We were sailing smoothly towards New Delhi from Newark on United Airlines 801. Towards the end of the trip, just as we were around the air space over where Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan meet, we took a rather convoluted anti clockwise circular approach before getting back to what appears to be our original path.

It cannot be any landscape issue – we were comfortably high to clear the Hindukush.

Was it for any geopolitical air space reasons? Does anybody have an idea? Some of you who gave taken this route frequently, have you seen this before?