Days: 566-569 (12 January 2016 – 15 January 2016)

Total distance travelled: 151,544.1 kilometres (94,126.78 miles)

When your course is set and you’re on your way home, by that point, all you want to do is actually get there.

The schedule was relatively simple.

An afternoon flight out of Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport (IKA) would have us in Istanbul just shy of 6pm, before a seven and a half hour wait precluded our next series of flights that would get us back to Melbourne via Beijing and Guangzhou.

No problem.

Unbeknownst to us, as we sat behind the wall that is the Islamic Republic (it’s not as simple as just connecting to a random WiFi signal and catching up on the goings on in the world), by now the 12th of January 2016 had already proved to be a date of significance in the Turkish capital.

We’d allowed ourselves plenty of time to get here early figuring there was no reason to cause ourselves any unnecessary stress by needing to rush at any point in time.

It had been a taxi for us from Tehran, the mooted metro link not yet completed over thirty kilometres that took longer than one would expect due to the city gridlock.

Upon arrival at the airport itself, it became very apparent that there would be no issues or complications related to time… the place was empty.

Having travelled through many major airports of the world, and in truth a little unsure as to how departure from a religious state may throw up unexpected challenges, we quickly found ourselves checked into a surprisingly modern terminal.

I could have been any major airport, in any large city.

Only it lacked the people, the volume of flights in and out, the shops and eateries…

As such, we had a reasonable wait before eventually boarding our Turkish Airlines flight out of the country.

From there it was like any other flight, although as we climbed and ultimately reached international airspace, we did get to witness the moment where the women on board felt comfortable and safe enough to remove their various head coverings (the first action created an avalanche of removals).

I was soon enjoying a viewing of the original Star Wars movie and our first alcoholic beverages in several weeks.

A meal was had, the movie passed and as one sometimes does, I checked our on board flight map and noted that we were now in a holding pattern of sorts, circling around the area above or near Istanbul.

It would seem there was a slight delay, but with plenty of time between flights, even with the need to re-check in our luggage, at present, there was still no issue to be had.

Eventually, we did descend, proceeded through immigration without issue and were able to collect our bags in anticipation for check in for our next series of flights.

On the boards there were a lot of flights delayed, we assumed like us, seemingly by the weather and our flight, so many hours distant, was still not visible.

The advantage of being back in Turkey meant we could also re-connect to the internet, so as we found some floor space for our bags and a seat for ourselves, we were able to learn the goings on of the world.

This also revealed to us the significance of the 12th of January 2016.

At the same time presenting us with another possibility for why our flight was delayed in the air, and a reason as to why the board was littered with flight days.

This very day, in Sultanhamet, the very same area of Istanbul we’d stayed only weeks ago, there’d been a suicide bombing…

Full details were still not clear, but there had certainly been casualties and those targeted had seemingly been (or perhaps specifically been) foreigners.

As the following hours passed, there was still for us a complete sense of shock.

Eventually our flight appeared on departures board… and we weren’t going to be going anywhere.

Flight Cancelled!

The immediate challenge became a different one.

We couldn’t find a single China Southern staff member, so had no idea what this meant for us in the short term.

Where on earth was everybody else?

Time continued to pass and whilst we struggled to find anybody related to the airline, but surprisingly thus far, we’d only found three other travellers, also booked on this flight in the same predicament.

Eventually, or perhaps that should be finally, a pair of China Southern representatives did appear at the check in counter (or at least where we would have been checking in), by now the time around midnight.

Details were scant, but the flight for this morning was most certainly cancelled and we were all finally given direction and sent to a nearby hotel where we could finally eat and equally importantly at this late hour, finally get some rest before returning again the following afternoon.

So here we were, not truly sure where ‘here’ was (aside from obviously Istanbul) instead of cruising through the skies at the start of our long journey home.

It turns out we were at the Wyndham Hotel, although where exactly this was in the city remains a little unclear.

At breakfast the following morning (where there was some of the most delicious honey for the record), we encountered another traveller, hopeful that the flight might finally depart tonight.

Turns out she was supposed to depart the day before us, however her flight had been cancelled as well, seeing her stuck here for two nights!

That had us wondering, “Would we even get out of here tonight?”

It was a dull old day, so we spent much of it in our room, breaking up the time with the odd bit of exploration of the hotel itself and lunch was squeezed in there somewhere as well.

At a set time, we were all expected to meet in the lobby area, where we were ferried back to the airport for our second crack at it.

It had also turned into a wet evening and a fist look at the departures board, again displaying a host of delayed and even the odd cancelled flight had us concerned.

Then the winds and the rain got heavier.

Soon we were peering through the terminal windows as rain lashed the tarmac, illuminated at regular intervals by large flashes of lightning.

Were we going to be set for a second night in the capital?

Eventually our flight appeared on the board, and although the weather was seemingly the cause of several delays, at least it didn’t have our flight appearing as a cancellation!

