New Job!!

Saying good-bye has always been very hard for me to do. I have a picture up here of Captain Sharma and Manika, whom I have been priveleged to work and fly with for quite awhile now. I have been doing the type training for Captain Sharma since early November of last year and Manika has been flying with me ever since I first started with Jindal Steel. This is a picture of my crew standing on the top of a construction project at our overnight camp in Aizawl, India, a place that Manika will always remember since you usually don't have someone breaking into your room and then stealing your money. But, I had never been to this part of the world and the countryside is just beautiful to see.

The last week has been a very difficult one for me and I hate making tough decisions. I just wish they were all easy ones. Jindal Steel has been very good to me and I have many fond memories of flying with this company and the very cool places that we used to go. For example, I am writing this very blog from Tblisi, Georgia, Eastern European Union (former USSR). I love coming here and this is likely my last trip to Tblisi but I am very happy that Karen got to tag along and see what a wonderful place this is to spend time and to get to know some of the most wonderful people on the planet. Again, tomorrow, we are going to drive up to Gudauri Ski resort and Andro and I will go skiing again, just like we did last winter. This time Karen and my co-captain will tag along and Andro's uncle owns a hotel up in the mountains so we'll drive up and then spend the night up near Gudauri somewhere. Just the scenic drive is so fun and so worth it. I again think there aren't many of my classmates who are able to say that they have snow-skiied in a part of the former Soviet Union, although Georgia is independant now and wants nothing to do with Russia.

Captain Sharma is a good pilot and I feel that I am leaving Jindal Steel in very capable hands until they also add another pilot to their group. One of my American pilot friends already called me and said that there is an ad on the professional pilot websites for a Citation XLS captain with the type rating and current experience, so they didn't wait long to try and replace me, that's for sure. But, after oscillating back a forth for over two weeks, as it was a very tough decision, the swing factor for me was the Indian pilot's themselves, who pointed out unanimously that they would definitely make the change as my new company has the best reputation in India for the way they treat their pilots. As most corporate pilots know, this is where the rubber meets the road in our daily jobs. You can be flying the greatest and most modern equipment out there and be the envy of every pilot on earth but maybe not be treated the best, or there may be major issues that affect the daily operation of the flight department but the new company asked me to find a single pilot in India that would have anything bad to say about them and I literally could not. Several of our own pilots in my previous company had worked there before and told me that they would go back in a heartbeat if given the chance. Several of our former people are over there now as this company, Sahara Group, which has a flight department called AirOne, is rebuilding their flight department after some cutbacks a few years ago. That is one of the things that I worried about in making the change because Jindal is very strong, financially, and really has nothing to worry about. Sahara is on the forefront of commercial development in India and is building many commercial projects throughout the country. Could be up and down a little more than Jindal, but what swayed me was, I only need them to do well for another 3-4 years and I can be out of here, if necessary. Even if I decided to stay in India until I was forced to retire in 7 more years, I think the company will be okay for that period of time. That 3-4 years could be very pleasant indeed if they are anything like what I have been told about the company. Very nice hotels and better treatment are all that make up our daily life formula for happiness and success. The added bonus is that, since ex-pat pilots have to bring their expertise to India, nobody can upgrade here to another aircraft. You have to have had 100 hours of pilot-in-command time in order to qualify as a rated captain in India, in addition to having the type rating already. Since I won't likely be changing types here, I am happy that I can at least now fly the latest and greatest iteration of Cessna's Citation XLS, which is now called an XLS+. No performance difference but certainly a lot of electronics and avionics changes will make this a more fun airplane to fly. Since I have been flying this type for right at 11 years now, this should be a nice, little change for me. And, of course, to add to the incentive to make the change, the whole package makes my life better. That doesn't take anything away from Jindal Steel, which was always a great option and has been nice to me throughout.

So, saying good-bye almost always makes me cry. I hate this part of life but certainly look forward to this exciting, new step. I was offered my first India job because of my experience and qualifications in this wonderful Citation XLS. When I first started flying the Citation Excell in April of 2000, I never knew the wonderful journeys that would result from flying this great performing corporate jet. Now, the most exciting part for me, this time, was that I not only got hired because of my experience on this jet and in my flying, in general, but I was offered this job because we flew a charter flight so well under extremely challenging circumstances, that the executives took notice and rewarded my flying with this fantastic job offer. Nothing could cap off my professional career better than to have something like this happen at this stage of life. After working so hard and so many long hours for so many years, now, I finally get a very special offer as I begin the think about winding down my career, it just seems that God has blessed my life so much.

