If you have read the famous epic - Around the world in eighty days, you already know this phenomenon. In our case though, it was the other way round – we were travelling from east to west making my journey from Muscat to Gatwick, London, the longest day of my life (till date).
To catch our Turkish Airways flight at 3:00 am, we reached Muscat’s Seeb Airport at 12 midnight. The flight was on time and our journey started when it was dark everywhere. We reached Bahrain in about an hour’s time and after halting there for about 45 minutes, the flight took off again. I was not at all feeling sleepy – partly because of the excitement of a long awaited holiday ahead and partly because of the LCD monitor in my front.
No, I wasn’t watching a blockbuster movie. I was staring at an interesting sight on the flight status display. It showed the image of our plane moving towards Istanbul over the globe where the left part of the world was in dark while the right part was in light! We were in dark part of the globe and moving towards the left part while the dawn was approaching us from behind. Soon, the darkness had to give in and we could see gentle rays of the Sun through the flight window. The sky was slowly turning from black to purple and then to blue and slowly the Sun welcomed us with a bright smile!
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| A view of Istanbul from Airport |
When we reached Istanbul, it was 8:30 in the morning and the climate was cloudy. It was a long wait of almost 4 hours before we could catch the flight to London. Peeping through the airport windows to have a glance of Istanbul and window shopping at the duty free shops were the only two things we could do while waiting for the flight.
At last the wait was over and we boarded the second flight. Soon enough we were flying over Europe! It was all green beneath us when we looked down through the window and finally when we were approaching the destination, we could see hundreds of windmills over the sea. Our flight made its way through the clouds and landed at Gatwick airport at 2:30 pm.
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| Southbourne Guest House, Horley |
We had our hotel booking with a small lodge called Southbourne near the airport. It’s a family run guesthouse; cozy and beautiful, with natural surroundings – no wonder it scored a whopping 95% in Tripadviser rating. The owner himself drove to the airport – which is just a five minutes drive, to pick us up. While we were waiting outside the airport, the Sun peeked through the clouds and it was bright all the way. The air was refreshingly cool and the surrounding was amazingly green. It was a warm welcome to us from a London summer.
We went out on our foot to browse thorough the small town. Away from the hustles and bustles, Gatwick is a nice little Picture perfect settlement on the outskirts of London. Undoubtedly, an ideal place for peaceful stay!
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| Gatwick, Horley |
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| Gatwick, Horley |
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| Gatwick, Horley |
By the time we were back to the hotel, it was 7 o’clock. The Sun was still bright and shining. It was a bit unusual sight for us as the land where we belong has never seen the Sun beyond 7 in the evening even during the peak summer months. We felt sleepy as we hadn’t slept the last night; in fact we hadn’t slept since we got up the morning day before-it added up to 40 hours at a stretch. I looked at my unadjusted mobile timing – it was 10:30 pm Muscat time. We retired to bed. It was time to recapitulate an interesting fact of the day – It was a day where the dawn had to chase a long way to catch us and we had to wait a long time and went to bed without seeing the dusk!
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| Gatwick, Horley |
