HECA (CAIRO INTL) - RIYADH INTL
"Thank God that the past week was behind us," I told Mitchell as he and I were sipping on a few pineapple juices in our hotel in Cairo. We had made a new rule: NO MORE ALCOHOL!
I went over to collect the map from the top of the TV. I took it back to the table, where we studied our next route.
"It's gonna be another 5-hour flight," I said as we found that this was approximately the same length as flight 1.
"Shall we get an early start?" Mitchell asked.
"Yea, lets get to bed now and set off early."
****
The alarm went off at 5:00am local time (3:00am GMT) and we prepared ourselves for a long flight. We had some breakfast and prepared to set off.
Soon we arrived at Cairo Intl. and found "Howie" parked up on a ramp gate. We boarded her, fired up the engines and began our taxi.
I was sat here, waiting for a Cessna and a Piper to touchdown on Runway 5L, and a small traffic jam had formed behind me. Quite scary, being dwarfed by the second largest operational civil jet...
And soon we were airborne, flying almost into the sun, which wasn't overly good. But still, we pressed on.
And here we are crossing the Suez canal mouth, which means that we had offically crossed into the third continent in our trip.
The endless desert which kept on coming and coming and coming and coming..... can be quite a boring sight. So I just turned on the radio to see what was happening back home. Mitchell was exploring the far reaches of our mini-fridge in the back of "Howie", fished out a few bottles of water and came back to the co-pilot's seat.
More desert......and not another aircraft in sight.
I was so bored that I began to slip into sleep...intil Mitchell woke me up and said that Jeddah center was talking to me.
"Jeddah center, Howard 500HP, on IFR to Riyadh Intl. Airport," I informed them.
"Howard 500HP, Jeddah Center. We will be redirecting you to Riyadh Aerodrome."
I was confused. I asked them why. The response was that they were tracking my progress as well, and wanted to safeguard our journey. Apparently, the risk was that I was at risk of being shot down, as there may be some terrorist forces around the deserts of Saudi Arabia, what with all the recent goings on in this half-decade.
I agreed to redirect, and was soon on my way.
"I spy, with my little ey"--
"Mitchell, why are we playing I spy?" I asked.
"You'll see, it's a real difficult one. I begins with 'S'."
"Um.....Sky?"
"No."
"Sand?"
"How did you guess?"
"Well I wonder......"
It seems that the endless desert was taking it's toll on us. We must have grown so bored that we had degreaded into playing child's games.
By now we were closing in on Riyadh, with about 200nm of our journey left. Fortunately we still had a good approximate 60% of fuel left.
Now we were at 7,000ft and descending to prepare for the landing. At last, all these crazy moments in the deserts will soon come to an end!! And, we were still safe.
Now we were on our short final, and this was quite a military aerodrome. I could see many military aircraft, patrols, training going on, a few bunkers and everything you would see in an aerodrome. It made us feel very safe.
Touchdown, and soon a few military jeeps pulled up beside "Howie" as we came to a halt. 4 men jumped out of one and surrounded the aircraft, and set up a defensive outpost. We were told to leave the aircraft and board one of the jeeps, which we did, and we were soon scooted off to the Officer's Mess.
Our route so far after another 5 hour flight, next stop New Delhi!!
Why are the Saudi Arabian Air Force being so careful about our trip? Find out next time.....
But the last picture is a liiiiiiittle pixlated... LOL.. 
