observation deck of Hoover Tower, went there, it was okayish.

Then headed to my friend's place. I had dinner plans with another Yugabyte colleague who picked me up at 6 PM from home in his Tesla.

Oh also, it was my birthday!!! - I was just roaming here and there at noon and I started getting birthday texts only to realise that 11th June afternoon PT time zone is 12th in India, so it's my birthday already lol happy birthday to me.

Day 8 (13th June, 2026)

We left home at 7:30, went to Costco for fuel, then went to Yosemite Valley. We stopped at some pizza place on the way to eat and grab some water bottles.

We went to Tunnel View point, saw the valley view and El Capitan rock etc. It was okayish.

Went to Yosemite Valley, looked at Bridalveil Fall.

Went to Glacier Point.

Then we started going back home through a different route via Groveland. Lol to the night booking we had in Fresno.

I also wasn't feeling good. Had throat cough since last night, plus runny nose and headache now.

Reached home at 9:15 PM.

Waste of a day.

Day 9 (14th June, 2026)

I was feeling feverish so I rested the whole day lol. Slept the whole day. Waste of a day.

Day 10 (15th June, 2026)

I left my friend's place at 9:30 AM so that I could reach SFO Terminal 1 by 10:30 at max. Reached airport at 10:25 AM.

We had a 6-hour layover in Tokyo. I withdrew 10k yen at Narita airport using DCB Niyo. Got one 10k yen note. I bought a Weekly Shonen Jump magazine (yes it's in Japanese, no I can't read it, shut up), and some chocolates. And oh, of course, a chewing gum as mentioned above somewhere.

Landed in Delhi on 17th early morning. Good trip! (except the Yosemite day and fever day I suppose)

Random USA notes

• The Yugabyte colleague with whom I went to Alcatraz said that SpaceX IPO would increase prices in the Bay Area, especially in SF, because a few thousand people will become millionaires. Lmao.
• The Yugabyte colleague I met for dinner said that each zip code has a school, and students living in that zip code have to go to that zip code's school only. They can't go to other zip code's schools.
• Weather scenes:
  • Sunset was super late at like 8 PM, darkness by 9 PM.
  • SF fog is called Karl.

Apps / transport I used

I used these primarily:

1. Uber for rides.
2. Waymo for, well, Waymo experience.
3. MuniMobile for cable car ticket.
4. Google Maps for everything.
5. Clipper card / BART machines for public transport.

Random other notes

• I probably spent around 1 lakh INR on the whole trip.
• Uber prices were insane, 20-30 USD :(
• Throughout the trip, I had the 20% TCS crap looming over my head. Any transaction I make would've incurred a 20% TCS, so I was asking people to pay for me or give me cash whenever possible.