Views from the flight deck

I was visiting my daughter for the first time since she moved to Philadelphia to complete her education. She was working there for almost 6 months now and lived in a small, neat apartment. I got a window seat on a clear day as we boarded the flight to New York from Dubai.
I had made up my mind to use some of the features on the flight to track and observe the path instead of succumbing to the usual temptation of movies, chat and music. And so I peered out of the window, subscribed to the inflight WiFi to see if the iPhone and the flight map would capture the right geo tags! Settling myself in comfortably after some usual pleasantries with the crew and helping myself to a refreshing drink, I lounged and looked out to clear, blue skies dotted with sparse clouds as we gained attitude.

However, the early morning departure meant that sleep drifted over me like a tidal wave. Nearly 5 hours past the take off, having conducted some casual conversations with fellow passengers, seated to right of the A380 bird, I observed we had taken a north easterly direction. By this time, we had crossed parts of Iran and I could spot the snow capped mountains.

An unnamed crated appeared in what seemed to have some part of Iraq perhaps Kurdistan? Geotags not working here and obviously the flight map showed the path to destination and not all the nearby destinations that the eye wanted to detect and find. My mind darted to possible ideas for an app for those interested but I firmly steered it to the original objective of trying to spot interesting geography.

Deciding to get a more close up view of the crater, I expanded the iPhone to max capacity and found actually it to be identified as part of Azerbaijan! It appears that google images have found similar traces of geographical features of Mars here in the mud craters of Azerbaijan. Baku was a name that cropped up on the map on my screen. 

By this time, with the aircraft flying at over 800 kph, I noticed that we were over the cit of Van Caldiran in the Anatolia province in the Asian part of Turkey. An obscure fact came to mind that the lowest temperature ever recorded in Turkey was here and Wikipedia confirmed it to be -46.4 degrees Celsius in Jan 1990!
2100 km from Dubai, from an altitude of 36000 feet, with no geo tags for assistance, I thought maybe these were the snow capped Trabzon peaks along with a distant view of the Easter Black Sea ranges which apparently stretch for 250 km - the hint of blue at the far end - is it Caspian Sea, I wondered?

Quickly deciding to take a few more pictures, I checked the map and found that we were approaching Erzurum. To our right was the city of Trabzon shown on the map on the coast of Black Sea. Trabzon was a city on the historical Silk Route becoming a melting pot for religions during the medieval period. And further ahead stretched stretched the mysterious Black Sea.

I was now looking at the coastline along the Black Sea from theTurkish side past Georgia and far ahead, we are looking out towards Russia and Ukraine. The Black Sea from this altitude suggested more calmness than its usual norm with its mix of anoxic waters and absence of mixing of water layers between surface and lower levels, hiding and preserving the remains of several fossils, wreckages and what more I wondered? 

Heading towards the town of Samsun - another coastal town with its contribution to Turkish history in 1919 for Kemal Ataturks War of Independence was coming up. A basic fact check on the net revealed that Samsun went back in time far earlier to Romans and Greek. Seems to have been around a long long time - however absolutely no traces exist of prehistoric period and we filled in the blanks with legends and stories of heroes.

Shadow of our vessel on the surface of the sea.

We start to fly across the Black Sea now, 2883 km from Dubai with a headwind of 83 km, flying at a speed of 0.85 Mach, bisecting Constanta and Varna, approaching Adamclisi with an outside temp of -60 degrees with another 10 hours to destination.
I spot a companion in the flying with us in the same direction and with the current rules on vertical and horizontal separation in vogue, I guess that he must be at least a km or two away

Unheard of cities pop up on the in flight map -
Elazig , Sivas, Sochi, Malatya, Kaiseri are some of them. I put a mental note to google them for later!
Ankara is to south and Moscow in the opposite direction. More names appear..
Yalta, Cankiri, Dneprop, Constanta, Sukumi, Bursa, Dov-na- donu.
All along skirting the Black Sea we will cross over to the other side towards Bucharest and Sofia. Clouds obscure my view of the Black Sea as we cross. I would like to believe that we entered Europe via Romania - anyone with a better knowledge of geography can challenge this
Cotton candy clouds consume the space beneath now completely cluttering my view. All the manmade borders of countries show the imaginary lines on the map - imagined reality as defined by Yuval Harare, prompt my mind to think of shared cultures beliefs across those imaginary lines!
Straight ahead lies Bucharest situated on the banks of Dambovita river flowing into Anges which is a tributary of Danube.

My geography is seriously tested as I grapple with the names as Cluj-Napoca and berate myself for not giving it due attention at school. Moving now towards Vienna the clouds clear and I think I can spot Krakow in Poland.






We have now crossed mainland Europe and just flying over the English Channel to dreary and cloudy UK. London seems directly in our path! Birmingham and Manchester to our right. It has been just over 7 hours since we departed.
Can spot Colossus 1798, Alabama 1864, Bismarck Egypt 1922 marked out on our map - are the shipwrecks ??
We are now obscured by clouds typical of the English stiff upper lip. Suddenly the clouds open like a paid of spectacles allowing a quick peek into mainland Europe before the cloud envelop us again. And hey presto, I spot a circular rainbow. Pink Floyd is playing on my headphones - Obscured by Clouds!

Dutch wind mills with the clouds.

Then the thick clouds envelop us once more and leave everything else to imagination and instrumentation. I then settle down to view the consumerist offerings of visual entertainment of the airline and fall prey to temptation. Only the Atlantic to cross and the journey is now less than 6 hours.