Am on my first ever long haul direct flight… Six of us are travelling to Rio De Janeiro for the 7th term and its a 14 hour flight from Dubai to Rio. We still have 4 hours to go and it already seems like forever. I have written two blogs, probably will write a few more, read about 60 pages between a book and the course material, sat up in Vajrasana and walked over to munch on bananas and Mars chocolate, played two games of Sudoku, got the camera battery charged and struggled with the memory card and finally managed to pry it loose, listened to songs, generally chit chatted with the rest of the gang, watched the movie “Argo”, slept and still there is 4 hours to go !!
This is also my first time at the Dubai airport. Arun had written that the airport was stunning, but when I got off the flight from Mumbai, it didn’t look stunning … How wrong was I 🙂 today morning when we were to board this flight from gate A6 we came through the new wing and it is STUNNING.. The train, the room sized elevator that can take 120 people in one go, the bus ride – all sheer stunning scale and class. They just need to get the Emirates economy seats to be better. We put a price range on the room sized elevator if we were to sell it in Mumbai – between 15 Lakhs to a Crore depending on the area.
The Emirates flight is no fun … Wonder how the rest of the airlines on this sector are, but the seats in economy are really cramped and onboard service is wanting. We have just been given breakfast and a snack in the last 8 hours unlike “death by food” that other airlines follow. Maybe Emirates wants passengers to lose weight so they fit in on their cramped seats. :):) Many of us wandered over to the pantry and helped ourselves to some food and whenever too many of us to there suddenly the captain turned on the seatbelt sign and we got back to our seats – traffic management in the pantry !
This is my first trip to a South American country.. Mikey’s “sasural”, looking forward to a country with a 3.5 to 1 female-male ratio and really beautiful women. That’s clearly something for India to learn from Brazil – to not kill the girl child.