It wasn’t mandatory to hire a ground handler in Penang, and I decided to save the fees and do it myself. But everything probably took twice or thrice as long. Picking up the fuel consumed hours. To file my flight plan, I was directed to the control tower, which was accessed through a security door into the smallest, skinniest lift I’d ever seen. When the doors opened I stepped out to see a wonderful panoramic view of the airport. There were a few staff, and the manager was very helpful, but that was another couple of hours. After she helped me with the charts and suggested a route to Bangkok, she then told me where to find the Penang laksa that Anne had recommended I try for dinner.
The next morning, when I got back to the airport, I found the world’s largest commercial aircraft – the famous Antonov freighter – parked next to the Sun. These awesome planes are used worldwide to transport what are now known as ‘RBTNQ’ – or ‘really big things needed quickly’. This one was carrying petroleum-industry equipment. Others have transported heavy machinery, rock band equipment and even yachts. All I had to deliver was an airmail letter. I tried not to feel inadequate.
After a tiring and stressful eight-hour flight over the Gulf of Thailand, dodging rain, low cloud and storms, I landed at Bangkok and got to my hotel by 4 p.m. Keen to explore, I scrubbed up, changed and asked the concierge for a taxi to the Mandarin Oriental, a layover hotel on the original Qantas route.
After forty-five minutes the cab pulled up at a swanky hotel, but something didn’t seem right. The building was modern, and the letterhead on the front desk boasted ‘since 1965’. This was the Mandarin, not the Mandarin Oriental. Another cab soon deposited me at the glorious old hotel, where my kangaroo-leather boots made a lovely squeaking sound on the marble floor of the foyer. The colonial-style building in which the Qantas guests slept is now overshadowed by a modern hotel tower, but the original section has been beautifully preserved and compared favourably with Raffles. A writers’ room still exists, and high tea is served every afternoon.
Under Anne’s guidance I had been enjoying eating local delicacies. But once I read the words ‘duck liver pâté’, the rest of the menu became a blur. The dish went well with the vibrant orchid martini on the sneakily accessed ‘house guests only’ terrace, and I watched the sun set while traditional boats and ferries plied the river. What a fabulous evening.
Bangkok held one more challenge. The SF Cinema City complex was at a nearby mall. The seats were quite good, wider and longer than expected, and the foyer was stylish. I was collecting good data for my thesis. I was only buying tickets in order to have a look around the cinemas, so it didn’t really matter which film I chose, but this turned out to be the fifth ticket admission on the trip thus far for Furious 7. I had lasted just fifteen to twenty minutes at each screening, sometimes seeing the same part over, so at this rate I might manage to see the whole film by the time I got to the Middle East. It felt like eating brussels sprouts as a child – much more palatable to consume in small nibbles than in one go.
10.
A Passage to India
‘It’s not a lie, it’s a gift for fiction.’
WALT PRICE, STATE AND MAIN (2000)
Myanmar was a military dictatorship nervously transforming itself into a parliamentary democracy. Highly suspicious of outsiders, the government had not exactly refused me permission to land, but they had made the paperwork and getting fuel too difficult. They did at least provide air-space clearance for the Southern Sun from Chiang Mai, our last stop in Thailand, to Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Having crossed the heavily forested, mountainous region west of Chiang Mai, the Sun entered Myanmar’s airspace. I tried to make contact with an air-traffic controller, standard procedure when crossing an international border. My call was met by silence, so I flew on unannounced for a few hours. There was a huge area of prohibited airspace in the middle of the route. I didn’t know what it was used for, but the military had controlled Myanmar for fifty-three years, so it was easy to guess. The restricted zone started at 3000 feet and extended above the Sun’s maximum altitude.
I decided to fly along the bottom of the zone at 3000 feet. An airport would be my sole waypoint across the desolate countryside, which looked more like the red earth of outback Australia than the lush fields and jungle of Thailand. Thirty miles, or roughly 50 kilometres, from the airport, I tried to raise the tower on the radio. I tried again at twenty miles, fifteen miles, ten miles and five miles. Perhaps they were having a day off.
A minute later a light-blue fighter jet sped past about a thousand feet below me, at a right angle to the direction I was heading. Stunned and fearful, I frantically scanned the sky behind me. The jet, which seemed to be alone, looked like a MiG-29, a large twin-engine Soviet jet designed to counter the F-16 Fighting Falcon deployed by the US Air Force in the late 1970s.
The radio silence was finally broken when a voice came over the radio: ‘November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa, please advise position.’ The man sounded excited to hear from me.
‘Overhead the field, I have been calling for a while,’ I replied.
‘Yes, November Four Seven Three X-ray Papa, you must remain in contact.’
Hmm . . . The jet landed at the airfield below me and deployed a parachute from its tail to slow down. The control tower, which in most countries helped aircraft avoid each other, didn’t mention the encounter. Perhaps I was target practice, or maybe the MiG had just spotted me and asked what a little flying boat was doing out there. I never found out.
