Both Nikita and Natasha have been to 5 out of the 7 continents (including Antarctica). Sharmila and I have been stuck on 4 for a long time. This trip to Australia should fix that. Now it will be a race to which Roy family member goes to the 6th continent first.

Our main target in Australia is to hit a place most folks don’t usually go – Uluru. This is in the Outback – in the middle of the Great Australian desert. Which reminds me – after the Gobi and the Saudi desert, this would be 3 out of the top 4 largest deserts in the world for me (not counting the ice capped Antarctica and Artic – which are undoubtedly the two largest deserts in the world).

When I was trying to plot by one and only marathon race, Uluru was one of the top three choices for me. (Eventually went with the Original Marathon in Greece). Had researched a lot about Uluru then and always wanted to see the giant land formation.

Outside of Uluru, I have very little knowledge of Australia. Strangely the two things Bhowmic miss had taught us in geography class in middle/high school that I still remember are the mining cities of Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie and the dingo dogs!! Undoubtedly because of the cool names.

Hoping to catch some interesting fauna there. A kangaroo or a wallaby perhaps. Definitely a wombat, if I can. I have half a mind to ask them why do they poop in cube shaped poops!!

We were starting to descend into Los Angeles when Delta sent me the following email. My favorite domestic airlines was sorry that our two suitcases did not arrive at our destination as intended.

Well, that obviously set us in to thinking what to do next. Good news is that we had six hours to spend before our trans Pacific flight. Enough time to go buy new clothes for this trip.

In any case, I could not do much at that point. Tried talking to an agent in chat box. Not much help.

Logical thinking was that there were two more flights from Atlanta to Los Angeles. So, hopefully they can send them in one of them. Question was if we would have enough time to take them and go to American Airlines for the check in to Australia.

Tried the link to check the status of the bags. It said they have arrived in carousel 23 ?!?

This meant, they have somehow pulled my luggage out in Atlanta for some reason and sent them out. But Atlanta does not have a carousel 23. Well, then the worst case must have happened. They mixed up destinations 🙁 Told Sharmila “The bags have gone somewhere else”.

Hmmm… this is not a good start, I mused to myself.

Curious about where they sent my bags, I checked the flight number they loaded it on to. Checked the flight status and it has gone all the way to…. wait… Los Angeles??? What the heck?

After a few more minutes of research, I figured out what had happened. There was an earlier flight that was leaving for Los Angeles and Delta decided to put our suitcases in that flight.

So, our suitcases would have been going around carousel belt 23 for two hours in Los Angeles like that ring of Saturn. In reality, they had taken them out since they were in an earlier flight and put them in a different area for us to collect.

Technically, Delta was right! My two suitcases did not arrive at our destination “as intended” !!

Phew!! That was a near disaster!!

All’s well that ends well!!

Never seen an airline map like that. Everything is pitch dark and no land to be seen. Consulted Google maps and realized we are hovering near Kiribati. Which means we are literally near a point that divides western hemisphere from eastern hemisphere (the 0 deg and 180 deg latitude) and the northern hemisphere from southern hemisphere (equator).

Moreover, you can see how the international date line strays from the 180 deg latitude here to save nearby islands from being on different days. But, that also means, if you travel at the right angle, you can cross the Date Line thrice or even five times. That would be one whiplash of “Today is the 5th… no it is the 6th… no, no, we are back to 5th… wait, now we are 6th of August”.

It is like my luggage confusion all over again…

But who is still use component cables, S-video connectors and for crying out loud, iPod audio/video connectors in their plane seats these days? These are AA equipments that ply Asia and Australia routes. I wonder if some international passengers still use them.

That was a throwback.

That was 30 hours door to door

Our first course of action? Sat in a coffee shop and had cappuccinos while watching the Australians mill around.

The noise they make, on the other hand can stand some tune ups…

We were lucky to be staying in the Sydney Harbor right between the two iconic structures in the city

That is totally contrived. Yes, she wanted to enjoy the picture in front of the Museum of Contemporary Art – which is up her alley. But the white Australian Ibis had too menacing a beak not to keep a careful eye on it!! 🙂

It turned around with that Robert De Niro-esque “You talking to me?” look about it!

And the Sydney Harbor Bridge did not look too shabby either!! 🙂

Check out the people climbing to the top of the arch of the Sydney Harbor Bridge!

Just before these two sea gulls started kissing or high fiving or whatever it is that sea gulls do after winning, you should have seen them aggressively attack a third one that was trying to be friends with one of them and chased it away to oblivion!

