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The romantic illusion of travel
There is something illusory about international travelling, while the mind conjures romantic images of the Arabian nights, the Orient Express, Raffles Hotel, Paris and host of other exquisite sights and experiences. But of course, the reality is somewhat different; endless hours waiting at airports, hours and hours of cramped flying and bastards in the seats directly in front of you who flog all the cabin bag space and then mount surprise attacks by unexpectedly reclining their seat back, to the full extent, without warning, just as you are about to drink a hot cup of tea. And toilets where men (me excepted) show a complete lack of finesse when it comes to aim. The bugger is that I have to put my shoes on every time I want to go to the toilet.
So, the journey has begun. From Christchurch to Sydney, but not before Kaelene was searched (if I was one to exaggerate, I would say a full cavity search) by customs who extracted her three prized tins of reduced cream, which, until then, had been destined to become the core ingredient of dip to accompany the salt and vinegar chips for Fleur and Jade. She, at least, still has the Maggi onion soup mix if we run out of food on Christmas Day.
A 14 hour and 20 minutes leg from Sydney to Dubai gives the real truth of travelling. Cramped, tired, bored, sleep deprived and force-fed airline food. The Emirates planes seem to have been reconfigured to give much less leg room; tall people beware. And they seem more spartan with the booze. We each wisely brought inflatable sleeping pillows, Kaelene’s from Kathmandu, mine from the $2 shop. Hers worked perfectly, mine exploded immediately on use, almost taking out a cabin attendant and nearly starting an international terror alert. Between that and the cramped space I doubt that sleep found me.
The brutal reality of long haul flying, like pain and hangovers, cannot be successfully recreated in the mind. It diminishes over time only to leave us going back for more. At least the trip from Dubai to Sydney next April will be on a new Airbus 380, the new two-story one.
The new terminal at Dubai airport, which opened just last month, is clearly inadequate. A 40 minute queue to get through the transit security tests the patience, as does having to take off belts and shoes to get through the metal detector. Even at 7.00am, the departure lounges were overcrowded, to the point of queues even for the men’s toilets.
Impressive though, the African women making their way through the airport crowd to departure gates with luggage balanced on their heads, no hands. I’m going to teach Kaelene how to do that.
Currently en-route to Dusseldorf (another 7 hours), we are flying over a very clear southern Iran, along the northern side of the Persian Gulf. I’ve been studying the downward camera view of the in-house entertainment screen, only to realize that if you look out the window, the view is altogether much better. Funny that. We could be flying over the South Island, only the green patchwork of the Canterbury plains replaced by the brown patchwork of the land somewhere to the South East of Shiraz. (Lots of snow below us now as we fly over northern Iran).
By the time we get to Dusseldorf it will be something in the vicinity of 30 hours travel since we left Chch on Monday evening. Time for the jet lag to set in and kill off any chance of a decent kip.