Chittagong is one of the bigger military bases in Bangladesh. The city of 4.5 million lies at the mouth of the Karnaphuli River, which drains into the Bay of Bengal, and has been an important trading hub between India and South-East Asia for hundreds of years. To get there, the Southern Sun flew over a vast delta of muddy waterways winding towards the ocean. I was booked to stay at the Chittagong Boat Club, which is part of the city’s large naval base and sits directly under the final stage of the runway flight path.
Paradoxically, the countries that can least afford large bureaucracies often have the biggest. When I landed at Chittagong, fifteen people walked over to the Sun and offered to sell me fuel, arrange my landing fees or book me a hotel. It took eight officials an hour to clear me through immigration, even though there were no other flights leaving or arriving at the time. Each one personally inspected my passport and read every visa stamp – and there were many. They even read the middle pages – the ones explaining that there was a microchip embedded in the passport. I could tell who the more important officials were because they got to read it twice. There were a lot of serious phone calls. Then came the question that had apparently caused the delays, concern and consternation: ‘What is your flight number?’
Wow, that’s a new one! I thought. I decided it was an opportunity to stake a claim in the world of international flight numbers. ‘SS1,’ I declared. There was a collective ‘ahh’ from the officials. As they repeated that official-sounding designation, SS1, I perceived a distinct shift in attitude. I was cleared to leave. They didn’t even bother to issue me with a visa or stamp my passport.
On checking in at the Boat Club, I asked for a taxi into the city. That was not possible, the staff said: it was election day. For my own safety I had to stay within the club grounds. When I suggested the poll was a great reason to go into town, I was told it was forbidden. I walked around the club, which was located next to the river, but the Boat Club had no boats that I could use to escape. I felt deflated, but later read on the news that at least seventy-five people had died in election-related violence that year. Understandably, the staff were being protective of their foreign guest.
The next day I was advised it was okay for me to visit the town. I said I wanted to visit a cinema but was told: ‘No, there are no cinemas for you in Chittagong.’
‘Oh, there must be some cinemas here?’ I said, knowing the Subcontinental love of the movies.
‘There are no cinemas suitable for you.’
I
explained that my family ran cinemas, and that I was visiting cinemas in every country I went to. In particular, I was researching how locals enjoy cinema. The staff were impressed and sent me to their favourite. It was a cracker.
The Almas Cinema Hall’s brutal Bauhaus-style concrete exterior looked like a pre-war telephone exchange. The ticket booths in the dusty foyer were small slits in a stone wall which the Terminator would have had trouble breaching. The candy bar was empty – not just of people but of products – and the seats had seen better centuries. If there had been floor lighting it would have shown that the floors were worn to the concrete. It was like a grand home run down by generations of neglectful owners. I loved it.
Bureaucracy’s dead hand kept me longer in Chittagong than planned. I had tried to file a flight plan for Kolkata the day before, and was assured several times that one wouldn’t be necessary. When I was ready to leave, the Bangladeshi flight controllers wouldn’t let me go without clearance to land in India. The Indian authorities, who were stalling, only relented after I photographed my handwritten flight plan and emailed it to my Indian flight handler. The Indians had decided that I wasn’t welcome in Kolkata, even to overfly; it was ‘too busy’, they said, which seemed a little harsh. They directed me to Patna, in north-east India, which was way off my route.
I wonder what’s there? I thought.
Northern India was brimming with life, activity and kindness. I had worked in India many times over the years, and was eager to return. For me, the Subcontinent reinforced a powerful lesson about societies: sometimes those who have the least to give are the most generous.
I asked Prakash Ranjan, my ground handler at Patna airport, where I could find some of the local delicacies, showing him Anne’s emailed suggestions.
‘You won’t find those at the hotel,’ he said. ‘It is street food – I will take you.’
A few hours later he picked me up from my hotel. On his small motorbike. With one helmet. Hey, live life, I thought. Let’s go!
Initially I was worried about the notorious Indian traffic, but I placed my trust in Prakash. We spent three glorious hours crisscrossing the city and visiting street stalls. Prakash, in his late twenties, was very proud to be showing off his beloved city and its best food. The most sublime dish was one of the simplest: a sprout salad served on a large leaf; you used a quarter of another leaf as a spoon. We finished with a soothing lassi, a milk yogurt drink clearly designed to settle any fire in the roof of one’s mouth.
As we neared my hotel, we were engulfed by an Indian wedding ceremony. The guests were all marching down the street – it seemed the reception was to be held at the hotel. It was loud, raucous, colourful and magnificent. They really knew how to celebrate. For a few hours I sat up and enjoyed the visual and aural feast; I couldn’t help laughing when someone decided that firecrackers were just what the party needed, but they exploded with such ferocity that the bridal party ran like Olympic champions, backwards.
My next stop was Gwalior, a quiet air force base near nowhere – other than the lake that was once a refuelling stop for the Qantas Imperial flying boats. The tower directed me to land with a ten-knot tailwind, which is not altogether safe, especially in a plane like the Sun, which has two wheels at the front and one in the rear. My annoyance was tempered, however, when I found out the airport was closed on Saturdays and had been opened just for me.