Of course my flying journey began with my father, who encouraged and provided me with the opportunity to fly airplanes when I was 8 years old. He bought our little Cessna 172 and, since mom didn't care about sitting up front too much, I began flying with dad at that very tender age. My siblings had the same opportunity but I was the one absolutely smitten with the flying bug. Dad was glad to have company on many of his business trips and I was so excited to be allowed to fly at such a young age. Pursuing all my flying opportunities, I became a commercial pilot and flight instructor while still in high school at Thunderbird Academy in Arizona, finishing up my instrument rating my freshman year of college just before I headed over to Botswana, Africa for a student missionary year of flying for Kanye Hospital. What a fantastic year that was. Being president of the Thunderbird Academy Flight Club (Cloud Choppers) for two years was one of the most fun things I did while in high school. Then, flying a mission plane in Botswana while still 19 years of age was a great set up for a professional flying career. But the folks really didn't encourage professional flying as a career so I ended up pursuing their dream and got my college degree in Ministry and music, while still flight instructing my friends and renting planes to fly home on vacations every chance I got. This all led to me continuing to fly while I was attending the SDA Seminary in Michigan and where I greaduated with honors in 1979. Early 1980 and I had a call from a friend about an SDA businessman in Tennessee who was setting up a new flight department for his growing health care company. I jumped at the chance to start up the flight department for Forrest Preston and Life Care Centers of America in Cleveland, Tennessee. Did that same job for over 8 years and then opted to go with the airplane when it was sold in 1988. Now, 5 jet type-ratings later and with over 15, 500 hours in my logbook, I feel so amazingly lucky to have had this all happen in my life. My family will all testify that my logbooks are more like a diary for me, as I can go back to as early as my first logbook and look at the specific date and flight and, for the most part, I can recall that flight. Usually I have made a remark in there that keys my memory to something and will help me remember that flight. I can tell you exactly where I was when things like President Reagan being shot or the big stock market slide or my father's stroke or more mundane things like a bad headwind or great tailwind affected my flight and my life. There are entries that are accompanied with tears of sorrow and others with tears of joy. In short, my logbook is a microcosm of my life and I love that. So, while this latest change is scary in many ways, it is also very exciting because, if it works out, it will fully enable me to hang it up and still have a life. When you fly airplanes for a living, you really never know if this is actually going to be a possibility. My friend and copilot John Page used to see the roadside bums with the grocery carts and bandanas and say, "there goes a former corporate pilot." We used to laugh hard at that because there was more than a little truth to that statement.

God has certainly taken me through some very tough trials in my life and there were days that I really thought it all might not be worth it but He has stayed by my side throughout and now, as this all seems to be such a huge blessing in my life, I cannot forget that HE led me all the way and that, all in all, it has been a very good life.

So, since life goes on and this is the next chapter, I expect it to be very exciting and adventurous. Daily life in India meets those criteria, and when you throw in the flying and international travel, I say, who could ask for more.

Now I have all my blog buddies and Facebook friends to share this with me and I feel blessed beyond my wildest imagination. Thank you all for being there for me and for acting interested in

those things that bring joy to my life. I will try to do my best to keep the India adventure and the God takes care of Dan story going so that, if it provides any inspiration or pleasure for even one person, then I will feel like my life has been worth it.

It will take a couple of months to get all my certifications and paperwork processed for my new responsibilities so be patient and then, let the new adventure begin.

So: to Dhaka, Ashish, Jagjiven, Capt Sharma, Manika, Mehak and the countless others who have been associated with me at Jindal, THANKS for all you did for me and I hope to still see you around somewhere in India.

Captain Dan

Eating bugs for breakfast

You might think that I am talking about going out to eat at this place, but I was getting my Honey Shredded Mini-wheats out the other day and I noticed a couple of dark spots that looked like they had little legs. I immediately began to get the bad feeling and so I poured out the entire contents of an otherwise fairly new and normal but expensive (at $7.50/box) of this cereal onto a plate, where I could inspect and examine these guys. There weren't many of them so I decided to go ahead and pick them out and eat the rest of the box over time, which was 2/3 full. This grossed Karen out but since I had already been in Africa for a year and was born in Bolivia, where my father used to talk about cockroaches in his soup, I was kind of ready for this. I am active on Facebook so I asked my group what I should do about this problem. I received many interesting and experienced answers. I think my favorite one came from Cindy Frank, who was a teenager in Botswana when I lived there in 1972 and 73. She suggested just eating in the dark. This would certainly work and would be the easiest. Then, one suggested the microwave and that would surely work but most suggested putting the cereal in the freezer for a couple of days. These are microscopic little guys, not any kind of big bugs at all. I guess over here it's okay to kill something once it gets to a small enough size. My boss is a Jain Hindu, and they are very strict about their diet and taking care of all living creatures. The really strict ones have shrouds on their house fans so that bugs don't get sucked in and killed. One of my American friends here was talking about going over to visit some Jain Hindus and she was unaware of this rule and was clap-swatting the mosquitos in the room that were flying around. Her husband had to explain to her later that she should not be doing that in front of Jain Hindus, who don't want to kill any living thing. There is a RAT temple not that far from us and since rats can be a problem here, and they are not to be killed, our apartment complex has a pretty high-tech ultrasonic device that keeps rats away. When I first moved in here I was up very late one night and heard all these whistle soundings going on. I got up, went out on the porch and couldn't see a single security guard with a whistle in his mouth. I called the manager the next day to complain and he told me I was hearing the anti-rat sonic system. It must work as we haven't seen one here. Most people who have lived overseas totally understand what is necessary when you are trying to keep food in your cupboard in a tropical type climate. Much of our food is not expensive, but if you have a craving for the stuff you remember from back in your homeland, there are special stores that cater to ex-pats and they also have special prices. Not that they are THAT greedy, but there is a 108% import tax on things brought into India from another country. Think how THAT alone would change the landscape of America, if they did that to protect our jobs and products coming from other countries. So, since I eat on the road a lot and it tends to be more Indian, I often choose to eat my favorite breakfast cereals and pancakes and stuff like that when I am home. Milk is about the same a back home, although it comes in a box and has a shelf-life of many weeks since it is super-pasteurized. You can just grab a milk box out of the cupboard and put it in the fridge the night before you want it. Since food and entertainment are all I pay for here, I do tend to eat some favorite foods from back home like peanut butter, nuts and stuff like that. To offset the expensive, imported foods, eggs are like .30 cents a dozen and bread is 35 cents a loaf for wheat bread. Karen has some favorite fruits that she loves, like pomegranites. These are prohibitively expensive back home and take a massive amount of work to prepare but here they are pretty reasonable and beautiful in season AND the househelper will peel and get the fruit out of as many as you want. She preps one for Karen every day that there is one in the house.

