About 7000 miles at about 350 mph to be more precise. Singapore Airlines like to emphasise how slim and attractive their stewards (of both sexes) are. And they are. Standing next to one I feel like a big brutish yahoo.
Unfortunately economy class seats were designed with cabin crew in mind not yahoos. I shuffle and squirm. I watch "Victoria and Abdul" (squirming even more) then a French movie about a teenager tricked by his parents into being a helper at a summer camp for old age pensioners - I won't bore you with the plot, you can guess only too easily (what has happened to French cinema?). I recognise only two names on the music channel: Carol King (Tapestry) and Dylan (The Free Wheeling ditto). I am a dinosaur. So I watch the sat nav display, gaze into the darkness and watch the twinkling lights below.
Our route takes us over a number of places I visited many years ago. Mashad looks beautiful from the air, when I visited in about 1972 it was a big centre for turquoise and agate. It's now Iran's second largest car producer. I must have dozed off and missed Tehran - which from memory is not a bad thing. Too cold in Winter (when I was there), too hot in Summer and a very short Spring and Autumn.
Aleppo and Damascus I probably won't visit again nor pick oranges in the Youth Hostel garden in Bagdad. My trendy but impractable boots began to fall apart in Herat where a friendly cobbler mended them and I bought an authentic Afghan coat which continued to smell of sheep until it fell apart. There was sugar shortage in Khandahar so we drank black tea while sucking mint Imperials. Odd the things you remember.
We also flew over Karachi (of which I remembered little except lots of men with hennaed beards - I might try that!) and Mumbai (it rained and there were several geckos and a quite friendly rat in my hotel room). And so to Singapore for the first time. From the past to the future ... but pictures tomorrow if I can cope with the technology.
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