My jour­ney started off on a slightly scary note when I reach the air­port at 5 am on the 13th morn­ing to find that the Gulf Air flight I am tak­ing to Lon­don via Abu Dhabi is rescheduled.

All this due to one pilot who over­shot the run­way in Mum­bai air­port, thus caus­ing a large plane to get lodged into the mud, inter­fer­ing with the func­tion­ing of the main run­way and also delay­ing and resched­ul­ing hun­dreds of flights from Mum­bai air­port. Four days after the mishap they were still try­ing to dis­lodge the plane!

They put 11 of us on an Eti­haad Air­lines flight to Abu Dhabi instead.

Our flight is 16th in the queue at about 9.15 am. Our Lon­don bound hearts miss a col­lec­tive beat when the pilot announces it might take another hour for take-off. We have a con­nec­tion at 12.55.

All is well, how­ever, when at about 12 noon, I look down over miles of sand and a rather beau­ti­fully stark land­scape, sud­denly brought alive by shim­mer­ing blue green waters below. Like an abstract painting.

We get our con­nec­tion with about 15 min­utes to spare. The Patel fam­ily of 4 even man­age to squeeze in some quick duty free shop­ping. I am too ner­vous and run towards ter­mi­nal 9. The flight is rather empty. A few min­utes into the flight, the lady in front pro­ceeds to down sev­eral glasses of wine and gig­gles furi­ously. Coochie-cooing with the hubby in between. A rather elderly cou­ple — such a cute sight too! Her laugh­ter is infec­tious and I can’t resist a glass of red myself. There is some­thing decid­edly deca­dent about sip­ping wine in the after­noon so many miles above the air.

We touch down at Lon­don at exactly 5.20 pm. A famil­iar face looms up large in front of me — my sis­ter — and much relief for me! Because of one pilot, I nearly didn’t make it in time. Our Pak­istani cab dri­ver keeps us enter­tained through the half hour ride through London’s sub­urbs. After a fill­ing meal of gar­lic bread, wine (again!) and pasta, I need to call it a day. It’s been a lot of late nights, wine and enor­mous quan­ti­ties of food a few days in a row. And I have a lot to see and do yet :)