Many of you said that bugs in your food would be a stopper, but you also have bugs in your food in America, you just don't see them because of the way the food is processed. I just consider the ones that I don't get out as extra protein and hope they don't float to the top of my milk as I am eating. If they do, then they get picked out. Karen doesn't eat cereal and doesn't have to put up with this. So, while you may be thinking I was worried about bugs at the above pictured restaurant near our home, it's in our kitchen that they grow. And, this is a brand-name world recognized brand of cereal, too.

We got the windshield back in the plane last week and started flying on Wednesday. Now, it's been really busy and tomorrow I have a day trip to Mumbai and then a 3 day trip way over to Eastern India, to the Myanmar (used to be Burma) border. We will spend the night and then fly back to Western India, Pune. If we overnight there, I will get my driver to take me out to the big SDA school there, Spicer College, and try to get a campus tour. I don't know how far from the airport it is but we'll try. I alway carry my camera to towns I haven't been to before because I never know what I am going to see.

For those of you who aren't on Facebook, I would encourage someone who is tech savvy in your family to get you signed up. You can have a good time finding old friends and even family that you have lost track of in the ensuing years. I post pics there on almost every flight from my Blackberry, so it's almost live action on there. I will put some more pics up here from my trip to Rajahmundry and Chennai last week very soon. That was a nice, long trip and I hadn't been to Chennai before so that was fun.

Take care and drop me a note once in awhile so I know you are alive,

Dan

Everything but Tigers

Hi friends and family,

You might think that I have totally forgotten about my blogsite, but no, its just been a hectic time and then recently I had some interesting things happen to the airplane and ended up with some time off, so have been concentrating on Facebook, which I got on in late October. I know many of you aren't on Facebook so I will continue to write letters and put stuff on my blogsite so you can kind of keep up with what's going on with Karen and me in India.

Just a few days before Christmas, we were doing a company flight to Ranchi, India and level at 41,000 feet all of a sudden we heard a loud crack that sounded like a shotgun. Even with my noise-cancelling Bose headset on, it was noticeable. I looked up at the windshield and the pilot side windshield had cracked like a checkerboard. Because I have been flying Citations for 25 years, I knew that our aircraft had a thick, plexiglass layer with a thin glass layer on the outside and the glass was what had broken. We asked center for a descent to 15,000 feet and got the airplane back to Delhi, where it has been sitting for 3 weeks as of Wednesday. We had to get the windshield from Wichita and when it got here there was a technical hangup in customs for about a week. We now have it in hand and it should be ready to fly in the next day or two but I knew this was going to be lengthy and so I took a couple of side trips. I had been wanting to go to Kathmandu, Nepal and see Everest and the Himalayas ever since I arrived in India in late June of 2009. So, we called our travel agent, something you hardly do anymore in the states, but is definitely the best way to do things here, and in a day or so we were flying commercially to Kathmandu, only a one hour flight from here. Most of you have already seen the photos from our visit and know the stories but for those of you who haven't seen the photos, I only have a Canon 1000D digital camera with 10 megapixels but I will have to say some of the photos are just breathtaking. Of course, we didn't have cooperative weather for the mountain flight the next day. I opted to go anyway since I had come this far but it was like climbing Everest without getting all the way to the top - quite disappointing. I will definitely go back with a few days to spare so we can play the weather and catch the peak without an obscuring cloud deck but the photos that I was able to take were quite beautiful, just not the awesome photo of Everest that I had envisioned.