The biggest event in Gwalior that week was the opening of the action film Gabbar Is Back. The main actor, Akshay Kumar, looked like an Indian version of Dirty Harry. He turned out to be more complex: Chuck Norris crossed with Charles Bronson, and Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. A beloved professor by day and an exposer of corruption by night. Even though I don’t speak Hindi, I enjoyed the movie so much that I returned after intermission (yes, intermission) to watch the second half. I have even put the trailer on my website just so you can watch it (www.southernsun.voyage/gabbar).
I took a three-day break in Gwalior, and was thoroughly enamoured by it. I even found time to catch up on work back home. Part of the reason I had not told many people about my trip was so I could continue to do this – I was able to answer emails most nights, so many of the people I worked with outside our office didn’t realise I was away. When I had a little more time, and reasonable internet, I was able to watch trailers and book upcoming films. Glory be to the interweb!
Gwalior was more interesting than I’d expected. The most common billboards, and they were prolific, promoted education: tutors to get students into high school and university, as well as the institutions themselves. This focus on education I hadn’t seen elsewhere. I was meeting many locals on the streets and in the parks; often whole families walked up to say hello.
Then it occurred to me that I hadn’t been asked for money in the streets at all during the trip – with the exception of an older man at the fuel station in Indonesia, who opened his dressing gown and showed me his weeping stomach wounds and a colostomy bag, a memory I had tried to erase. It was wonderful meeting so many people who wanted to talk and be hospitable, and who had no other agenda than being sociable.
The ancient temples, palaces and forts were magnificent. It was incredible to find buildings ranging from 800 to 2500 years old in a part of India the rest of the world seemed unaware of. I didn’t see a single other foreigner the whole time I was there.
Then there was the Jai Vilas Palace, the most extravagant nineteenth-century building I had ever seen. The maharaja who built it had perhaps somewhat questionable taste: a lot of the building was outright hilarious, either for its attempt at grandeur or for its outright weirdness. A solid-silver model train set had been built to transport food and condiments around a dining table that could seat over 100 people. A later maharaja proudly displayed photos with third-world dictators and despots, and a collection of unusual vehicles, including a swan-inspired baby carriage. Perhaps that had had a long-term effect on him, as later in life he commissioned a rather unusual marble statue of a woman in a somewhat intimate encounter with a swan (see the first photo section). This brought back a distant memory . . .
A decade or so earlier, when I was Commodore of the Royal Yacht Club of Victoria, one of my duties was to host an annual Christmas lunch. I had thus been asked to comment on the menu.
‘Can we have swan?’ I asked. It seemed a reasonable request.
‘No, you can’t,’ I was told a few hours later. ‘The wholesaler doesn’t stock swan.’
I wasn’t entirely surprised. The folklore I had heard – yet never checked its veracity, for I loved the story too much – was that swans were protected throughout the Commonwealth, being considered the property of the Queen. Only she was allowed to eat them. And not wanting to seem extravagant, she only ate swan for lunch on Christmas Day. I could picture the swan being brought out to the table, and the Windsors digging in to the most impressive of many courses. The leftovers would go back to the kitchen, and perhaps the next day Lizzie and Phil would enjoy cold swan and watercress sandwiches for lunch . . .
What would be closest to swan? ‘Probably goose,’ I was told, but was assured it was a greasy and not altogether pleasant bird, while turkey was much nicer and readily available.
‘Okay, turkey it is,’ I said. ‘But don’t tell anyone else what we are having, and leave the menus to me.’
A close ally in the club office and I designed a classically styled menu inside a neatly folded card:
Entree: Grain-fed prawns
Main: Roast free-range swan . . .
I’ve forgotten what we had for dessert.
The big day came around, and before I stood to welcome the members to the sold-out lunch, I could already hear the murmurings. ‘Swan?’ people were saying. ‘Have you had swan before? And how do you get prawns to eat grain? Don’t they have really small mouths?’
I formally welcomed the members, and went on to explain that we had prepared something special for lunch. To start with, we had secured prawns that, after being raised on
sea grass, had been fed grain for the last few months of their lives to fatten them up. ‘When I first became a flag officer and knew that one day I’d likely be Commodore,’ I continued, ‘I knew this would be a great opportunity to serve swan for Christmas lunch. They can’t be bought, but I discovered a loophole: if the swans are raised on your own property, they can be eaten. So, four years ago, I acquired some swan eggs, hatched and raised the swans, and eventually a dozen swans roamed our backyard. The lawn and the pool have been an awful mess for all that time. Today, you will enjoy these birds, and Anne gets her yard back. Here’s to a great lunch.’
Some members realised I couldn’t be serious, but my delivery was so heartfelt and straight that others were excited. A few were offended: how on Earth could we eat beautiful swans? To this day, a number of members still believe that they ate swan for lunch that day, and that it tasted a bit like turkey, but better.
11.
The Viceroy’s House
‘I have found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.’
GANDALF, THE HOBBIT (2012)
There was a problem departing Gwalior: the tower advised me that a visual take-off was prohibited because visibility was only 4000 metres. I was sitting in the cockpit and ready to go, but unable to see the problem. Just as I thought, What the hell do I do now? the controller offered a helpful suggestion: ‘Would you like to request special VFR?’
Voyage of the Southern Sun Page 8
