Nineteen of the world's 25 largest hotels by room count are on the Las Vegas Strip, with a total of over 67,000 rooms.
Every year millions of tourists throng the streets of Las Vegas and take back a slice of memory with them. Of beginner's luck at a casino that invariably leaves you lighter in the pocket in the end. Or the shock of seeing larger-than-life hotels and their make-believe facades plonked down in the middle of nowhere. My own memory though is of a helicopter ride.
Vegas by night is impressive enough at ground level, but the glittering lights from the air would be something else I was promised. I could have opted for a 'copter ride over the nearby Grand Canyon, but I just wanted to be dazzled, and coughed up the $120 for the night flight over Vegas.
Our pilot, a young lad, handed us our headphones with mikes to communicate with each other inside the cabin. The six-seater air-conditioned helicopter was quite unlike the military helicopters I had seen in Hindi films. This one had comfortable leather seats and wraparound glass in the front, which ran all the way from the roofline to the floor, for an unobstructed view. I sat in the front, ready to capture the sights on my Handycam. (Cameras were permitted onboard.)
The city that is rumoured to consume six gigawatts of electricity was a kaleidoscope of lighting patterns and colours from above. And the pilot, it turned out, was not only an expert at maneuvering the helicopter, but also on Vegas, which we learnt when he started the tour narration over the in-flight sound system.
As we flew over the neon signs of the hotels, the MGM, where I was staying, seemed to shine the brightest of them all, for obvious reasons, but also perhaps because its green illumination stood out against the colour of the night. We saw Celine Dion's life-size poster dropped down from the top floor of the massive Caesar's Palace hotel, where she continues to perform to packed houses night after night. Next, we flew very close to the ultra powerful space beam (which is known to consist of 39 xenon bulbs) shooting out of the rooftop of the Luxor hotel.
I was hoping to spot Andre Aggasi's mansion and his tennis academy. Rarely have I ever given up as fast as I did on this idea, because every other mansion of the rich and famous here sported multiple tennis courts. (All well lit).
Then there was the twist in the ride. (Spoiler alert!) The pilot took a 180 degree turn and we all squealed assuming the worst, until we saw the pilot grinning. He asked us if we had enjoyed his mid-air acrobatics and five enthusiastic yesssss reverberated in the cabin.
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