Karen and I shopped, ate, toured, and just enjoyed another country for a change. Kathmandu is growing and changing rapidly. I have a feeling that it is nothing like it was 10 years ago or anything like it was 25 years ago. To make a long story shorter: we loved Kathmandu. It was less crowded than India seems, the food was much less spicy and the roads seemed better, although there were still "jams" on the road during rush hours. We loved our hotel, with a view of the Himalayas once the fog burned off in the afternoons. Because it was kind of the off season we received excellent service and full attention everywhere we went. Karen had wanted to go visit a couple of casinos since they have none in India so we went over a couple of evenings to see what was going on. Karen is used to the huge casinos of Las Vegas or Biloxi, etc. and was shocked when we walked in and there were just a few, maybe a dozen, slot machines, and they looked like something out of the 50's and 60's. The funniest part to us was, that the Nepalese government doesn't allow the local Nepalese to gamble so the casinos cannot cater to locals at all. This means that the next available group is Indians and many do fly over for gambling junkets. The slot machines take and pay with Indian coins and the casinos will take Indian rupees, which almost no businesses in town will. They pay back in Nepalese rupees, which have a totally different value, so you have to be sharp and keeping track to make sure they don't shortchange you when you cash in your chips. Karen always had lots of helpers in the casino, even one guy who suggested which machine was generous, and it turned out to be. I was having fun at the blackjack tables and we came out ahead, so decided we liked Kathmandu. For those of you who are getting all judgmental and concerned, we spent more money on dinner than in the casino and nothing important was risked, it was only some interesting entertainment, where we met some nice Indians. If a Nepalese casino gets caught letting locals gamble, they immediately lose their license, so it's not something they tolerate. My friend Scott Graham, who successfully climbed Mt. Everest in May of 2004, told me that Kathmandu was a less than desireable little mountain city. It is suffering from extreme growth, water shortages, all the things that the cities of the world suffer from, but the whole time you are there you look to the horizon and see those Himalayas, and for me, that made everything okay. We enjoyed the Thamel area, which is kind of like Old Delhi, but caters more to the trekkers of the world and the tourist busses with it's shops, restaurants and lots of hippie types wandering the streets with backpacks and hiking boots and looking like they have no visible means of support. We ate at the Bhojan Grija, which was an authentic Nepalese restaurant with folk dances and music and an incredible meal. You got no choice about it, they just showed you what was being served that night but, even though we had no idea about most of it, we really found it tasty and enjoyed the program a lot. We stayed 3 days, flew back to Delhi, found out my plane was still a long ways from being fixed so called the travel agent again and said we wanted a tiger safari to Jim Corbett park if possible. He said no trains were available at the last minute but if we could stand a 6 and 1/2 hour drive on Indian roads, they would send a vehicle to our door. We have nothing like this kind of service in America but they sent a driver who picked us up at 7 a.m. and we were off to the park. Since it turned out that we left early on Sunday morning, we thought traffic would not be bad but they have no weekends here and it was just like any other day, busy and crowded. By early afternoon we were pulling into the park and to our very nice resort. Nothing was planned for the first afternoon since we didn't know what time we would arrive so we both decided to go for a full massage down at the spa. That turned out to be very relaxing and then we went to the main lodge where they were serving coffee and tea and showing movies about the tigers and elephants of India. That was where we learned that elephants are not feared in the jungles and that they have recently been carrying video cameras out into the jungle, into tiger dens, etc. and getting some spectacular footage. This was also when we decided to try the elephant safari because it looked like we could just ride our elephant and get some very interesting views of nature. The first day, though, was our regular safari from the back of a jeep. We had only paid for the group safari but since it was the off season and the resort was not crowded we got the private jeep for the group rate. They don't get the park permit to view tigers until the customers show up so we had to get up early and be at the reception at 6, ouch.

We hadn't planned properly for the cooler weather so we were borrowing clothing from the staff, etc., and the ride to the North end of the park in an open jeep in 30-40 degree temps was really cold. We found a blanket and blocked out a lot of the wind but were still shivering by the time we got to the gate where we actually left the road and started exploring the tiger road. Then, that road went even further up the mountain and the trees were now tall and everywhere so no sun to warm you up. Of course, our guide then told us about a man-eating tiger that had killed several people in the last year and one woman just 5 days before we were there. That added an element of scariness to the whole episode but we felt better when he explained that man-eaters are usually older tigers who can no longer kill wild game and end up taking the easy route and killing some poor, hapless villager. This poor lady had been out collecting food for her cattle and had it stacked on her head and was walking with some others back to the village. According to the guide, she was a little bit ahead of the rest of the group and they only found her hand, foot and her sari, as well as the stack of food for her cattle that she was carrying. Since these people are often small and vulnerable, that's what the tiger takes. They send out groups of men to hunt for the man-eaters, and since they are territorial and within a certain area, they can usually find them. Since India's tiger population is dwindling, they try now to tranquilize and capture these animals, rather than just shoot them, but sometimes circumstances prevent doing what they'd like to do. As you can see from the above photo, we were where tigers had been just a short time, maybe minutes, before.

Anyway, we saw lots of tracks and many kinds of game, including a good look at a leopard, which is even more rare than the tiger. I couldn't get my camera ready and get a shot before he was gone but we know we saw it and it is a treasured memory. On the back of the elephant, Karen thought she caught a glimpse of a tiger in the same area where we later saw fresh tracks. I never got a look but I had seen two tigers at Ranthlambore Park a year ago, so I had my wild tiger spotting and was just hoping for a good one for Karen. We will definitely go back just because the park itself was so beautiful and peaceful compared to the hustle and bustle of Delhi.

Now we are back in Delhi and I am just waiting for the call from the mechanics (called engineers here) to go test fly the airplane after the new window installation and the cure of the sealant. If everything goes well, we should be flying by midweek. It will be good to be back in the air, but with Christmas, New Years and some nice vacationing under my belt it was the perfect time for something to ground the airplane.

I think most of you have seen the photo albums that I posted online so I have only put up a couple of reminder pics as to what we were doing here lately. Still having a blast, enjoying the differences and now looking forward to our trip to America in early April so I can attend my 40th high school reunion from Thunderbird Academy in Scottsdale, Arizona. It's also where I got really serious about my flying and worked hard on my early training and it's where my folks are buried so I have a lot of ties to Scottsdale. My sister, Janet, lives there so I will be able to see family, too. While I am there, I will also go see my granddaughter Sadie, who just had her 1st birthday last week, visit my kids and also spend some time with friends.

