Airplanes, Airports and Destinations

When I first boarded that Air India flight in August of 1970, I was as much in awe of the opportunity to cross the ocean by air as today's generation would be of boarding a commercial rocket. Though I grew up on an air force base with Dakota's and DC-3's buzzing in the air and even got a turn at the wheel of a 'glider' in the city of Poona while in high school, I was impressed by the spacious cabin and service of the flight attendant. Were they even called flight attendants in those days or steward and stewardess?

Back then my family walked with me on the tarmac to the plane's boarding steps at Delhi airport - which was just an expanded air force station. As I entered the plane they retreated to the safety of the building, where they could stand and wave to one of the many faces peeping out of the windows as if they were waving to me.  I couldn't wait for my adventure to begin and since it must have been written all over my face, the steward quickly brought Air India Maharajah writing paper and a beautiful pen to start my scribblings right away.  I was bound for graduate studies at the University of Florida's Food Science Department in the College of Agriculture armed with the knowledge that once I reach Jacksonville, Florida all I will have to do is find the Greyhound Bus Station and make my way to the campus.  Alas, if I did write on that vellum, I didn't mail it home or save those scribblings.  So sporadically did I write letters that they didn't even fill the shoebox my mother kept my mail in.  Years later I found no letter written on the plane or my impressions of the world on my first long journey away from home. 

During this flight from Chicago to the city of Ohrid, Macedonia, I negotiated my way through a maze of security checkpoints arriving at my gate about half hour after I said good bye to my family at the check-in area of the airport. Gone from economy class was the linen service with it's starched white napkin and gleaming silverware, porcelain plates, complete with a glass goblet for water and in it's place I was handed a hastily made sandwich with a smear of mayonnaise, cheese and a lettuce leaf wrapped in cellophane and a plastic glass for water!  This modern airplane seat was narrow with just enough leg room for my knees to bump into the seat in front of me. Heaven forbid if (being in a window seat) I needed to go to the airplane's 2'x3' lavatory (who uses the word 'lavatory' any more?) to freshen up or use the toilet with the people sleeping soundly between me and the aisle.  It takes courage to wake them up and have them unbuckle and stand in the aisle for the few minutes even as I would have edged my way out, half-folding my body at the waist and trying not to rock the headrest of the passengers sitting in the row ahead. On the first and longest (7 hours and 45 minutes in the air and about one hour cumulatively before takeoff and after landing)) leg of my flight, I somehow managed to stay put even after drinking at least 4 glasses of water.

When my last segment of the flight into Macedonia from Zagreb, Croatia was delayed and diverted due to heavy fog blanketing the Skopje airport and most of the country and I was in a window seat - you can imagine my amazement that I could see clear to the ground without fog obstruction when we crossed over the mountain ranges south of Skopje.  I felt some of that same excitement I did on my first plane journey, when I tried to find landmarks I could identify and saw an odd shaped lake, which I excitedly told everyone on my descent was Lake Koziak- a dammed lake formed by the River Treska as it flows through a narrow gorge into Lake Matka and finally emptying itself into the River Vardar.  Vardar once lent it's name to northwestern Macedonia and may still! Only later after searching for the shape of the lake on "google earth" did I realize it was Lake Mavrovo that I spotted!

The plane flew south above a couple of mountain ranges separated by narrow valleys - which I believe has kept the ethnic Albanian communities relatively isolated from the rest of eastern Macedonia's villages and small towns. The valleys were a shade of deep green while the peaks were oasis of white snow and with the low altitude maintained by the pilot during this descent I could see the narrow mountain roads as they zigzagged along the sides of the mountains.

When we arrived around 3:30 pm at Ohrid, the city was not visible through the fog.  It took about 10 minutes for me to collect my baggage, roll it past customs and place it on an angled luggage belt to offload on the upper street level and into the arms of taxi drivers trying to grab your suitcase and negotiate with you into their unlicensed cabs. The airport authorities had lined up two buses to transport all the passengers to Skopje and though I hoped I could use them and hop off one third of the way at a city named Kichevo, I couldn't resist taking a cab right away to Kichevo, enabling me to board the connecting combi (minibus) to Makedonski Brod.  I had been worried with the flight delay that had I arrived at Skopje airport at that time, I would most likely have missed the last combi from Skopje to Brod and would have to knock at a fellow volunteer's door to put me up for the night or spend a fortune on a taxi to get home. Thank you heavy fog at Skopje!