The Beauty Below

It's been quite some time since my last post here and with a trip to South East Asia, I thought it would be the perfect time to start back up. I named my blog "On the Path Unwinding" after a verse of one of my favorite songs: Elton John's Circle of Life. One of the lines of the song says, "There is more to see than can ever be seen; more to do than can ever be done." I know I'll never get to see or do everything, but I can never pass up on opportunities like this trip to see so many new places.

While there is "more to see than can ever be seen," I I feel what you do see falls on what you choose to see. The views of flight from Dulles to Korea was quite amazing and unlike anything I had ever seen before. Once on the plane, almost everyone either pulled the window blind shut and tried to go to sleep or shut the window and started to watch movies. I did watch my share of movies, but I made sure to look out the window throughout the flight.

When flying from Dulles to Korea, the shortest path is over the frozen waters of the Arctic, northwestern Canada and the vast northeastern parts Russia. As the sun began to rise, you could see the ice breaking over the frozen arctic waters. Russia was the most amazing. Rivers that looked frozen in time meandered their way through the seemingly barren winter landscape. They created such amazing designs through the landscape; it really was quite stunning. I'll probably never get to those parts of the world, but at least I had the chance to see it from the air.

By the time the second flight from Korea to Singapore took off, it was already nighttime. I've never felt so close to the stars! I had a great view of Orion's Belt and the Gemini constellation for some time. I'm sure I had a great view of others, but I didn't know what I was looking at :)

There was one holy crap we are going to crash movement when the plane hit severe turbulence. Look at the last picture of the slide show and I think you will be able to tell when the pilots had to navigate through some challenging air.