Dubai to Mumbai

Dubai to Mumbai [Enlarge]

We got to the airport very early for our Emirates flight from Dubai to Mumbai (Bombay), to allow for the taxi ride taking as long as it had the day we arrived, and because for all we knew Dubai airport's check-in process would be as crazy as Amman's. We were wrong on both counts, so we ended up with a lot of time to kill at the airport. Apart from Isla buying some different ear plugs that she hoped would be more comfortable than her existing ones, we couldn't find anything worth spending our last few Dirhams on. We did however discover that the terminal has a free wireless network, so we got the laptop out and joined it. We even found a socket to power the laptop. We managed to get a large batch of photos uploaded to flickr before the final gate call.

The in-flight facilities were even better than on the last flight from Amman to Dubai. Isla watched The Queen, a movie for girls which Glenn had refused to go and see at the cinema, while Glenn chose Cars, a movie for boys which Isla had refused to go to. Apart from waiting in a holding pattern for a while for a landing slot, and a slightly bumpy landing it was an uneventful flight. As easily as that, we had taken out a further seventeen degrees of longitude.

The heat hit us the moment the plane door was opened. It was like a furnace, but not humid and therefore not unpleasant. Mumbai airport was easy enough and our free hotel pick-up was waiting for us with one of those boards with our names on it (first time we've had that). By the time we got outside it was nearly dark and as we headed towards the hotel through the North Mumbai traffic we wondered what our first time in India was going to be like.

In our room in the clean but slightly strange Hotel Airlines International we had a room service meal (room service is the only way you can eat in the hotel—we said it was a bit strange). When we had finished, we applied our mosquito repellent, switched on the air conditioning and went to bed.

Day 049
Dubai to Mumbai

This map shows the route we took in this post. Click it to see larger maps of our whole route at flickr.

Maps are taken from the CIA World Factbook.