Mooney eastbound

Having flown from Egypt, we spent two nights at Corfu on the west coast of Greece.    We parked at Corfu's airport.  Corfu's old town is quite charming.  There is a lot of history, including its long centuries as a possession of Venice and the periodic assaults by the Ottoman Turks.  This resulted in impressive fortifications. A practical feature of Corfu was that my mobile phone did not work at all.  I could not log on to any local mobile phone provider.  My own service form Three seems to be very substandard. Today (Sunday) we departed Corfu and flew across the Adriatic to Italy.  Here is landfall at Ancona: There was a considerable headwind and we stayed low over Italy, eventually climbing to FL200 (or 20,000 feet) over the Alps.  The Alps had some considerable weather and the TKS anti-ice system was put to good use.  Here are the Alps, largely cloud-covered.......  .... followed by descent in to Switzerland and crossing the Rhine. Finally getti

This map shows the westbound route: Shangjie near Zhengzhou (China) Nanning (China) Chiang Rai (Thailand) Bangkok (Thailand) Yangon, formerly Rangoon (Myanmar, formerly Burma) Kolkata/Calcutta (India) Ahmedabad (India) Karachi (Pakistan) Bahrain Hurghada (Egypt) Corfu/Kerkira (Greece)

From Karachi we flew westward towards Oman, then over the UAE (Fujairah and right over downtown Dubai) and onwards over the Gulf to Bahrain. Here is The Palm at Dubai. Umbrella being put to its original use, at Bahrain Airport. A village in the Saudi desert. Being shadowed by an unknown aircraft, over the west coast of Saudi Arabia. Hurghada, on Egypt's Red Sea coast, a holiday resort that is struggling due to the security situation in Egypt.

A refuelling stop was made at Karachi.

Here are a few photos from India.  Early morning in Calcutta.  Little did we know that we were heading towards the Black Hole of airport bureaucracy. Ben and Peter with Mr Karati of the Indian Customs at Calcutta Airport.  I will post at more length about the thievery and obstruction we encountered there, and how it took SEVEN hours before departure to go through ATC briefing, terminal manager approval, customs approval, immigration approval (for a domestic flight), security clearance etc.   A certain Mr Bannerjee of the Customs, scowling at us and sporting a very large diamond ring, took it upon himself to create as much mischief as possible; this was not just regarding Customs matters but also raising objections with the Immigration personnel about their processes and complaining constantly about our paperwork and alleged regulatory infractions.  A flavour of the issues may be be given by the fact we charged some 70 cents per litre tax on the fuel remaining in the aircra

I should just like to explain that posts to this blog have been fitful, partly due to a lack of time, but partly because access and/or the ability to post have sometimes been difficult.  In China as I explained earlier no Google products were accessible via normal hotel wifi.  More recently in Egypt I could access Blogger but posting anything was impossible.  So along the way there have been various issues.  I should have set up a separate website that would not have been blacklisted or restricted for political/security reasons.

Now in Corfu! We made a long (almost 8 hours) flight from Hurghada in Egypt, across the eastern Mediterranean to western Greece, Corfu (Kerkira).  This was into the teeth of gale force headwinds.  This was the longest flight I have ever made. More later ......

Finally last night I got a proper night's sleep in our Bahrain hotel and felt refreshed this morning.   Off to the airport again after breakfast (I made some Flahavan's Instant Porridge in my bedroom, great stuff to sustain you for a long day).      We went to the fuel company office, where I showed my Air BP card.   "You can't use this", the manager said triumphantly, "this card is for avgas!".   That, I replied, is exactly what we need.   Then there was a long delay in the 36 deg heat waiting for the refueller to produce some avgas. Two barrels eventually appeared, we refuelled, and called the tower ATC for startup clearance.   The Tower insisted for a while on the absurd proposition that our plane would have to be towed in accordance with procedures to a startup area, but this requirement was dropped.   We departed in due course.   This flight took more than 6 hours today, across the deserts of Saudi Arabia.   Much of the interior of Sau

Yesterday was a much better day!   We started off at Ahmedabad airport, after a night at the Ummad Hotel (I would recommend!) and breezed through airport security, immigration etc.  Full marks to a sharp-eyed security man who saw that the name on my Newcastle Airfield pilot badge "Peter O Gorman" did not correspond to the name on my passport;  I never saw that myself.   Anyway after Calcutta, Ahmedabad  was a very quick process. Then we flew across the desert of western India into Pakistan and landed at Karachi for fuel, a 2hour flight.  It was very hot, in the high 30's deg C and there was not much shade.  I got out my umbrella for the first time.  The fuel was delayed being allowed into the airport, various promises came that it would be here in "five or ten minutes", then there was talk of "problems".  Uh uh. However it did eventually appear in barrels and 305 litres were pumped into the aircraft wing tanks. Finally we got away with just enou

This was a bad, difficult day. People joke about the Black Hole of Calcutta - well this morning we experienced it at Calcutta airport.  Getting through in sequence, Briefing, Terminal Mangager, Customs, Immigration (even though making a domestic flight) and Security, took SEVEN HOURS of paper chasing, stamping, arguments etc etc etc. Then eventually we went to refuel the plane and our pump broke. Then eventually we got clearance to taxi and a storm arrived. Ugh. I will post more later about this awful day.  We did eventually make it to Ahmedabad in western India (Gujarat), but very late, close to midnight.  Now I will not get a proper night's sleep before flying tomorrow to Karachi (hopefully). Lights out now.

I'm writing this from Calcutta (Kolkata) where we arrived last night, after a 4 hour flight from Yangon.   We had intended to land, refuel and overnight at Chittagong in Bangladesh (on Sunday night), but we heard during Saturday that the Bangladesh authorities had denied our request for permission or at least insisted on a delay.  Given that this application had started the previous Tuesday this was surprising to say the least.  We succeeded in getting confirmation of avgas in Calcutta so decided to go there instead.  The only other option would have been to go back to Chiang Mai in Thailand, a very expensive stop. Arriving in Calcutta after a 4 hour flight, it took 3 hours to get through immigration and customs. I haven't time now to fill in the details! The next flight is planned today to Ahmedabad in western India.  That is, if the promised fuel turns up this morning .....

Today rising was at a comfortable pace, pickup from the hotel here in Yangon is scheduled to be at 1130. Then we will be taken to the city's Mingalodon Airport.  That is where there allegedly was a cache of buried Spitfires, left there after World War 2.  This story generated much excitement last year in the UK, and fundraising to pay for excavations.  Few were surprised that nothing was found.  I asked our airport handling agent here about this story, he had never heard of it.  Hmmm. Last night we went to the "Union" a rather western style bar near the harbour.  There was a football quiz being held as a promotion for Heineken, 15 questions with 3 possible answers each.  I got a prize of unlimited free beer, for getting 6 right answers out of 15, which I am proud to point out is slightly better than a completely random choice.  I had, in fact, no idea at all what were the correct answers ....   But I repeatedly pointed out that I was the only contestant drinking Hein

Yangon is a very colourful city, here are some photos:

Today we had a trip around the sights of Yangon with a driver/guide.  Amazing.  Photos later.

Some photos in Yangon .....