Back over Africa

Sahara
A few days ago I was on board a British Airways Airbus on my way back to London from my excellent Christmas spent with my stepdaughters in Cape Town, South Africa. BA looked after me well and I had an excellent starboard side seat with plenty of leg room. The passenger in the next seat was not talkative, which suited me fine and so I tried watching a film. After a while though, I switched to the aircraft’s moving map display and began to watch our progress Northward. Having flown this route twice before, I was aware that having flown up the West coast towards Nigeria, then northward over the Saharah desert. On a night flight such as this there is little or nothing to see from the windows: occasional settlement lights and so the moving map gives some indication of progress. It shows town names of exotic places, reminding me of books I once read, My boyhood hero Biggles http://www.biggles-online.com/index.php?bookID=50 was always flying off to adventures in darkest Africa or the Gobi Desert and other places. So, it is dark over the desert and only the moving GPS map to guide me. Looking down I could see occasional lights, not many but Touareg villages I assumed and the moving map announces places overflown such as Tamanrasset in Southern Algeria- Have a look at this link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tamanrasset where goats and camels and many peoples come to the market.
Soon enough we cross the desert and on over the Mediterranean for breakfast over Marseilles then Nothward over the English Channel to Heathrow. Here I changed terminals to catch my onward flight to Budapest, where Ibolya was waiting to escort me home to Mezőbereny by train.