Share a story about the furthest you’ve ever travelled from home

While “home” at the time was Bangladesh, where my father was working, we children were at boarding school in the UK. We had an agreement with my parents that they would not book us on two particular airlines: Aeroflot (because of their dire safety record) and Bangladesh Biman (because even their own nationals were decidedly iffy about the safety of their fleet). Except, on this occasion, they didn’t honour that agreement….

One Christmas holiday, I travelled to London’s Heathrow airport, only to discover that we were due to fly on Bangladesh Biman. Barely before I’d had time to react and kick up a fuss, the flight disappeared off the board. Further investigation revealed that the plane had made an unscheduled landing in Stansted (another ‘London’ airport to the east of the country), following which all staff had disappeared, all desks were closed, and all phone lines went unanswered. Also, the plane itself appeared to have a hole in it’s fuselage, so (happily) was deemed unflightworthy.

As the saga unfolded, my younger sister and brother arrived, while the organisation my father’s employers engaged to sort out our travel, frantically attempted to find us replacement flights. One overnight stay in a hotel later, and we were flying first class to Delhi in India, from where we were on standby to catch a flight to Bangladesh. A representative from this same travel organisation would meet us in Delhi and handle things from there.

But you know what I’m going to say, don’t you – there was no-one there to meet us. We had no cash (my mother’s lengthy shopping list ate up all we had), no credit cards, and both the airline we’d arrived on and the one we hoped to fly on, washed their hands of us. And, of course, this was pre mobile phone. We spent 6 hours in the airport, surrounded by our luggage and waited… Not a drop to drink or anything to eat, while I (as the eldest) worried and racked my brains as to our options, should there not be 3 seats available on that flight.

Eventually the flight was called, but the airline staff simply shook their heads at us. After the last call for passengers had gone out, I was girding my loins for the battle ahead, when a member of staff ran – literally – across the terminal to us. Gathering up our luggage, we – again, quite literally – ran across the tarmac to our plane. Our luggage was thrown into the hold, and the plane was already taxiing as we found seats.

When we arrived in Bangladesh, we 3 were the first off the plane as it came to a standstill, so keen were we for that journey to end…. only to be met by my father’s employer’s travel fixer at the foot of the stairs, to be whisked through customs, told to remove from our luggage what we needed to fly onward (with our parents) to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur, to cram said items into a carry on bag, after which we were rushed back onto the very same aircraft we’d just left. The aircrew laughed to see us returning 🙂

Although we spent a few days in Bangkok, visiting some of the sights there and along the coast, before flying to Kuala Lumpur for a few more days of R&R, my mother was traumatised… and she spent every minute of that holiday letting us all – but especially my father – know about it. Unsurprisingly, my sister, my brother and I did our best to make ourselves scarce at every opportunity.

When we finally felt able to speak to my parents about what had happened, the kicker is that they’d decided to book us on that ill-fated flight, as it would’ve arrived a day earlier, meaning our transit wouldn’t have been quite so rushed (insert eye roll here).

Do you have a long distance travel tale to share? Or even a short distance one?

© Debs Carey, 2024