Made it!

...to Hong Kong - the most challenging part was acquiring our green QR code without which we wouldn't be allowed on the planes. It took about two hours of going round and about with online forms and proofs of negative covid tests etc. The flight was interesting, we clipped the southern part of the Black Sea but Kherson, Odessa, Mykolaiv, Sebastopol were all on the map - slightly uncomfortable! We flew across Turkey and then on over Iraq but made a wide semicircle clearly and obviously avoiding Mosul, Erbil and Kirkuk and I thought 'are they still a problem to fly over?' The star of the flight was flying south of the Himalayas in early morning light on the 2nd leg from Doha to Hong Kong - what a vision! The surprising part was just how thickly settled the whole of Eastern Turkey and northern Iraq are, little villages and bigger towns spread evenly across the landscape from horizon to horizon. Anyway, I'm here! I've cuddled the baby copiously an sung to her, had an evening coffee, beer and baby stroll and Korean soup for supper. Co-incidentally and quite unplanned, my twin is in Hong Kong visiting her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren so we're all meeting up later in the week.