It’s a wonderland up there; yeah! If it’s a cloudy morning, with white cotton balls of clouds everywhere…you wouldn’t know if you are 30,000 feet above the tallest human being or the tallest constructed monument.( could have said Everest but I don’t wanna do the math!) It’s like flying in a euphoric dream (at least I felt it; my fellow passengers were either engaged with their gastric juices functionality or rummaging through stale airline magazines). How can you not go gaga over such scenic beauty, that too, somewhere in the sky. How can one not feel the anxiety upon having the closest encounter with the gigantic colony of white and grey clouds in mushroom and what not shapes! I could have classified’em into stratus and cumulus for a keen listener and observer had there been someone forcing his nose through the window as I practically was doing.
For me it was like a tour through an automobile factory, where I can get a close look how the machine is made from scratch. Clouds of varied shapes and sizes, with sunlight filtering through the lighter ones was a soul-gripping sight. But the chart topper was a sight I can never forget. With sun shining directly in front of me, I could see the lithosphere below me. But in a distant land down south, I could distinctly see clouds showering and getting relieved! In a nutshell, I was witnessing sun, land, clouds and rain simultaneously thousands of feet above and going at about 200 meters per second- 20 times faster than the fastest man (19.58 to be precise) and 1500 times the highest pole vault jumper!(1489.573 to be exact) This made me realize the importance of a digital camera at hand.
I was so up close, I could sense the condensed water droplets sticking together to give rise to the weird shapes. I wanted to measure their density, reflectivity and various other physical properties; I had a craving to conduct all the scientific experiments so that I could unravel everything about cloud formation. But alas! I ain’t a nephologist.
They were the best one and half hours I’ve ever spent anywhere (a 90 minutes formula one grand prix comes pretty close!). Better than a lousy tour through a museum or a planetarium. I had hummed all the way Bryan Adams, “…we can watch the world go by, up on cloud number nine.”
I was literally on the cloud number nine!
For me it was like a tour through an automobile factory, where I can get a close look how the machine is made from scratch. Clouds of varied shapes and sizes, with sunlight filtering through the lighter ones was a soul-gripping sight. But the chart topper was a sight I can never forget. With sun shining directly in front of me, I could see the lithosphere below me. But in a distant land down south, I could distinctly see clouds showering and getting relieved! In a nutshell, I was witnessing sun, land, clouds and rain simultaneously thousands of feet above and going at about 200 meters per second- 20 times faster than the fastest man (19.58 to be precise) and 1500 times the highest pole vault jumper!(1489.573 to be exact) This made me realize the importance of a digital camera at hand.
I was so up close, I could sense the condensed water droplets sticking together to give rise to the weird shapes. I wanted to measure their density, reflectivity and various other physical properties; I had a craving to conduct all the scientific experiments so that I could unravel everything about cloud formation. But alas! I ain’t a nephologist.
They were the best one and half hours I’ve ever spent anywhere (a 90 minutes formula one grand prix comes pretty close!). Better than a lousy tour through a museum or a planetarium. I had hummed all the way Bryan Adams, “…we can watch the world go by, up on cloud number nine.”
I was literally on the cloud number nine!
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