Durban day 5 – Chasing the sun (of a bitch)

I had a flight to catch at 4.45. I packed up my stuff and decided that I probably can’t do anything much. I had started reading a book called ‘eleven minutes’ by Paulo Coelho. So I decided to go and sack in a bar with the book and have some beer. I found a nice place called Mimmo’s in the sun coast casino with a good beach view; ordered myself a millers and started reading the book. It was good. I was reading at a pace of 30 pages per beer. Not bad at all. I finished around 100 pages when I thought I should catch the flight.

I was early at the airport. I got my boarding pass, had lunch there at the coffee shop and boarded the flight at 4.30.

It was closing to sun set and I was about to see the most spectacular sunset from the plane. Now if you imagine being outside the plane you would see that we were going in the opposite direction as to earth’s rotation and towards the sun. As I told before the plane travels at about half the speed of earth’s rotation. If it had traveled at the same speed as earth’s rotation then the plane would have been at the same point relative to the sun if you ignore the revolutionary motion for some time. And hence we would see the sun at the same point all through the flight.

But we were traveling at a lesser speed and hence we were losing out. The chase was good. I could see the sun going down with spectacular colors around. The horizon was filled with colors of yellow, which was soon changing to red. The best part was after the sun went down. The whole place looked like as if there was a volcano and red-hot lava was flowing out. I wish I were the pilot. I could have got a better view. It’s difficult narrate things of beauty like this. It’s best to keep quiet. Otherwise we would be doing injustice. Anyways I have tried my little best to explain this. I think you should try some flight like this and see it for yourself.

A thing of beauty is a joy forever – some poet has said this I guess.

At last Cape town was there and that’s the end of my Durban story!