We are experiencing really chilly weather here now and Karen now sees how it is to be here with no central heat in the house. We have one oil-filled, electric radiator type heater and Karen and the cats are fighting over being close to that. This time passes and then, the rest of the year it's too hot, with heat being back on by late February. At least we do have air-conditioning for that.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday season. I want to high-five and recognize three people who actually got Christmas cards through the mail to Karen and me. My niece Ashley was first and then my cousin Jerry and his wife from Redlands, CA got a card through. Just yesterday we got a nice card from Cherie Wical Sawyer, whom I knew when I was a student missionary in Botswana 38 years ago. Thanks so much, people, for making the effort to give us a real card. No packages have come through yet, so we are thinking about going to customs and see if they have anything for us.

We love and miss you all. God bless and we wish you the best for 2011.

Love,

Dan and Karen Clifford

Amazing Big Rocks and More

Hi friends,

I know its been a while since I wrote but I actually wrote a nice, long blog the other night and then, just as I was getting ready to publish it, it all disappeared and I lost the will to recreate it on the same night. So, I went to bed and now here I am in Pakistan just sitting in my hotel room and wondering what it would be like to just go out to the mall or something. It feels so strange to be in a country that I know so little about. I will have to say that the people at the airport were nothing but nice and brought the fuel truck on time and pumped us right back to where we wanted to be for our departure to Bangladesh tomorrow. I don't think in any of my wildest dreams that I thought I would ever be flying from Pakistan to Bangladesh but here I am and here we go. To add interest to the program we are flying the Norwegian Ambassador to India and his staff. My daughter's boyfriend before her husband was Norwegian and he and his family really did some wonderful things for Shayna at her wedding. It was just awesome the way they decorated the gymnasium for her reception, I have never seen anything like it. I told the Ambassador that is made a lifetime impression on me and all the staff were so pleased. They had already complimented our air hostess and said that she needed to start a restaurant in Delhi for the kind of food she served. I had some after we landed and it was really good, I will have to say.

Anyway, I find myself looking out the windows at a country that speaks a similar language to India but, in many ways, is very different. Here, it doesn't feel nearly as crowded and that's probably because this is a desert climate and won't support the numbers of people that the Indian continent does. But, also, the roads are much better and there are fewer cars. We drove about 20 minutes form the airport and didn't hit a single "Jam" as the Indians call the nightmarish Delhi traffic. So, when I get back home I will send some of the pictures from this trip and write another travelogue about where I have been this week. I realize that it must sound like National Geographic at times but it just happens to be my life on the other side of the world. Today, while we were flying over here I heard another airliner on the frequency and it gave me pause for thought as it was "Vietnam Airlines". Here I am, over Pakistan and hearing Vietnam Airlines. It made me realize what kind of a specialized world that I live in here. I consider every day of my life as a HUGE adventure and so interesting for this little, old country boy from Tennessee for the last 30 years.

Last week we did one of the most awesome trips that I have done since coming to India. We flew over to Calcutta, which was my first trip to extreme Eastern India and so I got a look at that city from the air. Then, we flew North of Calcutta towards the Himalayas and spent parts of 3 days in the Himalayan foothills at Bagdotra, with our hotel city being Siliguri. The mountains were staring down on our hotel room windows. I took a private taxi ride for the day up into the mountains to over 5,000 feet. I took over 400 photos which I will eventually post if I ever get the captions done. I have had to go out and buy extra space on my website so that I can post all my photos. While we were flying in and out of Bagdotra I got some of the most awesome photos of Mt. Everest that I have been able to get so far. I had to really reset my brain to look out the window of my jet and be descending through 20,000 feet and see a mountain not that far away that stands over 10,000 feet ABOVE me. This can't be happening, but it was. In this photo above you can see Mt. Everest on the right and K2 on the left, the two highest peaks in the world. I couldn't help but think of my friend Scott Graham in Chattanooga. He took leave from his job in the spring of 2004 and took a couple of months off to climb (successfully) to the top of this mountain. I also thought about the many folks who have died while trying to climb and many who are still up there on the mountain as there is no way to get them down if something happens above a certain altitude. Scott explained to me that once you get into what they call the "death zone" you have to take care of yourself. A broken ankle or any little thing that might prevent you from carrying your own body up here will be a death sentence as no one else can do anything for you at these altitudes. At some points the trail is narrow and they literally have to almost step over the bodies to get to the top. It all just seems unreal and Scott said his brain felt like mush for about 2-3 months after he came back. I know some wonderful young man from Scandinavia gave up his life climbing the mountain last May so it's not an automatic for anyone, that's for sure. I just felt so in awe looking out the window at the really special place on earth. Karen and I have plans to fly over to Katmandu commercially and I will for sure be doing the aerial tour of Mt. Everest before I leave this side of the planet for good. My son's wife, Jessica spent a student missionary year in Nepal and so I am sure she has special feelings about this area.

