These Up In The Air pics are from the recent trip to Varanasi.
Inbound into Varanasi's Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport at Babatpur, we flew on Air India's Airbus A319 VT-SCU. VT-SCU made her maiden flight on October 2, 2009 at Toulouse, France and was delivered to Air India on October 28, 2009.
The flight was pretty smooth with flawless takeoff and landing, I must admit Air India pilots are certainly a lot more skilled.
When we boarded at Mumbai, a group of Japanese pilgrims boarded with us. There must be about 30 of them, all very elderly but extremely dignified.
Since there were scattered all over the aircraft, a lady from the group requested a politician, presumably a UPite for exchanging seats. The paan-chewing politician much to my surprise smiled and said in English "Madam, you are our guests in India, anything for you!"
I was impressed...
The shortfinals into Babtpur was a disappointment...
I had hoped to catch a glimpse of the mighty Ganga, but there was so much haze that hardly anything was visible....
The red cowlings - casings for the engine look nice... especially with the sun-rays painted on them...
Much to my surprise, I discovered that Babatpur Airport is an international aiport with flights coming in from Thailand, Sri Lanka and Nepal...
On the return leg, after a disappointing experience with IndiGo's staff at Varanasi airport, a flight a 1000 feet above us flying eastwards caught my attention... Unfortunately, I could only capture the contrails on the zoom... the pic was far too grainy...
The mighty Himalayas of Uttarakhand on the horizon...
At this altitude - 33000 feet, a quick calculation suggested that the mountain ranges were a good 360 kilometers away!
A few more mighty peaks emerge...
A zoom-in on the range...
A clearer view...
The Varanasi - Mumbai flight stopped at Delhi for an hour, and we took off from Delhi, we got an awesome view of the Arravali Hills....
Homeward bound, now over Vadodara....
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