… here we are at Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach

This is taken from the hiking trail that runs between Bronte Beach and Bondi Beach.

We ran into about a score of these cockatoos on the hike!

We saw these during our hike. I assume these are sandstones.

The two edges of the beaches you can see are Bronte Beach and Tamarama Beach

Today was spent checking out the various animals and birds of Australia

Searched a lot for some cube shaped poop but could not find any…

One of the two species of mammals that lay eggs. Hope to see the duck billed platypus this trip too.

The koala bear could not care less as long as it was given food!

Also, would stick out among Australian animals like a sore thumb!

Avijit and I were fairly inseparable when we were in middle/high school. Once I moved to the USA, we rarely got a chance to meet. He left for England first and then eventually Australia.

I did see him in 1999 in Kolkata, then around 2018 or so in the USA and then again in 2022 when both of us happened to be in Kolkata at the same time. Ironically, both of us were there to clean up all the property, bank accounts and such after our parents died. His mom and my parents all passed away within weeks of each other.

It is a testimony to the kind of relationship we had that he took a five hour, red eye flight from Perth after a whole day’s work to come and see Sharmila and me for a day. We had a great time driving around outside Sydney and checking out the Australian fauna. Finally, we settled by the Harbor in the evening and relaxed over a couple of drinks.

Seen as we were descending into the airport.

What an amazing piece of geological formation. The whole thing is one monolithic structure. If you start digging, that rock goes for another 2.5 km underground! This has been the one thing I always wanted to come to Australia for!

I was expecting vast barren lands in the Great Australian Desert. Turns out there is fairly good amount of vegetation. At least in this part of the Outback. The most surprising part is there are absolutely no animals – no grazing animals, no wild beasts, no reptiles. Just a few birds.

Upon enquiring with the locals, found out that since here we are exiting winter now here, most of the animal kingdom is still in hibernation. The birds are the first to wake up and come around…

We are a bit tired. We will be back tomorrow first thing to catch the sunrise and then later, the sunset. Apparently Uluru becomes bright red in the sun’s early (and late) rays.

We got bundled up (it is cold here with the wind) and headed towards the park early in the morning. Stopped on the path to take this shot.

From our viewing station, we could see the Kata Tjuta in the distance. The colors looked ethereal!

It was surreal to watch Uluru turning bright red. Everybody watched with pin drop silence.
You could feel the cold wind. And hear some birds waking up. Otherwise, there was complete silence as Uluru woke up.
The motto of the local Anangu aboriginals here is “Touch the Silence”
I touched the silence. And it was an out of body experience.

You may remember the picture of this from early dawn today. It is much longer than Uluru but is not one monolithic structure.

On the way to Kata Tjuta, we stopped at a place to climb up a sand dune to get a panoramic view. The dunes are very deceptive. Because of the vegetation, you don’t realize that they are dunes. But they are huge dumps of red sand and if you carefully notice, you can see the contours of all the sand dunes.

You can see Kata Tjuta in the background

You see the V shaped slice of the sky between two of the mounds? The idea is to hike up that gap between the mounds.

That is Sharmila in the distance that you see.

Roger, remember the Bayanzag Flaming Cliffs in Mongolia and your pose?

The good news is if we can get closer to the other mound, we will be protected by the shade. And that is the way we are headed as of now!

Checkout the contrast in the colors of the mountains with and without sunlight. Against the backdrop of the crystal clear blue sky.

The two sides of the gorge meet in front of us. We sat there for some time, took in the complete silence and the sheer majesty of nature.

the valley in front of us

The sheer drop was daunting to fathom

It was bright red off the reflection of light from the facing monolith. There were numerous birds flying in and out of the holes way up there. Sharmila had a theory that some of the bigger holes are the dens of red kangaroos. She made short shrift of my question – “How are they going to get in and out of there?” “Kangaroos can jump”, she pointed out.

I focused back on my hike down.

We went back to the park in the evening – this time to see Uluru by sunset. What resplendence in the richest of hues! This is a completely untouched photo – taken from my iphone. This is definitely Uluru at its beautiful best.

To give you an idea about how exhausting this run was for me – nearly 40% of the time I was at 100% or above of my Max Heart Rate and peaked at 182 (112% of my Max Heart Rate)

This was no Outback Marathon – the research into which got me to learn about Uluru in 2015 – still It was worth it to put the 35th country with a 5K run or more in the books.

As Virgin Australia 1628 banked a hard left, I looked out of the window to take one last look at Uluru. I know it will be here for thousand of years, but for me, this is the last time I will see it. I had no idea of the existence of this even 10 years back. While researching for my one and only marathon, Outback Marathon around this rock was one of my top three choices. Eventually, went to Greece to run the Original Marathon.

