Another day, another flight

The Ambassador - production is finally ending after almost 60 years

The drive to the airport is fascinating; the time passes quickly with so much to see along the way. It's a visual and olfactory adventure going from my hotel in down-town Dehradun out to Jolly Grant airport. The driver is taking a different route, which passes through little villages and through a forest. It's a windy road, made more so by the fact that whoever built it seems to have had an aversion to cutting down trees. So the road meanders around large trees, and there's even several (many, in fact) places where there's actually a tree in the road, and the roadside barrier goes behind the tree rather than in front of it. I try not to think of the safety aspects of this system. Cows walk leisurely along, and across the road. Motor bikes rush past, all of them with at least two people. In most cases the rider is "wearing" his helmet by putting his arm through it, rather than having it on his head. Perhaps this somehow satisfies the requirement of motorbike riders having to use helmets? Once out of town, we see few of the almost-ubiquitous Ambassador cars. These still ferry government representatives around, and are also used as taxis in some areas.

The road passes through some small villages, where it becomes very narrow. We're in a little Tata, but often very much larger Tata trucks bear down on us from both directions. "My Tata is bigger than yours" you can almost hear the truck drivers thinking as they take right of way. forcing us out of their path.

Singapore Changi

Self portrait with A380

Singapore airport: a world apart from any other. I arrive on schedule (of course) at 06:00 from Delhi. My connecting flight leaves an hour later and in any other airport attempting a connection with so little time would be a complete lost cause. It takes me ten minutes to walk from my arrival gate to the departure gate and a few minutes to go through the security checks. I even have time to connect to the airport's WiFi, which is a painless experience (unlike other airports I can think of). The WiFi has a speed an order of magnitude faster than the lamentable connection at Delhi.

Not long after, boarding starts and then the flight leaves, right on schedule (of course). I wonder about my luggage, but when I arrive at my destination, my bag is there waiting for me. Not only have I made a connection in less than an hour, but my luggage has made it too. I am very impressed!

I've come from an A380 and connected to a 777. I am enjoying the comfort of the business class seating on these flights and it is virtually the same in each aircraft; it feels sort of nice to be in a familiar place despite the change of plane. The seat is the massively wide cocoon which Singapore Airlines first introduced when we were in Paris; Ann and I happened to take the very first flight out of Paris that featured the new seating (how we managed to wrangle business class then I do not recall, but we did not complain!)  I still remember the bemused reaction of the cabin staff when we sat next to each other in the one seat (just to show how wide it really was). But today my seat isn't working; it won't recline and the reading lights don't work. It's like the whole seat has lost power. The staff is brilliant and immediately offer an alternative seat but for the moment I prefer to keep my spot by the window. A moment later the cabin manager appears, addressing me by name, apologising for the trouble. Even better, he fixes the problem by rebooting my seat. So now we live in a world where even the chairs can crash and need to be rebooted!

As I have a window seat I spend much of the flight looking out the window rather than at the screen in front of me; things are more interesting out there. We skirt several impressive cumulonimbus - we are at over 36,000 feet so these are serious thunderstorms. The islands of Indonesia pass below. Some time later the west coast of Australia comes into sight: red earth meeting a turquoise blue ocean under an impressively bold blue sky.

First sighting of Australia