Lancaster fast forward 12,000 miles
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I left Lancaster at 6am on 23rd Ocober for my 10am 14 hour flight to Singapore at a speed of 1,000 km an hour and an outside temperature of 51 degrees.
We flew over Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Kiev the Black Sea and Astrakhan. Through the plane window the Astrakhan area looked like a freezing desert with icy white gusts blowing across the tundra. There were several giant fires burning and a small square of industrial lights and nothing around for miles and miles - maybe some kind of oil collection, how horrible to work in such a place.
Somewhere between Russian and Tehran the little screen in front of me failed and disappeared for hours, maybe we’re lost!
The moving map is on again and we are crossing the Caspian Sea then Kabul, Lahore and Karachi with a tail wind of 170kms an hour- 6hrs to Singapore, pitch black from the window which prevented me seeing the Plateau of Tibet , the Himalayas and Kathmandu.
The plane is very cold I have got gloves, a scarf and 2 woolly thicknesses of clothes and two blankets. Over Patna and the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. We’re going into a head wind now of 27kms and hour - seat belts on it’s quite bumpy! Only 2014kms to Singapore and 10 hours from Manchester.
Hot towels coming around which means we will eat soon - 1′m starving haven’t eaten for 15 hours.
Down over the Strait of Malacca at a height of 11,887kms.
Arrive Singapore at 6 am for a three hour break. Singapore is a HUGE airport there are many internet facilities, perfume shops, bars, computer tech shops, cake shops and burger bars, what I’d give for a crunchy organic apple! Would also have loved a shower but a lot of the airport venues were shut due to the early hour. After many directions and escalators and miles and miles of carpet I found a massage center that did reflexology for $48 an hour (exactly 20 pounds) went off to change the 20 - it took 15 mins - came back and was told there was $3 tax. Flew into a temper tantrum then and stamped my foot and eventually got my feet done by lovely little deaf and dumb lady, she hadn’t heard me making a fool of myself in reception and gave me a lovely, firm treatment.
Back on the plane, nice young Spanish couple next to me spent most of the flight trying to eat each other - in 7 hrs they didnt go to the loo or a stretch, just chewing away.
We’re heading over the center of Australia, Uluru, brick red desert ( base chakra colour) and extremely hot looking - only four hours now to Auckland.
After a 23.5 hour plane journey- you’ll never guess what ? its throwing it down in Auckland at midnight, serious rain. It was pouring down as I got out of the cab from the airport as my lovely new flight bag fell upsidedown in the flowing gutter and was washing the contents down the storm drain. The cab couldnt move because all the “stuff” had fallen around the wheels, the Indian cab drive wasn’t at all helpful as we’d had a bit of an altercation earlier on.
It was 1am and it had been a fairly long couple of days. He’d got 4 women in the cab on the premise he was leaving straight away, we waited ages and ages as he wanted to fill his 7 seater. I offered to get out and find another cab, the next thing I nearly lost my fingers as he shut the heavy cab door really fast to prevent us leaving. So I wasnt his flavour of the moment and had difficulty stopping him driving over my things, but as I hadnt paid the fare he had no choice.
And so to bed at the Quaker Meeting House
Good night it’s so fabulous to be back in NZ