But I have held a fascination for this rock ever since. Very few people I know have visited Uluru. I have asked a lot of my friends who lived or are still living in Australia. This counts the people I work with in my current company who live in Australia and New Zealand. For most, it is too far to make it worth the trip. There are the attractions of big cities and beaches that are much easier to access.

I am so happy I finally made a trip to Australia. And needless to say, made a beeline for Uluru. It was worth the wait and was even more beautiful than I thought it would be.

Would love to come back here but I know Nature has a lot more other beautiful things to offer that I should see too.

At Ayers Rock airport, our boarding was getting delayed by a few minutes. We were all ready to go but were kept waiting. Peeked around and realized why.

We had a physically challenged customer. In USA, most of the time they just roll you in on the aero bridge. In India, when there is no aerobridge, often instead of stairs, they use an incline (which actually folds over twice). And the customer’s wheelchair is pushed up on it.

You see that contraption on the right? That is a mobile elevator! That is what they used for our fellow passenger. I have never seen this before! Have you?

Our rescheduled itinerary took us thru Melbourne instead of Brisbane direct.

where does she look like she is?

That is the Story Bridge in Brisbane. Coincidentally, this bridge was inaugurated only three years before Howrah bridge.

Brisbane was rainy the whole time we were there.

This is barely a year old

Dipped its tail in the water and went into a total zen mode

Noticed the apparent grammatical anomaly. The sign went off as I started re-reading it. Asked Sharmila to wait and waited for all the other ads to cycle thru. And it came back to this again. I was looking for phrases like “Employees of” or something like to preface the airport reference but could not find it. Am I missing something?

Brisbane to Sydney, Sydney to Los Angeles, Los Angeles to Atlanta. 42 hours door to door including a night layover on the way.

Here are some of my first observations of Australia:

1. Australians are incredibly nice. Very polite and helpful people. We met people who have been in Australia for multiple generation. We met first generation immigrants from England, South Africa, Philippines, Fiji, India, Pakistan, Spain, France, Italy and even Ecuador. Everybody seemed to embody the same level of empathy and helpfulness.

2. Australians are very trusting. In all the domestic travel we did – 4 different segments – nobody checked our identities. We used our boarding pass on our phones to check in luggage, go thru security, board the flights and use the lounges. Not once did anybody ask us for our identity! I checked with my colleagues here. Apparently, that is how it is for domestic flights.

3. We did not see much pet dogs here . And not even one pet cat. The airport did not have any of your service dogs, comfort dogs and all that. Sum total, we might have seen three or four pet dogs in our entire trip. And unfortunately, did not see any dingo dogs either!!

4. Back to the airport. In every airport, for domestic passengers at least, there is only one security queue. Regardless of status, class of ticket etc etc. For that, the queues moved very efficiently. Again, the security folks were incredibly helpful. Nothing like some of our TSA experiences in the USA or CISF experiences in India. Here the folks were going out of the way to be helpful.

5. Public transport is efficient and quick. Found an interesting way of “buying tickets”. You get up on the bus, tap your credit card or iphone and go sit down. And tap it one more time as you get down. The system will charge you based on the distance.

6. Did not have to use any cash whatsoever. Or credit card for that matter. Apple Pay was good everywhere.

7. Did not see anybody drink Fosters beer anywhere. Remember the old ad – “Foster’s, Austrlian for Beer” ? Don’t know what happened.

8. Also, nobody said “Good Day, Mate!”

Truly enjoyed the country.

Somewhere between Brisbane and Sydney, the sun trying to break from the clouds before setting for this evening…

We landed from our American Airlines flight from Sydney to Los Angeles after nearly 15 hours. However, Global Entry and some efficient luggage handling meant within about 5 minutes we were out of the airport. One last leg remained – and that was with Delta.

Delta surely made it memorable for Sharmila today. First, as we relaxed in the sofas of their Delta One area with the cappuccinos they made for us, they took the passports and our suitcases from us and took care of all the formalities without we having to do anything. Finally, when we had finished our coffee, there was a special security belt right behind where it was the two of us and three TSA agents.

After a shower and made to order egg breakfast, they put us in a Porsche and drove us straight to our plane. An elevator ride and an entry thru a secured staff door later, we were in the plane before anybody had started boarding. In fact, we were not even carrying our boarding passes with us!

That was totally royal treatment. Reminded me of how some of the Asian airlines roll out the red carpet for frequent flyers.

Nice way to finish off a really memorable trip.