MAY-A-5
THE LONG TREK WESTWARD
WITH THE NEVER-SETTING SUN
FROM THE ORIENT TO THE OCCIDENT
AND HOME
MAY 4, 2001
It is a long row to hoe, as we of peasant stock might say. The journey from the far side of the globe to return home at the same rate and direction, as the sun is moving westward is a true "disorienting" experience. Leaving at 2:00 AM means that the eight-hour flight remains in perpetual darkness, since we are chasing around westward hiding in the earth's shadow from the sun, which is over the far side of the globe throughout the eight-hour transit. The best analogy would be to remember me sidling around the acacia tree, as an enraged bull elephant rogue was trying to circle around the opposite side to catch up to me at Kariba in Zimbabwe. Fortunately, in neither case, the "catching up" never happened, and I was able to stay alive in one instance, and asleep in the other. So, we have an everlasting night during our westward flight at night, as surely as we have an endless day in the transit by day westward across the Atlantic.
I did not attempt my usual typing up of the experiences while in flight. In fact, I elected not to disturb any of my cabin mates who would have taken a dim (or more aggressively "dimming") view of my need to keep an overhead light on thought he the night when almost all of them were trying to secure a dark cabin made as comfortable as if possible to nap away the long flight hours of this first jump from mid-Asia to mid-Europe. Toward that end, I ate the dinner of my first non-Indian food in weeks ("What? No Dal Bhat?") and asked for a couple of the German beers and schnapps to bag the movies and just try to spread out in the adjacent empty seats to see if I could "bag it"-one does not speak of "crashing" when one is hanging out at 33,000 feet for a third of a day!
Dawn was just breaking when we set our flaps for Frankfurt, and we landed before even the majority of Germans were out of bed-except, fortunately, for those in ATC. I piled out in a sleepy haze and carried my unused laptop to the empty gate areas in my perpetual search for power as a "juice junky." As all of our team had been on this flight from Delhi, we would scatter out now to a number of forward connections, flying from Frankfurt to Atlanta, Denver, and two of us-Carrie Starkie and I -to Washington Dulles.
After due diligence, I not only found an electric outlet, but fitted it with
an adapter that allowed me a fit. Now, which of the dozen outlets I had eventually
found contained any electricity? The answer is the furthest one from where I
had wanted to be, but I stayed with it until the battery was charged and I had
done some typing while the trickle into the battery continued. Now, all I had
to do is get primed for an equal time flight from FRA to IAD after coming off
a mere five and a half time zones to FRA from DEL. And, of course, I did. That
it is possible does not necessarily make it enjoyable-but that has been true
of many "Extreme Travel" adventures of mine before, at present, and
no doubt to be continued!