Surprisingly, when it came time for check in, there appeared to be hundreds of Chinese passengers here as well.

Where had they all been the night before when the previous flight had been cancelled!?

Regardless of this, it finally felt like we were again moving forward although it would be the second ridiculously late night in succession, as it was after three in the morning before we were finally in the air, sipping a wine and being served an airline dinner at a most odd time.

Flying east meant it wasn’t long before the sun had again risen, and whenever a gap did appear through the largely consistent cloud cover, the views of Central Asia below, a real winter wonderland, were quite superb.

It certainly didn’t feel all that long before our descent began, a refueling stop necessary in the western China city of Urumqi.

I should also point out at this time I was wearing shorts on the flight for a more comfortable journey…

As we were deboarding the aircraft, I soon realised the issue with that choice of attire.

Outside, it was a brisk minus twenty degrees Celsius!

Chucking on a hoodie I did my best to keep warm, the chill seeping through our bodies as we walked up the glass walled air bridge.

Still, it shouldn’t be long before we were back on board… or so we thought.

At some point as we waited, in fact I think we actually all had to go through immigration in between connections, it somehow came to pass that the two of us, our Estonian friend George (whom we’d befriended the night our flight was cancelled) and another girl headed for Australia were separated from the rest of the passengers.

It soon became apparent that we weren’t going to be taking our next flight on to Beijing… but what did that mean for us?

The four of us were forced to wait in a holding area of sorts (I don’t mean a room or cell, but we were separated from the rest of the airport by the sort of temporary barriers you see in airports normally used to guide queues to immigration lines), not really sure exactly what was going on.

Urumqi it turns it, is not really an airport it turns out that has many English speakers and our Mandarin quite frankly is worse than shithouse (also a bit how we were feeling at this point).

I should mention at this point that they also had our passports.

When nobody can really explain your predicament and there are a series of serious sounding conversations being conducted by people in sharp looking military uniforms, all sorts of scenarios begin to float through your mind.

Were westerners not supposed to transit through this remote Chinese city?

Had our passports been flagged because we’d visited Iran (common sense would have had us ask, then why also were the other two held with us)?

We simply had no idea.

It could have been thirty or forty minutes, or perhaps even a couple of hours, but it certainly appeared we weren’t getting back on that flight when our bags were eventually brought to us.

Finally, it was indicated that we needed to collect our bags and follow a lady through the airport (by this time our passports had been finally returned).

More time spent waiting at another location, still not really any wiser when eventually we were delivered the news in the form of new boarding passes and a tray of food for each of us (we were all starving by now not having eaten for a good many hours).

Turns out we’d be flying directly on to Guangzhou!

Our bags were checked in once again and the time came to follow yet another person to another place.

We were finally led to a new waiting area (no longer ostracised from other travellers) where we could finally sit and enjoy our plastic trays of food that I at least found quite delicious.

I then whiled away the remaining hours with a combination of random wandering around and staring out at the most snow I’d seen on an airport anywhere (it was quite possibly the first time I’d even seen snow at an airport before).

Later, as we were finally back on our way, that first drink again felt well earned indeed.

By the time we’d landed and were once again off this latest flight, it was some time between midnight and one in the morning.

Our final flight back to Melbourne, back home, was some eight hours distant…

Fortunately, China Southern is one of those carriers, that should your transit exceed a certain time (I can’t recall if it was six or seven hours, but either way, we qualified), you’re eligible to request a hotel room, subject to availability.

Thankfully for us, availability there was and we were soon on a shuttle that whisked us away to the nearby promise of a bed.

We were exhausted, knew that we’d need to be awake some time that was going to be all too soon, but the prospect of a shower and the chance to rest our heads, if even for a short time, was too good an opportunity to knock!

Flicking through the TV channels, I even managed to catch a bit of football action, as Australia’s under 21 football team (soccer) was busy playing in a tournament against Vietnam I think it was!

Slightly refreshed and at the very least smelling better, we were soon back at the airport, for our final flight from Guangzhou to Melbourne.

Roughly nine hours later, after travelling somewhere in the vicinity of a hundred and fifty one thousand kilometres, we were home…

As a bit of a post-script to the end of our adventures, I’d thought it might be a clever idea not to tell Sarah’s mum we were headed back to Australia, so to this end we’d arranged for her brother to collect us from the airport, and for her sister-in-law to arrange to stay with her that night (so that she’d be expecting someone to be arriving that evening).

Perhaps an hour or so later, we finally pulled up, grabbed our bags and wandered up to the door.

I’m not sure if she was more surprised, or we, when one of the first things she said was “Oh no! Sorry, you can’t stay…”

* We flew Turkish Airlines from Tehran to Istanbul and it cost $194.78AUD for each of us.

* Our China Southern flights from Istanbul to Melbourne cost us $724.54AUD per person.