Long distance flights feel like a kind of teleportation to me. Once you are up in the air and the window shades close, time seems to bend. There is the time at the place you left, the time where you are now, the time where you are going, and the clock ticking down the flight duration. When you first take off fourteen hours sounds like forever. But inevitably time passes and improbably you find yourself somewhere new.
Our flight on Air Qatar took us over the North Pole, across the western tip of Norway, over Poland, Hungary, and Romania, then finally over Turkey and Iraq until we finally reached Doha, Qatar. As the in flight map updated, it regularly displayed a compass showing the direction toward Mecca with a reminder to Muslim passengers to remain seated while praying.
With a less than two hour layover in Qatar, the airport did little to interrupt the feeling of suspended time. Brand new, the main passenger terminal dropped us into long stretches of people movers interrupted by a gleaming yet generic duty free shopping mall. I’m sure there was more to see, but with only about thirty minutes of free time we didn’t have a chance to explore.
Then up we went again for another nearly four hour flight. Exhausted and sleeping fitfully, the last hour seemed to drag on for me. At last we landed in Bangalore and into our new timeline – 2am on Sunday morning.
Immigration after such a journey is like a test to see how well your sleep deprived brain still functions. Then there’s baggage, finding our driver, and finally the drive home. After more than 24 hours traveling, a real bed is a beautiful sight.