Scene: The long-haul daylight Singapore Airlines Boeing 777, Economy class 13:55 flight out of Singapore, bound for
Copenhagen via Frankfurt. 12 glorious hours in a window seat watching the world
go by.
Admittedly 40K is not quite 1K but it will do .Singapore Airlines has 3-3-3 seating on the 777
and there’s a reasonable amount of room.
North over Malaysia, reading ‘The Glass Palace,’ having
finished ‘The Sheltering Desert’ on the previous flight from Labuan, via Kota
Kinabalu and KL to Singapore. A glimpse of the drilling rig ‘Transocean
Richardson,’ anchored off Port Dickson, to where we had towed it 2 years ago
from Angola. It hasn’t moved since. Further north, another gap in the cloud
reveals a handful of the Andaman islands – a view lost on most of my fellow
passengers; mine is one of the few window blinds still open.
A good Thai curry is served for lunch and afterwards,
crossing the Bay of Bengal, I switch from reading about Burma to watching about
India; given the location, ‘The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel’ is an obvious
choice. I keep the blind open to see the bar-straight Indian coast. Central
India is green, plenty of rice paddies, sporadic towns, and with the smooth
curves of railway lines crossing the more jagged paths of roads. We are well
south of the Himalayas today and as the film ends we are over the drier north
west. It’s irrigated valleys with towns on rough hills. Over the desert to the
Pakistan border and the irrigated valley of the Indus, listening to Vivaldi and
Beethoven as we make a turn north to overfly Afghanistan instead of Iran, while
all along a steady stream of drinks, ice cream, fruit, sandwiches and rolls is
brought past by Singapore girls.
The crumpled mountains of the North-West Frontier – rifted
and folded. Straight lines of stratified rock tumble over valleys, getting more
and more wrinkled as we cross into Afghanistan. Deep valleys, with barren,
rocky steep mountains. It makes me want to get out and walk it – wild and
inaccessible; quite how anyone thinks it is governable is beyond me.
Occasionally a broad, water-carved valley breaks the narrow, straight rifted
ones. Small villages surrounded by strange-looking holes – what are they?
Wells? Who knows…the ruggedness does not stop until we cross into Turkmenistan
near a desert confluence of two rivers. More desert and the cotton-irrigation
schemes that date back to Soviet times and that have emptied the Aral Sea. A
huge, dry area criss-crossed by canals; it looks as though partly at least it
is still in operation. Approaching Ashkabad, the sky turns to wispy cloud and I
go back to the book until we get close to the Caspian, with hazy views down to
the last of the desert and mountains, crossing the coast near the Turkmen /
Kazak border heading straight for Baku. Baku looks quite nice if you don’t mind
a view of oil platforms from the beach, though I missed spotting the crumbling
remains of the Soviet-era offshore city further out to sea.
We keep south of the Caucasus ridge and the Russian border;
the green mountains here are essentially a continuation of the dusty ones east
of the sea, and it doesn’t take too much imagination to link them onto the
Carpathians further west, and the Alps. Past Tblisi and the sun was still up on
the higher peaks – which one was Mount Elbrus? Each one looked higher and more
Elbrus-like than the last, though I think it was one of those closer to the
Black Sea end of the ridge. Every now and then vast alluvial fans spread out
from steep valleys cutting into the ridge, with a proliferation of farming
around the edges. High above them winding roads lead up the mountains, and high
dams keep black lakes in check. We cross the eastern edge of the Black Sea at
5pm Copenhagen time, appropriately time for another round of tea and cakes, with
the north coast visible on the horizon, arcing back towards us as we just clip
the southern tip of the Crimea. The charge of the Light
Brigade and all that; Sevastopol is just visible through the haze, which has
re-appeared.
The sun is going down, but as we’re heading west it’s a slow
sunset. The little bits that stick up along the wing are bright white, catching
the sun, then turn grey near the coast. Romania, and a bit further away Moldova
and the peculiar republic of Trans-Dnestra: the lights are coming on down
below. Glimpses of the Danube in the fading light, Bucharest, the Carpathian
Arc. Now it’s dark over Europe and cities show up as hubs of light in a
spider’s web of roads; Budapest, Vienna. Bits of the route I backpacked in
2000. A final round of drinks and a bite
to eat before descending over Germany to Frankfurt.
It’s 9pm. The short
connection to Copenhagen will have me home by midnight and in the morning the
little one will jump onto my bed with a little squeal and a laugh, ready for
the weekend. On the alternative overnight redeye flight I would still be several hours away. It just isn't an option.