Those of you who know me know how much I love to go to places that I have never been before and especially if they are outstanding or different places to visit. That is what makes this flight to Pakistan so special today. I wonder if any of my classmates from either high school or college have ever been here, and that alone makes it special to be able to come here. My friend Dr. John McGhee, from Auburn, Washington, was born here in Pakistan and speaks the local language, Urdu, which is similar enough to Hindi that my Indian crewmembers are able to converse and get along just fine here with the language. For those who don't know India and Pakistan were one country until 1947 under the British rule. When Britain pulled out the man who ended up being the prime minister for Pakistan said he wanted all the Moslems here and he shipped all non-Moslems to what became a smaller India under their first independant leader, Nehru. Many of those who travled to India during this very unsettled time were killed and never made it on those death trains to India. I have several friends in Delhi who can tell you terrible stories about that time. It's within my sister's lifetime so that kind of puts it in perspective for me. Anyway, to be sitting in a nice hotel room in Islamabad tonight and thinking about the incredible differences in culture that mankind has come up with just fills me with amazement.

Our other air hostess says that the food is good here so in a little while we'll wander down to the restaurant here at the Crowne Plaza and see what they have. This is not the American Hotel chain that you might be thinking. I thought it was but that would definitely be a 5 star hotel here and this is a 3 star. We have comfortable rooms and air-conditioning and wi-fi, etc, which seems to work faster than just about anywhere I have been in India but it's still not blazing speed, but no complaints and just interesting to look out and take it all in with my eyes. So far, the people have been very nice. We asked if it was okay to take pictures at the airport and sure enough, they said it was fine. I was trying to get pix from the back seat of the taxi on the way to the hotel and I will see how that turns out later. The second pic above was a large 777 or something that flew OVER us at 41,000 feet while I had my telephoto lense on so you guys get treated to a rare photo of that. My autofocus won't work through the aircraft windshield and its very hard to get a good shot of something going by at 1,000 mph.

Well, we have decided to go for a walk at night. Everyone assures us it will be just fine. There are three of us so here we go.

I will send another update soon and let you know what we are up to next.

Karen is in full recovery mode and has been going to the gym with me every morning, so she is starting to look good. Everyone at church was very impressed and mentioned how nice she looked so I was happy for her.

You guys take care, we think of you every day,

Dan and Karen

Himalayas from the Air on a clear day

I am really kicking myself now because I forgot my camera on the most beautiful trip I have had since coming to India. Last night I was telling Karen I would need my camera since I hadn't been to this city before and it was over towards the Himalayas. Well, I got up and my driver was early and so I was in a hurry and when we got levelled at 41,000 feet I was just so sick to my stomach because I didn't have my good camera and telephoto lense. As we levelled I looked out the window at the most unbelieveable sight I have ever seen. Just hundreds of miles of the most beautiful mountains I have ever seen. At, even though we were 41,000 feet above sea level, we were only 12,000 feet above some of these peaks. My eyes could barely take it all in. For awhile I was just completely filled with awe and almost unable to do my job up there. I was so distracted for about 30 minutes. It was just a mind bogglingly religious experience. To have had the camera to really show you would have completed my day. It was clear and cloudless for hundreds of miles, just awesome, as a cold front had recently come through and showed me a world I knew was out there but had never been able to see.

I took out my trusty Blackberry with it's pitiful 3.2 megapixel camera and fired away. It's kind of sad to see all that beauty and then not be able to bring much of it home, but I will still post the photo album and let you see a little bit of the amazing world that I saw today.

Coming SE from Delhi, we never really got down as far as Mt. Everest or K2, although I believe I saw them from the cockpit, but they were still over 100 miles away. But, on the trip from Delhi to Patna, India, we saw hundreds of miles of the Himalayas. To see those gorgeous mountains on the horizon and realize that it represents the highest places on earth and all the beauty that they contain was completely life changing. My good attorney friend in Chattanooga, Scott Graham, had bothered to come to Nepal in 2004 and climb Mt. Everest successfully in May of that year (GO SCOTT) and now I was seeing it out my window. And today the sky was clear and you could see how huge this area is. But, the biggest thrill was to see from our cat-bird seat these huge mountains, so high they looked like they were out the window, not down below.

I promise now that next time I go this way I will have my good camera and will never miss another opportunity to put this place in it's best light. I will send out a link really soon with connection to the rest of the Himalayas photos that I took today, along with a few others from this week.

Now, I have to go to Nepal and see this magical place. Even though we mess it up continually, I am transfixed by the pictures of our Blue Planet from space and now from high in the sky to see these mountains was completely magical - what a beautiful sight!!

Still kind of tingly from today's flight!!

Dan

A Full Roll

There are things that you just have to get used to in another country. Here, since they really prefer sprayers to paper by the toilets, you have a hard time finding toilet paper. One of the reasons that it is rare is because the roll of paper, if there is one, is always small. I was in a hotel recently and asked for another roll and, after taking the wrapper off, this is what I found on a brand new roll. To give you a reminder of how it feels to be without this precious stuff when you need it, in Africa we used to call it GOLD! I asked Dr. Wical why that name and he said because you will realize how valuable it is one day when you are without it. So true!! But, in America this roll would be almost used up and over with, yet here it constitutes a full roll. I haven't figured out if they want you to use less and think that a small roll helps or if the smaller rolls are all the hotels want to risk in case of theft, I just don't know. I can find full rolls in the stores near our house but never in hotels.

