Travel opens up myriad frivolous chance encounter opportunities by throwing at us and delivering memorable tryst with human foibles. I am reminded of this funny incident at Heathrow Airport few years ago. A Virgin Airline flight was about to board and names of passengers not boarded yet were called as it was getting closer to the departure time. An Air hostess swung by, shouting at top of her voice - "ANY VIRGIN HERE", obviously looking for some missing Virgin Airline passengers.
Couple of girls raised their hands. Everyone close by started looking at them, some with chuckles and half baked smiles. The shy girls retreated to their privacy by dropping their heads over their smartphones to hide their embarrassment, still peeing through the corner of their eyes to look at the reactions. Non of them got up to board the flight. We humans are slaves of our inadvertent reflex actions.I was all excited and bit apprehensive upon my arrival at the Atlanta's Hartsfield - Jackson International Airport, hoping there is no flight delays or any untoward incidents. The light cloud in the distance stratosphere in the sky appeared as if an artist painted white with a broad paint brush on a blue canvas. The late afternoon sun peeking through the clouds, exiting them to spread their golden wings. My Etihad Airlines flight to Abu Dhabi, UAE was on time on a relatively cool winter evening. I thought both the Airport and flight would be sparsely populated considering schools are open post winter break. But I was wrong. We were on a packed flight. With the ever growing expatriate population in US my observation shouldn't come as surprise.
While waiting to board the aircraft, it was interesting to watch flights taking off and landing in quick succession at Atlanta's Airport, the busiest in the world. This being the peak hour, every couple of minutes an airliner lands or takes off from the ground. Flights lined up one after another in blue sky, their tail emissions forming a string of hazy pearls extending into the horizon, as they wait for their turns to land and take off. The Air Traffic controllers must be doing an amazing job. They are in a profession where error is not an option.
Remembered my school days while travelling in our DM School bus when it stopped at Railway level crossings (those days the roads, the arteries of Bhubaneswar were not clogged yet, no bypass in the form of flyover was necessary over the Railway tracks). As a goods train passed by, we waited inside our school bus, enthusiastically counting the number of bogies. Now I don't have patience to watch flights landing and taking off every other minute, forget about counting them.
The flight to Abu Dhabi entered into calm sky as the sky turned from maroon to black as darkness descended. The night was young and short lived as only few hours layer it entered Atlantic past Greenland, the rising sun rose behind the crimson horizon looking like a gargantuan red vermillion on a Hindu woman's forehead. Due to the diurnal rotation of mother earth, while flying West to East you lose time, see reduced amount of day as night passes by too fast, too soon. Again you gain time flying the other way round, as earth is round, vindicating the fact that what goes around comes around.
A few hours of dozing off was all the sleep I got as I am a frugal sleeper in flights. The short night evaporated as I could see glowing sunlight trying to dazzle through my window seat. I slid down the windows to doze off again through intermittent "ding dong" of bell from passengers solicitating air crew and pilots making announcements to put on seat belts due to occasional turbulence.
Inside the flight fired up by couple of cocktails, watched Liam Leeson fire shots in the farcical movie "NAKED GUN". Unforunately the movie falls short of its original funny version from 1989 bearing the same name based on Frank Debin, Police Squad. Being a long flight in order to pass time between sporadic naps I looked down to view the snow capped Mont Blanc in the Southern Alps mountain range, emitting stars under the bright morning sun. Clusters of pretty bluish white clouds overlooked the aircraft as it flew over the blue star studded Mediterranean waters. The fleece of clouds would have made Mary of Little Lamb fame proud. The top view of the spotless cloud splintering away looked from the virgin sky a la scores of white furred lambs on move on a bluish - green pasture. It seemed I was looking at a gigantic milk shakes with white cream churned on top.
The day of January 14 seemed to fly fast as I flew eastward. Morning became afternoon, afternoon turned into evening as "Suryadev" (Sun God) was in a hurry to complete His journey. It was the middle of afternoon when the airplane glided over the brown Syrian desert and drab mountains before reaching the shore of Arabian gulf, getting closer to Abu Dhabi Airport piercing through a hazy, dusky desert sky. As the slowly descending gigantic bird lowered itself flying in a low altitude, I could see several light blue Oasis amidst golden sand dunes looking like a giant sand boa taking sunbath under bright, sparkling sunlight. The gulf next to the Airport looked like faded sky blue ink on a dusty sandpaper as the ground looked gray and listless. As the aircraft descended further, the sea looked much brighter like a bubbling fountain with scores of spotless ships looking static from top, a la white rubies garnishing the blue sapphire. As the aircraft was barely few hundred feet above ground the palm trees on drab sand looked like gray black dots pores on a Native American's face on National Geographic Magazine. What looked romantic from far away, isn't so when you get closer to reality.
No wonder they say hill from looks beautiful.
Same you get closer, reality strikes back as familiary breeds contempt.
After a long flight of 14 hours from Atlanta I finally reached the Abu Dhabi Airport.
I decided to stretch my legs before catching my connecting flight to Delhi. Took some time to walk around the glittering Duty Free Shops doing window shopping. Apart from many Europeans and Asians, I saw a good number of Africans wearing long gowns roaming around. Arabians in white cotton helmets, with their female folks tagging along in black attire from top to bottom peeping through tiny slits cut below their foreheads and looking like Knights from Medieval era or Ku Klux Klan members in black attire for a change. Covid virus won't dare penetrate their impregnable visors of these ladies in Burkha attire from tip to toe, as if a bunch of Penguins were let loose inside the airport.
Almost 3 hours flew fast as four more hours of flight time awaits me when I neared the boarding gate to catch my flight to New Delhi. No more Virgins were solicitated as an Air stewardess started calling names of the last minute passengers boarding. More later...
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