What an adventure

Book Review: Around the world in 80 days: Wing Commander Rahul Monga; Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi in association with KW Publishers, 4676/21, First Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi- 110002. Rs. 720

Pheroze L. Vincent

It is what legends are made of. Reality is much more fantastic than fiction, because of the intricacies of it.

On June 1, 2007, Wing Commanders Rahul Monga and Anil Kumar set out from Air Force Station Hindan, near Delhi, in a CTSW microlight aircraft. Their mission: to create a world record of circumnavigating the globe in a microlight aircraft. The previous record was held by Colin Bodil who performed the feat in 99 days in 2001.

The author, in very simple English, lets the reader vicariously enjoy the 80 day adventure, spaced across 81 airstrips in 17 countries. Apart from the treasure of practical flying knowledge the book offers, Monga’s description also makes it a delightful read for the lay reader.

It reads like a log book, a journal of sorties from one landing to the next. Through Monga’s eyes you see the purple lagoons of Thailand and hear the hysterical screams of Russian navigator as they fly through heavy rain. You even feel the pain of frostbite and injuries that don’t heal.

There are innocent descriptions of the colourful characters that bind the tale together. People like Robin, the Chinese barber. “Robin was a dude. He set the pace for the haircut by switching on the TV in front to a channel blaring Chinese rock and started jiving.”

Monga isn’t the best of writers and he fails when he experiments with sophistication. But he is really good at painting a colourful picture even of the most mundane things like filing flight plans with an air traffic controller.

Another critical aspect the book throws light on is the networking of Indian diplomats and the camaraderie of aviators all over the world. Men like a 75-year-old British paratrooper who served in the Second World War, who offers the author “the most wonderful sortie” of his life in a 1943 Piper L4; and the Indian diplomat in Iran, who drove in the middle of the night with 200 litres of incendiary aviation fuel. The book is replete with such adventures and wonderful people.

Jet lag and fatigue lets the mind philosophise. Monga gives plain observations on the little things like traffic, markets, the smiles and body language, the tempers and the view from the skies. There are moments when he jokes about situations that could have been fatal, in the most casual manner. In brief sentences he ties them together with opinions on human nature and the purpose of it all. There are also hilarious tales of the hotel and the food, like the one about a Chinese hotel room stocked with spermicidal lotion and tiger balm and, the homogeneity of American fast food.

Conspicuous in his fleeting presence is the co-pilot Anil. There is hardly any mention of him, as the author hogs most of the limelight. The author does give examples of how they deal with snags in the aircraft like short circuited transformers, high oil pressure, punctured tires and other such unnerving obstacles. The credit of the success goes not to technology, but to their presence of mind and uncommon courage.

The intricate details of documentation and red tape are given a fairly good explanation in the book. Most shocking though, is the shabby treatment of Indian officials when the plane gets back. This is in sharp contrast to the warm and lavish reception by the Pakistan Air Force in Karachi. The author bluntly admits being driven to tears by the irrational interruptions to the mission on its seventy ninth day, in India.

The essence of this book is in the preface where Monga writes, “I learnt something very important. I learnt that the world is beautiful and that some places on our earth are so wonderful and so fragile that we must never go there.”