Last night we spent the night in Angul, in Orissa State, near the East Coast of India, just a few miles west of a city called Bhubaneshwar. The pilots who live here were telling me that one of the nice things about this part of India is, for some reason, there are no mosquitos. How nice is that, especially this year since the monsoons were so heavy and the mosquitos were apparently potent since they have had so much dengue fever, including some of our drivers and flight attendants, called air hostesses here. It's further South than Delhi so I notice that it hasn't cooled off as much but it's closer to the ocean and so there is more of an ocean type breeze that helps cool it off a little bit. The whole facility, which will eventually include a steel mill and a coal gasification power plant, is still very much under construction, but the airport is done for now and the guest houses are nice and new. We like staying here because the menu isn't so strict and they have internet that actually works pretty well without so many filters that you cannot get anything done. And now, today we flew 25 minutes in the jet to Raigahr, where we are on a regular basis. There were a couple of new guys from England on board the flight and one of them is a private pilot who used to fly Twin Otters in Florida for a sky-dive school. He came up front to look things over and to see our glass cockpit. I think he was glad to see me up front and wanted to know about how and why I was in India. We ex-pats always want to know why the other guy is here.

The tricky part of this flight is to fly almost 900 miles with 9 passengers and then land, spend the night, and then the next day fly another 100 nautical miles after having taken on no fuel. Our airport in Angul is so new that they have the fuel truck there but it hasn't been DGCA approved yet so we have no option for fuel there yet. Making all your takeoff and landing weights and since Angul is a short runway (4000 feet) you have to do quite a bit of flight planning to make sure this is all going to work (it does).

Karen continues to recover at home and it has now been a full month since I brought her home from surgery late in September. She is doing well but we went to visit her doctor again last week and pressed a little bit for more information about what went on during her surgery. When Karen started talking about getting a couple of other things done she said both she and Dan needed some time for recovery before trying another operation on Karen. We took that to mean that she and the other doctor were quite scared by her low blood pressure and quite pale appearance. They had ended up giving her 3 units of blood and she spent the first night in ICU so that is quite a bit more scary then just a routine surgery with a trip home that night. At one point Karen heard the doctor's voice in the background saying something about her heart not doing things they liked and she had a hard time breathing for quite a while after the surgery so she was scared and quite uncomfortable but now seems to be fine and is on the mend, so to speak. I would still give her another full month before she will be doing exercises in the gym, other than just walking, but at least all the drains are out and the leaks are stopped now.

It's going to be another Christmas away from home as our thoughts about the Citation XLS going home before the end of the year have been changed by the maintenance schedule for India being quite different from the original. Our Phase V, which would be due in 5 years or 1200 hours, was done by the previous owner just before we bought it in 2008, so won't be due until next year because the 5 year schedule is compressed to 3 by the Indian government. That means that we won't be brining it to America like I thought for paint and interior and Phase V until possibly later next year. Dan's training will be due again next Spring and his 40th high school reunion will be coming in April so that's most likely the next trip home to the USA.

We are disappointed that Dr. Tim Jennings visit to India just didn't get wings. From the beginning it seemed like things were aligned against us. The SDA church had a campout planned that was a big conflict and the Sunday church never really got behind the program so we are going to back up and try again sometime in the near future. We already had some touring planned and were just looking forward to having company from America but sometimes patience is a virtue and this should be something we can redo and it will be better. One of the things making this year kind of scary was that President Obama will be here in Delhi that weekend and we don't know what will be shut down and when, so that's a big unknown.

While here in Raigahr this time there were lots of company pilots here so we set up a "party" and solved most of the company problems. That was fun. The difficult part will be communicating it to management. Tomorrow will be a 35 minute flight to Ranchi and then a 1:30 flight back to Delhi. This time of year it's much cooler and yesterday when we took off from Delhi it was only 78 degrees F, which we haven't seen for many months. That made the airplane perform much better as we are used to flying in 25 C above standard air, which really takes the excitement out of flying this airplane, putting us back in the regular jet crowd.

Well, it's getting late and we have to get up and fly tomorrow so I will sign off, say thanks for keeping in touch and hope to see everyone of you sometime in the near future.

Take care,

Dan

Commonwealth Games

Well, we finally broke down and decided to attend some of the Commonwealth Games here in Delhi since Dan's schedule kept cancelling and there were international athletes competing in town, might as well go and see what is going on.

