One of the realities of overland travel is that sometimes you have to do it in the sky before you can tackle the actual terra firma. Such is the case for two Montanans who have booked an overland trip in Namibia and Botswana. We’re on our way.
I went ahead and ponied up the $1 for wifi on the second leg of our two-segment flight from Seattle to Johannesburg to pen a little update for y’all. Winging all the way around the spike of the Burj Khalifa on the ascent out of Dubai, we gave a wide berth to Yemen, and now we’re currently somewhere over the Horn of Africa at .84 Mach in an Emirates 777-300R.
A few words on Emirates: I’ve flown a lot of airlines, but never this one, and so far I can’t really complain. The fare was reasonable, the seats are comfy with decent leg room in cattle class, the aircraft are spotless, and the in-flight entertainment has literally hundreds of distracting options. For a poor airplane sleeper, this is essential. Entire season of Curb Your Enthusisam reruns? Yes, please.
The food is generally passable, and some of it quite good, but, damn, they never stop feeding you. Sometimes you just want at least try to take a nap, you know? Like during that 14 hour leg from Seattle to Dubai. The booze is free, even if the beer is warm and the choices are few (beggars, right?). They made me check a carry-on that was baaaaarely too big at SEA, but checked luggage is free, so no harm done.
The flight attendants are what I imagine to be Gulf State Stepford clones. Seriously - my wife thinks even their makeup is regulated. It’s a little creepy, but they do wear jaunty hats and are good at their jobs. Overall? A-, would fly again.
They really ALL look like this. No deviations.
You can hardly imagine two greater contrasting cities seen from the air than Seattle and Dubai - the only thing they have in common is a waterfront location. The highlights of that half-day aerial slog were flying the length of the western shore of the Caspian Sea on a cloudless and crytaline morning - you could see the manic traffic in downtown Baku - and then curving a 7-mile high arc over nearly all of Iran. The rugged and desicated Elburz mountains, Tehran’s immense sprawl, and hundreds and hundreds of miles of deserts and dunes - my forehead grease coated the window by the time we landed in Dubai.
Something amazing seen from above about Iran, a country where freedom of movement is greatly restricted both for its citizens and visitors, were the countless dirt tracks criss-crossing the wastes. The imagination reeled at the possibilities - I’d love to get my Goodyears on some of those roads. Now that would be an overland adventure.
But we’ve got our own adventure on on the way, and with less than 5 hours to Johannesburg, I really need to find a way to force myself to sleep. It’s up bright and early tomorrow for an Air Namibia flight to Windhoek, and a date with a HiLux.