We’re picking up on our journey today, departing from Jerusalem headed to Cairo, Egypt. It is in the pre-dawn hours and I’m reviewing today’s weather across the region. It looks to be a wonderful day. The cloud cover over this portion of the Mediterranean will burn off after sunrise.
Departing LLJR just as the sun is rising over Israel.
The awesome pyramids just west of Cairo. This was the highlight of today’s trip.
The Sphinx along the Giza Plateau, near Cairo, Egypt
While it was out of the way to travel through Egypt, it was certainly worth it to view the pyramids and Great Sphinx of Giza. If you’ve never seen these in FSX (or in real life), I would encourage you to depart Cairo in a single engine aircraft and travel west. You can’t miss them. I found thiswebsite which shows the locations of the major sites to visit in Egypt.
After flying around Giza, Cairo and around the Nile I landed at HECW (Cairo West), refueled and departed as quickly as possible. I had a lot of ground to cover to get across Saudi Arabia to either Qatar or the UAE. I wanted to best position myself for the next leg of the journey and got on my way. I knew the flight from Cairo to either Qatar or UAE would require at least one re-fuel stop. So I planned to go from Cairo to Tabuk, Saudi Arabia. It would be a short leg of 365 nm and one that I thought would allow me to reach Qatar.
I departed Cairo and made it to Tabuk without issue. Once in Tabuk I realized I had possibly made a planning error and it would be very tight to get from Tabuk to Qatar without refueling. But I had a couple of airports I could stop at for fuel if needed. Fingers crossed I departed Tabuk hoping for a nice strong tailwind. In stead of a tailwind, I found a strong headwind and this strong headwind would stay with me most of the trip. Getting low on fuel and knowing I would not make it to Qatar, I landed at Z26G and took on enough fuel to complete my journey to Qatar. While perhaps not something to be done in real life, but I landed at OTBH which is home to the US Central Command. It was great to see the US Airforce Jets and support aircraft depicted in full force. I parked my Mooney and prepared for the next day of flying fun.
The next day has arrived and it is time to depart Qatar for OPJI, in Jiwani, Pakistan. I departed Qatar just as the sun was rising. My days journey will have me flying across Pakistan and India. When I began this trip I figured I would fly to India, but my route would take me in a southerly direction for Sri Lanka. I had planned to cross from Sri Lanka to Sumatra. However, since trading in the default Mooney for the Carenado, my fuel capacity went from 95 gallons to 66 gallons. This means I will need to modify my route. No problem.
My route over the next few days will take me in a northeast direction into India. I will go to Agra to see the Taj Mahal and perhaps head to Kathmandu before dropping down into Myanmar, Thailand etc. I’m really looking forward to exploring more of this region and also Australia and New Zealand.
I’m enroute to Agra, India to visit the Taj Mahal. It will be more of a fly over and around then briefly land at VIAG for fuel, lunch and preparation for the next leg of my journey which will take me to Kathmandu, Nepal and VNKT airport. Unfortunately, VNKT is a far as I’ll venture into Nepal. I’ll then turn and head southeast toward Bangladesh.
Taj Mahal
The highlight of this recent portion of the trip was flying into Kathmandu and through Nepal. The terrain reminded me a lot of Colorado and the Rocky Mountains. I had to do my research for the region as I wasn’t 100% certain of the altitude and just how tall some of the peaks are. I wouldn’t be coming close to Mt. Everest, but the charts I found online indicated the areas directly around Kathmandu topped out around 9K.
Once leaving Kathmandu, I headed Southeast towards Bangladesh, Burma and Thailand. I then headed South into Malaysia then to Singapore. This series of legs were completed over the course of a couple of days. Upon reaching Singapore (about 10 days ago) I came down with a cold or the flu in real life and spent several days off work and mostly in bed. I’m am back at work and feeling much, much better. I plan to depart Singapore and head down into Indonesia landing at Jakarta, then eastward across Indonesia to Darwin, Australia.
Until next time,
J