Headin to the Maldives

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Day zero: What time shall we set off?

Well, having trusted Ross to take care of the flights he settled on a 930pm departure from heathrow airport, london. 930pm on the friday of a bank holiday weekend. Given the journey time would normally be 3 1/2 hours, there was no counting for bank holiday traffic and potential motorway closures so we debated the departure time, wrestling between "in case there's a nuclear explosion time", or "mentally stable time". We accounted for the Trump factor and settled on the former after multiple attempts to persuade my driver it was the right thing to do.

It was worth it - even despite having to endure a journey of countless " this is the earliest i've ever travelled for a flight ever!" statements. Gifted with that and other banal comments like "aren't you going to compliment me on my driving?" - you can imagine the journey just sailed by. We duly arrived in the nick of time at 415pm with a mere 5hrs to take off and a tight 75 minutes to spare before check in opened. Phew.

Several plates of sushi later we boarded the flight and settled in to our seats - thankfully, i was not in sight of my travel companion.

As the captain welcomed us aboard over the tannoy, some of the more astute amongst us will have heard the unnerving sound of clinking glasses in the background. Mmm. Everyone wants a happy captain i guess - just not too happy.

Its reassuring to know we are still being advised upon how to fasten a seatbelt. I must have nodded off during the "how to breathe succesfully on an airline" section - still somehow i managed both.

So with ten and a half hours to kill I turned to the in-flight entertainment. "Hacksaw Ridge" was my first choice (about an army medic who rescued his comrades in ww2) which I was really enjoying until I had a little bug fly into my eye towards the end, which created quite an irritation i can tell you. Unpurtubed i watched PS I Love You and as luck would have it, the exact same thing happened again. What are the chances?

I managed a few hours of shut eye and was awoken with a lovely hot omelete for breakfast with a knife and fork that i can only assume had just returned from 6 months at Everest base camp. Having successfully avoided ice burns on my tongue, the omelete went down well and we soon arrived for our connection in Columbo, albeit 40 minutes late. A lovely Sri-Lankan Airlines attendant escorted us to the gate for the final call to Malé. Knowing that our bags would have a close shave i used the "I cant find my passport" line, "I think that guy stole it" i exclaimed in utter panic, pointing at Kirby heading for the dearture lounge. After emptying my bag it revealed itself in the pocket where i had placed it. I'm a bloody good actor me.

After locating our escort in the packed 30 degrees airport we sat around for 90 minutes for a couple of Americans who never showed. Well what was another hour and a half when we'd been travelling for 24 hours already.

Too late to surf after the short boat ride to the lodge so we took a walk past the old jail (now a drug rehabilitation centre) to checkout jailbreak peak. Spotted a handful of black tipped reef sharks a ray and couple fruit ?bats on arrival and returned for dinner and an early night.

Until next time ...

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Photos

M40 services
Forget your driving what about your parking!

Heathrow lounge
A rather inexplicable lean on that seat Andrew??