Great views from 9.5 kilometres

I can never understand why people ask for window seats and then keep the blinds drawn. With seat back movies, open blinds are less likely to bother neighboring passengers, but our location at the back of the section was perfect for hassle-free viewing as we flew over mostly cloud-free India, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Passing over the coast of India’s Andhra Pradesh state.

The view from 12,000m of Pakistan’s Indus River showed a different aspect to the recent flood disaster: the area just beyond the river course is empty desert, so people in the valley would not have been able to just move out of the way.

The Indus River in flood. Punjab, Pakistan.

Afghanistan was a surprise. Our flight path crossed between Khandahar and Kabul over rugged dry mountains with almost no vegetation, and only the sparsest sign of agriculture in a few of the valleys.

Irrigated fields and orchards along a watercourse flowing
into Lake Istadeh, Ghazni, Afghanistan.

Roads were quite visible, and some had evident checkpoints along them, but otherwise it seemed incredible that there would be any reason to have our armed forced involved in conflict there.

The road on the left runs between Kandahar and Kabul:
with our binoculars, we could see a military checkpost along it.

However, the view from above reveals the geopolitical reasons for conflict: access to the Indian Ocean from the north, and the only land passage between the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East has doomed this barren land to conflict for generations.

Crossroads land: the rugged land below connects oil-rich central Asia
to the Indian Ocean, and the Indian subcontinent to Eurasia.

The eastern shore of the Caspian Sea was clear, but clouds covered most of Georgia and Russia as we flew westward.

The eastern edge of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan
marked the end of clear views for our flight.

We could catch occasional glimpses of neat farmland of Poland and Germany before descending through cloud to land on time at busy Heathrow.

A very long day

Our last day on Victoria’s southern coast.

We awoke to a sunny Sunday morning—our last in Victoria, and the start of a long “day” of travel.

Our hosts drove us to Warrnambool to catch the train to arrive in Melbourne at 20:30; then a bus from downtown to the airport. Our flight was to leave at 01:05 Monday morning but we were in the air five minutes early. I’d selected seats at the back of one of the sections to have just two seats in the row; all of the rest of the economy section is configured as 3-4-3. These seats also have a bit more leg room, so we managed to catch a bit of sleep on the 7.5 hr flight to Singapore.

Katharine at the free Internet kiosks at Changi Airport.

Singapore’s Changi Airport is big and modern, with the typical shopping arcade of major airports. Free Internet access helped pass some of the time in our quite welcome 3 hour layover.

Back aboard for the next leg to London Heathrow—and 13 hours in the air as we followed the sun over 12 time zones to arrive at 15:30.

A terrorism threat had no apparent effect on Heathrow arrivals, but the customs clearance wait took almost the hour the signs predicted. Then we were out with our bags and onto a bus to the car hire place. With our GPS installed in the Volvo diesel—and a bit of maneuvering practice in the parking lot—we were soon onto the M25 for the 2 hour drive to Katharine’s cousin’s place.

Finally… into a bed after nearly 44 hours of travel.

What’s in a name?

The address on Redman Road had been given to us directly by the person living there, so we expected our GPS to get us to the right spot. As Katharine entered the street name, it helpfully completed after 4 letters—but with “Redmond Road” instead. It would not allow her to enter the correct name, and the proposed road did not have the number we wanted.

Since we’d arranged to meet the resident at a specific time, we had to call for directions. It turned out that not only was the name wrong in the GPS, but it was also wrong on the printed municipal map!

The fact that the map was also wrong provided the clue to why the GPS data was wrong. The company Garmin uses for its navigation data, NAVTEQ, had obtained the incorrect municipal data for their database.

An error like this one may only be a minor inconvenience for a few people for now. But what if a courier can’t deliver a much-needed part for a milking machine, or an emergency vehicle is delayed in finding an address? Accurate navigation data is quickly becoming essential, and such errors need to be fixed.

Fortunately, “crowd sourcing” methods are available to enable users to provide direct feedback. My query to Garmin support got a speedy response with a link to the Garmin error reporting page as well as to the NAVTEQ map reporter site. Both were straightforward, but the NAVTEQ site used a map navigation interface to display the current information from their database.

How often do we get the opportunity to directly contribute to improving a useful tool? I’ve added these reporting sites to my browser bookmarks, and will certainly make a point to report any errors I happen to find.

Road trains

You can see them coming for miles: even on paved roads, a cloud of red dust churned up by their wake lets you know that a road train is coming.

Large trucks with three or more trailers are common sights on many Australian roads. Carrying animals, ore, fuel and a wide range of products to (or from) remote areas, meeting them on the road for the first time is a knuckle-tightening experience.

This road train was at a rest area along an unpaved section of the Savannah Way in western Queensland. With three trailers and 72 tires to kick up dust and rocks, we were very glad to find it stopped!

