JUL-B-3
ON BOARD LH 419 FROM IAD TO FRA
THEN, LH 760 FROM FRA TO
ENROUTE FOR THE FIRST LIMB OF THE LONG
ROAD
TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE GLOBE
FOR THE NEXT SEVERAL WEEKS
LEAVING ALL ELSE BEHIND
It is still a long way round a
very big globe. That I have used these
rather reliable engines to push me along the stratosphere as the planet turns
beneath me all over the surface of this globe does not mean it has shrunk. Outside the frosted window at this 37,000
feet elevation, just now, over a mile above even the Himalayan peaks I will be
staring over shortly, it is – 70*, a temperature where the difference between F
and C is negligible. I have carried very
little work to do, since both long flights will be principally at night, even
though they each start out by day, they are traveling in a direction opposite
the course of the sun, so the sun both rises and sets a lot faster, and I will
be hanging out on the shady side of the globe for much of the long flights. The first flight is accompanied by a
frivolous movie about a teenage CIS agent entitled
Well, now I have had the three and
a half hour privilege of watching a vapid Bollywood feature film in all its
vapid unrequited love of beautiful people poseurs in the splendor of the
wealthiest, best dress, industrial heirs of the idle rich who go into a frenzy
of synchronized choreography with a cast of thousands along the unpeopled
scenic clifftop backdrop terrain of India –when I am much more familiar with
the reality—of uncounted masses of poverty stricken people packed into squalid
conditions where they are in a hard scrabble struggle for daily survival. These highly stylized Bollywood breathless
features of posed shots to accentuate the enormous investment each had made in
eye makeup and matching saris is the reason I had tried to have my MP-3 player
programmed with an extra disc of audiobooks loaded on it, but the guru in the
Microbiology and Tropical Medicine Department who has allegedly been working on
it for the last year has not come in during the last month while I was trying
to get it prepped for this trip. So, the
Bollywood flick still in extra innings is grinding along freshly produced as they seem to turn them out a dozen a day from
Mumbai (formerly
I have just set my watch forward
the nine and a half hours (You go figure why there should be a half hour change
in time zones in
So, upon arrival, I will meet the
gathered group: there are about eight on this plane only one of whom I found in
Frankfurt, and there are about the same number that got in early to India and
those that came by Air France and Aeroflot who had time to get to the Hotel
Ajanta to get a shower and some rest before coming over to the domestic air
terminal. We will arrive about 1:20 AM
Delhi time—about mid afternoon Washington time—and must clear the customs and
claim al the bags to transfer over to the domestic terminal directly to wait
there to take over most of the fully booked 737 that will fly us out at 6:00 AM
along the Gasherbruns and the K-2 peaks of the Karakorum Range to land in the
highest mountain airport on earth in which jets are capable of landing. The tricky runway has several scars in the
mountain backdrop, one of which was made by
So, this begins the series of Indian expeditions of this year, with Ladakh-03 being the first of three, following the three earlier medical missions to Mindanao-03 and Malaswi-03 and Haiti-03. Hang on for the ride; while there is action enough left out of sight on the far turn of the globe which I now have to leave out of mind.