Logbook entry: Mumbai - Dubai - LAX - Phoenix: An Arab Jet takes me farther north than I have ever been before, as far north as I will ever go

Yesterday, I wrote I would probably put this post up before the day ended and at about 8:00 PM, I decided to do just that. But I felt overwhelmed by sleepiness, so I decided to take a 15 minute nap first. That nap did not end until nearly midnight.

And, once again, even though I am in a major city in the US, the wireless internet connection that I have here in this hotel is exceedingly slow. I always place my pictures before I write and it took a long time to place these pictures.

Anyway, here I am, in a taxi cab in Mumbai, headed for the airport to board the first of three flights that will end with me getting off the plane in Phoenix.

I have several other potential logbook entries in this India take, as we traveled often and far and I will probably work at least a few of them into the series that I plan to develop after I arrive home. I could have saved this to end the series, but I know where I want the series to end - in India, where Sujitha and I put our feet into a warm river.

Here I am, waiting at the Mumbai airport to board the first of three flights.

And here I am, on the plane, as it lifts off Indian ground and heads west, over the Arabian Sea.

Now, here I am, debarking the Emirates Air jet that has brought me to Dubai.

The next leg of the flight would put us in the air for 16 hours straight. I would watch many movies.

Now we are flying over the Arctic Ocean, maybe 200 miles north of mid-Russia. When I look down, the terrain of broken ice looks very familiar. We are on a great circle path that will take us directly over the North Pole.

Now we are passing over the pole. This is the farthest north I have ever been or ever will be and it is an Arab jet that has brought me here. To fly over the pole - what a huge thrill I felt. I felt excited.

We had been flying due north, but in an instant, without changing directions, were suddenly flying due south. The stewardess did not let this distract her from her work.

My goodness, she was beautiful! Tall, too, Very tall. Way taller than me.

The pole is now far behind us. We are on approach to LAX, the Pacific Ocean before us, the US beneath and behind us.

Now I must go through customs. It made me proud to see this picture, not because he has done everything right, but because it is a picture that one could not have imagined ever being taken in the America that I grew up in. It just could not have happened. Of course, there are many who undoubtedly feel rage about being forced by their government to pass beneath this picture when they return to the US.

Many of them wish those old days, which were not the days they now imagine them to have been, had never left. Many of them imagine that a time when America was a place in which a person of color had absolutely no hope of ever becoming president and maybe of not even sitting with them in the same restaurant, was somehow a more moral, upright, just, place of higher, righteous, values than the America of today. They want to bring those days back. They can't. Those days are gone forever and for good.

Now here I am, on the third leg, the one that will take me to...

...Phoenix. Now here I am, driving away from the Phoenix airport, looking for a hamburger. And here are all these people, in a jet, leaving Phoenix, flying away to who knows where... the entire world, perhaps.

Logbook entry: Pune to Mumbai, shot through a taxi window darkly

First, I must apologize - this post is going to be a bit of an eye irritater. I shot it all through a rather foggy, dusty, taxi-window, often backlit as Murthy, Vasanthi and I headed for the Mumbai airport after the wedding so that we could catch the jet to Ahmedabad - once home to Mahatma Gandhi.

Yes, Sujitha and Manoj have now been formally married in the Hindu tradition of Manoj's family and community in and near Pune. I had been to two Hindu weddings in Bangalore - that of my niece, Khena, to Murthy and Vasanti's son Vivek as well as the wedding of Soundarya and Anil, but this was very different.

It was magnificent, to be certain - wild, fun, hot, chaotic and now Manu and Suji can get on with building their lives. Of course, I have had no time to so much as look at a frame or two.. 

I am just going to wait until I return to Alaska to blog the wedding - and all the stories from this trip that are most important to me.

There is just no way I can do justice to them as I travel.

So from here out I am just going to keep doing this - posting random little things here and there, catpured as I move along.

Yesterday, I did not get on the net at all. I am on it now, in an internet cafe, which will be closing soon. So, for that reason, I am not going to take the time to put the photos in order or to give you a travelogue - I will simply state that I shot these through the cab window, in between Pune and Mumbai, and in Mumbai.

We stopped for snacks, but not here.

For a time, we entered into darkness, but soon emerged into the light.

A fellow sojourner.

I don't know for certain, but I'll bet he drives one of these rigs.

Everywhere I look in India, someone is putting up a new building. America, knock off all this ignorant, self-detructive, silliness that now passes for politics within your borders. India is catching up to you and might just pass you by.

Same is true with much of the world.

Mumbai.

Brave fellow.

I, of course, cannot look at a crow without thinking of Soundarya. They may not all have known it, but in Soundarya the crows had a friend.

Make of it what you will.

Mumbai.

There's lots of billboards in India - most of them covered with pretty girls.

Really, what are the odds that in the second or two it would take us to pass by, we would come upon this advertisement, in this setting of massive cement just as a cement mixer rolled past between us?

Sometimes, I am a most fortunate man.

Ok. Internate cafe getting ready to close. Typos be damned. This post is done.

By the way, its cheap to hire a cab for a whole day - as little as $10, plus gas and oil.

Update: I did not know it when I took this picture, but this man is the most famous athlete in India, a cricket player, whose status is no less than that of a Michael Jordon, a Steve Young, Joe Montana, or Mohammed Ali: Sachin Tendulkar.