We had been watching it on TV and it seemed like there weren't too many people in the stands so maybe we could help with that also, but what to go see?? We both like swimming competitions and it was the finals, so it would be more exciting and it included the awards ceremonies, so that might be fun. I went online and found the website for the CWG2010 and start trying to buy a ticket. They don't make it easy but I finally purchased the tickets. After hearing the prices for the Olympic Games when they came to Atlanta in 1996, I thought I would have sticker shock but discovered that tickets were amazingly inexpensive. Lots of the events could be attended for 250 rupees, or just over $5 USD. Since the swimming was into the finals and I wanted the best seats we could get, they were 1000 rupees each, or $20. Completely amazing. The hard part, though, was actually picking the tickets up. You would think the advantage to buying online would be to just pickup at the box office at the venue you were at. Sad thing, no box office and there were only two ticket venues where you could pick up online purchases, so we had to go all the way to downtown Delhi in traffic, to the train station, and our driver didn't know where the swim venue was, at all. Fortunately, we drove right by it on the way to the train station. Once I got to the station, I walked around the corner and found quite a long line waiting for ticket issues. I spoke to the lady in line in front of me and she indicated that in Delhi you really needed to come the day before to pick up tickets as the wait was quite lengthy. I had told the taxi driver just 10 minutes and Karen was in the car. Oh-oh. The lady suggested that I cut to the front of the long line and see if they would issue my ticket immediately, as the swimming started in about 90 minutes. I went to the front and there was a door where the security guy let me right in. When the lady at the desk saw my expat face, I was welcomed with open arms and told to hand her my paperwork, which included my passport for identification. So, based on that info, she typed something in and a couple of minutes later I had a couple of pretty cool looking large tickets to the swimming finals. The taxi wasn't allowed to park outside and had to drive down the street some to find parking so he had to come running back a half a block to find me and we headed for the swimming venue. Of course, there were about 10 different gates for this and we drove around for a few minutes and then ended up walking about half a mile from the entry gate to the building itself. Karen had agreed to go to this but we hadn't counted on a long walk since she is healing from her surgery but, fortunately, she did okay and we had a sandwich and a soft drink on the way in and found our seats, which weren't really assigned, but the section was assigned, so you went to your section and then just found the seat that you thought would be good - interesting. We ended up with a whole bunch of expats, probably parents and family of participants, from England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, etc. I think we were the only Americans in the building. The lady next to us from New Zealand guessed that we were from England, so that wasn't a bad guess. When we said we were from America but lived in Delhi, I think the look of shock on her face kind of let us know that she thought we were crazy.

But, we had a great time, it was a great venue, the air-conditioning was strong, the pool was beautiful and the families around us were supportive and talked good English, which was so much fun for a night. By the end of the evening we had several friends and had really enjoyed the spectacle of the games. I will post my pictures on a separate email and you can see more of what was going on. Since the company cars were all tied up we took a taxi and it was great. They dropped us at the gate and after I had the tickets in hand, I realized that they included two free passes on the Metro, the new elevated train around Delhi that we had been threatening to ride but had no reason to. So, I told Karen, let's ride home on the train, which ends up about 3 miles from our house. So, that was the plan, but after the games we were hungry and only a short taxi ride from Connaught Place where our favorite Mexican food is. So, after the game we hit the streets and found a tuk-tuk within a few minutes to take us just 5 minutes to Sancho's. Great!! Karen had only ridden a tuk-tuk one time for just a short block or two when we were at the Taj Mahal last Spring. So, this was her first real tuk-tuk ride in heavy traffic and with horns and close quarters, but we made it and it all made for a great adventure. After a good Mexican dinner we walked a couple of blocks to the Metro station and went down into inner sanctum under the ground. It's all very confusing, with us not even being able to figure out how to get through the gates with our passes from the games but they had someone to let you through a gate with your ticket from the games so on we went. Down more stairs and looking for the yellow train which runs to Gurgaon, where we live. We got on a very uncrowded train in a hurry and began to ride. About the 4th stop they said it was the end of the train but it just kept on going after pausing at the station. We failed to notice that it had reversed direction and now it FILLED UP with a rowdy crowd of somewhat inebriated local boys. Karen was ready to jump off. After about three stops I didn't like the sound of the crowd or the names of the stations. We began to realize that we had headed one way and then reversed course and were now headed for the North Side of Delhi with a rowdy crowd and at a great rate of speed. One older man took mercy on us and told us to change at a certain station, where it was safe, and so we crossed up and over and found the train going all the way to Huda Central Station, where the train now ends. Our ride took over an hour but should have only taken about 40 minutes, but we had nothing better to do and since we had opted for ice tea at the Mexican food place, we were wide awake. Then, when we got to the end of the line we walked out and started looking for another tuk-tuk which took us all the way home, about a 15 minute ride for 150 rupees. Too much fun and it was Karen's first really big outing after her surgery. I had a flight early the next morning but somewhere in the middle of the evening it cancelled so we had no schedule and finally crawled into bed somewhere around midnight. We both think we are the only members of any of our high school or college classes to attend the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. And the whole evening was very inexpensive but really adventure filled. When we were on that Metro train with about 100 pushy, shovy Indian men, I thought Karen was going to jump right out the window but she hung in there and we survived.

While we were in the building we saw several of the contestants practicing on the high diving platforms so now, if I am around, we want to go back for the diving. My boss, Mr. Jindal, was going to participate in the skeet shooting but he said he was the 2nd alternate and so didn't get in. Would have been fun to see him on TV.

The weather is really getting into the nice time of the year and the city really gets crowded and lit up now as the crowds go out in the much more liveable climate.

My cats have totally become loyal to me after Karen went home for the summer. She is quite upset that they always follow dad around and choose to sleep on my side or be by my side, no matter what I am doing. I tend to be the disciplinarian but they take it and come back to cuddle and take a nap. One cat, Rupee, allows me to spin him on the tile floor while he is curled up in a ball, by his tail. You would think that he would get up and run away, but when I finish, he just lays there and kind of looks at me like, is that all you got?? I think he just does anything to guarantee a steady food supply but I will take it as affection and that's my story.

Have a great week!!

Dan and Karen