Happy New Year folks! Here’s hoping 2013 is a good one for us all. I’m getting my 2013 blogging started with some views from a grime-speckled aeroplane window, taken on a daytime flight between Amsterdam and Cape Town on 14 December 2012…

aerial view, belgium or germany (?)

leaving the grey and frozen lowlands behind

aerial view, the alps

crossing the swiss/italian alps

aerial view, favignana and the sicilian coastline

a mediterranean idyll
(the island of favignana and the sicilian coastline)

aerial view, the sahara

the sahara desert

aerial view, the sahara

vast and hot and very dry

aerial view, craters in the sahara

desert craters

aerial view, lake chad (?)

and fascinating formations
(possibly the edges of the tragically rapidly disappearing lake chad?)

in-flight journey information

almost there!

I really enjoy the in-flight maps that chart a journey’s progress… the enticing names of unknown places popping up on the map as you go. And one of the best things about a long-haul flight – in addition to the magnificent views of the earth below, and it finally ending – is seeing the ‘distance to destination’ counting down.

More journeying to follow…