...back home safely (in Dhaka)

Home sweet home! (As it's the closest thing to "home" that I have these days!)

We arrived (BARELY) in Pakistan on Thursday evening - early Friday morning. Our flight from Dhaka to Karachi was uneventful and quite nice, business class...got to love it! We flew on PIA - Pakistan International Airlines, and I was impressed by the service in Business Class. Cattle Class, ooops, I mean Economy Class was an entirely different matter altogether!

I shouldn't have eaten the chicken curry dinner that they served. It stayed with me the entire night and the flight was so turbulent from Karachi to Islamabad that we actually had to divert to Lahore until the weather cleared up! (There was a moment where I was going to toss my cookies, and then say my prayers because I wasn't sure that we were going to make it.) At about 700 kilometers, on our descent into Islamabad, the plane dropped for 30 seconds. Like a roller coaster - only it wasn't the fun kind of exciting.

Everyone was sighing in relief when we heard the engines kick in, but were confused when we saw that we were slowly coming up in altitude. Apparently the pilot decided not to land due to the turbulence - there was a point where the engines were working so hard to pull up that we weren't exactly sure that we WOULD be able to pull up.

We landed in Lahore at 10/10:30pm - we were scheduled to arrived in Islamabad at 9:30pm (we left Dhaka at 1:30pm...and Pakistan is 1 hour behind Bangladesh).

We left Lahore at half past midnite and after another roller coaster ride - seriously, I was nauseated for several days after landing in Islamabad, we finally arrived safely at nearly 2am in the morning. The plane was tossed back and forth like a paper airplane in the cross winds and we all thought that the pilot would change his mind again and redivert to Lahore. Yeah - it was bad. Of all the flights that I've been on - I think this one took the cake. It was bad - I'm glad that I have a good life insurance policy. =)

The trip to Pakistan was a relative success from a business perspective...although of course it means more work for many of those involved in the venture. We had a great time meeting our country director's family - shopping and learning more about Pakistan, in addition to the work and meetings.

Days in Pakistan are long - dinner usually started around 8:30 to 10pm. Bedtime was from midnite to 2am - and the work day starts at 10am.

I'll post more pictures - I know, I'm bad at doing that in general for most photos...trust me, I know that I'm behind. And I'll give a better accounting of what we did - I just needed to drop a quick note to say that I'm back safe and sound in Dhaka!