Flying high | 2 June 2007

Kenya

I have hated flying since 1989, when I was in a Boeing 737 that crashed into an Ethiopian mountain, lost its wings and burst into flames. Surviving that one was followed by years of pre-check-in heavy drinking. As if that were not enough, I now suffer this wrenching guilt about all the carbon I emit on my frequent long-haul flights. And my recent journey home from Mongolia to Africa was a 48-hour nightmare. I felt like an astronaut. I departed Ulan Bator loaded with souvenirs: a horn and sinew bow with a 40-lb pull and six arrows, cashmere and camel hair, pebbles from the Gobi desert and a very large quantity of Genghis Khan vodka. The Mongolians, I discovered, consume 60 million bottles of vodka per month. Given that there are just 2.5 million Mongolians, including women and children, this is impressive.

On the first flight to Beijing I made sure I was in the aisle EXIT row adjacent to the wing, which I reckon is the best place to be if you want to survive a crash. My heart sank when I saw the Italian next to me. He was the size of a sumo wrestler. On all aeroplanes I seem to get put beside boorish, ugly or very fat people with weak bladders — and three rows away from screaming children — but never next to attractive women. The Italian was a cashmere dealer with a 21-year-old mistress in Ulan Bator. ‘Why not? If you eat roast potatoes every day, do you switch to mash?’ His wife back home, I realised, was the roast potatoes. He said, ‘No, you go for something different.’

After the wonderful Mongolians, the hordes of shouting Chinese in Beijing airport sounded like honking geese.