My Traveling Companions two Flying Horses August 14, 2008
Posted by dodo in : Air Tickets, Airlines, Beirut, England, Europe, Hotels, India, Museum, Rail Pass, Sightseeing, Tour, Trails, Trip , trackbackWhenever I’ve been asked to take a sponsored parachute jump I’ve declined, giving the excuse ‘fear of flying’. Of free will I chose to fly to India, taking as my travelling companions a stallion and two mares, in the back of a decrepit Boeing 707 on its third time round the clock. The interior was like a dingier station on the Northern Line, complete with peeling, dripping walls. Outside, the Flying Carrot, as this airline’s cargo planes are affectionately known to the handlers at Heathrow, has peeling orange and green livery. She’ll be all right when she’s finished, said one. Finished what?
The first leg of the first occasion I had flown horses from Heathrow was made bearable by a bottle of whisky and a regular itinerant groom. His responsibilities were for a single grey pony bound for a Kuwaiti Sheikh. They said au revoir at Beirut, the first port of call, having given me a crash course in survival.
We were jammed unceremoniously among sinister-looking unmarked packing cases, obviously best left alone. Compared with our own disembarkation, when the all-change was announced at Beirut they were unloaded with a certain amount of deference. Beirut! What could they do with more weapons that hadn’t already been done? Rising columns of smoke from the ruined city, shell craters and baggage handlers with machine guns gave the airport the appearance of M6 Bank Holiday roadworks. After five hours (feeling a bit over-exposed) parked on the tarmac, flying off towards the Gulf was an appealing pr( spect.
The experience of travelling with horses need not be unpleasant. Horses won’t be airsick all over your lap; they don’t drone on about overbooked hotels, or insist on playing Scrabble to pass the time. Ideally a canopy should separate the beasts, and ideally a stallion should not accompany two mares on a pallet the size of a diving board. They should be let down properly before the flight and not, as in the case of one of the mares, introduced to racing a week previously in a Windsor selling hurdle. No-one accompanying thoroughbreds expects to glide along aisles adjusting headphones, providing pillows and dispensing drinks, other than the odd bucket of water. Then again the most beleaguered hostess would not swap a cantankerous granny on a Poundstretcher for a panicking mare trying to lie down in her stall at 30,000 feet.
The mare alongside the stallion rubbed her hip to the bone attempting to do just that, while we took turns swinging from her head and tail as a preventive measure as turbulence upset the flight across Europe. A hay net can be improvised as a seat belt, especially if there is nothing else (no seats either). Meanwhile the stallion’s attentions were diverted by his own terror, and mine. The other mare obligingly took little interest in the proceedings — until the Beirut-Sharjah leg. By this time the new cargo of contraband televisions for India was tumbling about our ears. This threat posed less of a distraction to the horses than I would have hoped. When both mares began aiding and abetting one another to increase the confusion and alarm, somewhere high over the Gulf I made for the cabin to solicit help.
There I found an Australian pilot, German co-pilot and Lebanese navigator arguing above the noise of the engines, which sounded as if their exhausts had blown. These cargo planes are the modern equivalents of the tramp steamer. They flip from one airport to another collecting and dumping in remote corners, removed from passenger terminals. The aviators who fly them, while not (generally) sporting eye-patches, are particularly hard-baked salts. The exchange which I began, ‘Could one of you give me a hand with these lunatics?’ went as follows:
`Sorry sport, international regulations; can’t leave the flight deck.’
`If you don’t leave the flight deck at least one of these horses is going to be joining you on it.’
`You know what to do — shoot the buggers.’ `Where’s the humane killer then?’
`Under the coffee pot.’
`There’s only an old fire extinguisher here.’ `Use that then.’
When I got back to England, someone commented on my bravery in the crisis. What else could I do, I replied — bale out on the Iraqi trenches? Fire the extinguisher? Pray? Well, as I explained to the Almighty, at 30,000 feet I was much nearer to him than ever before and, shouting to make myself heard above those damned engines, perhaps there was an even money chance of being heard. I was certainly sincere.
When we landed at Bombay (for the story has a happy ending) I asked to be shown the piece of tarmac pasteurised for the Pope to kiss on his recent visit, so I could bless it too (poojahs is the Hindi word) and give thanks for deliverance. That’s when I noticed oil dripping from the fuselage.
Whether or not horses understand landing procedure (they don’t smoke or have to cope with seat-belts), it occurred to me that we had taken a couple of bites at the cherry on our approach — I could only guess how near we came to dismantling the gateway to India, for there are no windows in those vehicles.
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