In all of my previous blogs I have attempted to affect a carefree jocular tone that I hoped would convey to you the tone of life aboard Indigo as we disported ourselves among the world’s fun spots. Here for the first time, and I dearly hope the last time, you will find the tone lacking the accustomed frivolity, just a bit tense, maybe irritated, at some moments uncompromising and angry. […]
What began as an inadvertent stop, required by the need to discharge some old crew and take on a few new, became one of the most memorable of the entire voyage. Here is the story of our month long visit. […]
In 1965, the Emirate of Dubai was a sleepy sandbox of a place. That year, RAF pilot Lt. Terry Michaels flew a mission there requiring him to land at its airport, a single sand strip hardened by oil sprayed over its surface. Following protocol, he made a low pass over the strip […]
For a vessel to travel from Bombay to Dubai it must pass through the Arabian Sea, a sector of the Western Indian Ocean, then along the coasts of Pakistan and Iran, through the Gulf of Oman and the Straits of Hormuz and into the Persian Gulf. […]
There is first the matter of the city’s name, Mumbai or Bombay. In 1995 a far-right, xenophobic political party, apparently in an irritable mood, changed the city’s name from the classic Bombay, a pusillanimous gesture at ridding it of the last vestiges of the British Raj. Nevertheless English-speaking Indians still call it Bombay and so will I. […]