Signs along various highways advise drivers to allow at least a kilometre to pass a road train—and in our underpowered camper vans, even that was barely enough. Fortunately, the drivers are understanding, and often signalled to let us know that the road ahead was clear. Passing can still be dangerous though: in one instance, a kangaroo carcass on the road ahead made me pull in much closer than I would have liked. As well, the roads often become narrower on bridges, so you don’t want to pass these monsters while crossing a bridge.

Australian roads sensibly have truck pull-offs, and frequent road signage encourage tired drivers to stop for a nap. We were always glad to see them in use because any collision with a road train would be serious.

The point was driven home very graphically on one lonely stretch of highway in the Kimberly region: the pavement had literally been melted where the many tires of a road train had locked up in an emergency stop. Despite the braking, the road train had hit the full-sized bullock whose broken carcass was being picked over by scavenger birds nearby. What was particularly sobering was that there was no evidence of broken headlights: the “bull bars” in front had done their job, and the road train had apparently been able to continue on its way.

The grey nomad trail

Canadians like to go south in the winter, but doing so means leaving Canada. Australians are luckier: to escape the cold, they go north, but can do so without leaving their own country—or even their own state in the case of residents of Western Australia.

The other notable difference between Canada and Oz is that Australians can drive around their country—certainly not an option for Canadians!

And drive they do: as we’ve been making our way around much of Australia’s coastal perimeter we’re meeting dozens of Australians who have taken to the road to explore.

The term “grey nomads” is often used to describe the many mostly-retired couples driving robust 4WD vehicles and towing trailers as they tour from caravan parks to camp sites—and often well-equipped roadside stops.

Our little “chubby camper” van is tiny and limited in where it can go compared to the Toyota Land Cruisers towing luxurious trailers—some equipped with wide screen TVs and satellite dishes.

Caravan parks are widespread in Australia, and most offer laundry facilities, well-maintained “ablution blocks” (toilets, hot showers), camp kitchens (many with refrigerators, BBQs, washing facilities). A powered site is typically A$20-45; an unpowered site A$5-10 less.

One of the best sources for things to do along the way are these grey nomads. We’ve exchanged all sorts of tips and “must see” ideas as we’ve travelled, and seldom stop without having a conversation with someone about where they have been or are going.

We can also tell that we stand out a bit from the stereotype of people who rent our kind of vehicle. At one site, a neighbour commented “Aren’t you two a bit old for a van like that?”

I guess maybe I should start shaving my head or using Grecian Formula…

The cost of “cheap flights”

Tiger Airways flight prices certainly support the “fly cheaper” tag on their promotional banner: we had paid just A$140 to get both of us from Melbourne to Brisbane—a two-hour flight.

How can they manage to provide such low-cost flights?

• Online bookings. It may be possible to buy tickets at the counter, but we didn’t see anyone doing so—and there was no obvious counter.
• An “extra” charge is levied for everything. Water in a 325ml bottle was S$6; weight surcharges for bags >15kg are steep; food is expensive (and pretty basic) on board—and they have signs imploring people not to bring food aboard (although there was no apparent reason other than people would then not buy food on board).
• Use of minimalist airport services. The Singapore airport was not the new and fancy one; instead, it was a dingy hall with a McDonalds and minimal services. The Melbourne check in looked temporary, and the security check was about a slack as we’ve seen since the 1980s. Even the boarding was minimal: several passengers were very annoyed to have to walk down a long hall, and then out onto the tarmac to climb up stairs to board. (We rather appreciated the fresh air after the dingy terminal!) 
• Crowd people into the plane. Just as well the seats didn’t recline on the Melbourne-Brisbane flight, because there was just barely enough room for my knees.
• No on-board entertainment.
• Weird flying hours. Our flight left at 6am, and the online ticket was pretty clear about being there at 4am to check in. We managed that, and were near the front of the line—but by 5am, the counters were closed so the staff could process passengers after security. If you arrived after 5am, too bad…

For a two-hour flight, none of the above were too onerous. The longer flights—like our Singapore-Perth flight—had seats that did recline, but none of the amenities common to more major carriers.

Are better amenities worth the extra cost? Fares for Melbourne-Brisbane flights later that same day were ~A$300 each, so for us, the A$460 saved meant quite a few nice meals…

Asian traffic: Everything goes

What do Bangkok and Pattaya (Thailand), Hanoi and Saigon (Vietnam) share? Crazy traffic.

My intro to the wild world of “everything goes” when driving was while entering Bangkok by taxi from the airport. There we were in our hot pink cab, cruising along the highway peacefully, when all of a sudden I spied an unforgettable sight.

A phalanx of three motorcyles full of families… all driving the wrong way up an exit ramp. Speechless, I watched as one driver turned her motorcycle into the highway traffic, while the other two fellows wove through oncoming vehicles to turn onto the opposite lane.

That’s traffic, Asian style. Anything goes but drivers actually watch the vehicle(s) ahead of them. This way, everyone keeps moving, slowly (usually) but with purpose.

Actually it appears to work… fairly well. After all, we did see several nasty motorcycle accidents, with injuries, but that’s another story.