Saturday, April 17, 2010

Tales of jagged mountains, Iranian airspace and security conscious Pakistan

Norman flies to Karachi, Pakistan today where it is 33 °C and sunny.  It will take him about three and half hours covering over 300 miles / 480 kilometers. He reached Pakistan via Abu Dhabi and Oman. When Norman departed Abu Dhabi he considered that the Hajar Mountains in Oman might, like the rolling hills of Ulster, offer a quick stop off or a scenic fly by.  Such notions soon evaporated when saw the reality. What he witnessed was something completely different to his home - jagged peaks with very steep plunges. Photo below shows Norman and Gyrox getting the VIP treatment as they are rolled out from the Abu Dhabi hanger by no less than seven staff.

Entering Muscat and for those closely following the SPOT tracker you will notice he had to divert around restricted airspace. When landing and departing Norman drew on his famous haggling skills to try and alleviate the impact of the very high landing and fuel charges he has been met with in parts of the Middle East. He was successful!


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7 comments:

  1. Very naughty to go into Iranian airspace, nearly had a diplomatic incident there!

    Gwadar does look very empty on the satellite pics. Interesting mountain formations though - isn't the subcontinent slowly crashing into Asia as a result of plate tectonics?

    Sorry to hear about the high fuel charges. Maybe dropping into roadside petrol stations is the way to go after all, haha.

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  2. Many thanks for that really interesting account of your travels from Abu Dhabi to Gwandar. Good luck on your journey to Karachi today and I look forward to reading further accounts of your travels.

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  3. A wonderful blog-post and it really gave you a taste of his flight. You're a braver man than me Norm, messing with the Iranian heads :-) But have a great flight today, the route looks spectacular and I expect Karachi will be just a tad more busy than Gwadar was, lol. Happy landings.

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  4. A guess at the next stop offs. Lucknow and Patna ?? Well done, be carefull with the rules and the camera near airfields. TR Kirk-B

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  5. Another one of those moments when I was a bit concerned. Did anyone else lose track? Loast Spot at some place and didn't get any more updates for 1 h 40 m. When Spot did wake up again, the track showed Norm had gone across Sonmiani Bay and now landed at Karachi's main airport Jinnah International. Weird but wonderful that he has made it this far.Well done Norm.

    Roger

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  6. We also were a tad concerned Roger. We tried to check on Google earth to see if there was a petrol station close to where he landed but no such luck and when we went back to the tracker...He was on the ground at Karachi, panic over :-)
    It certainly adds excitement to ones day.

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  7. What a man!! This blog is wonderful, giving us followers the wee interesting details that brings it so close!! This amazing adventure is so easy for us sitting in the comfort of our own homes but i feel as if i am doing a world trip too!It brings parts of the world of which I know very little, to life and i spend time trying to guess where he is going to land next? I can hardly wait to get in from work to check that those little spots are still moving across the globe!!Continued good luck Norman!

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