My flight from Mumbai to the US flew east over India. I was surprised that it didn’t fly over the pole. I’d even been trying to figure out whether I would be night when we were sufficiently far north to see aurorae around me. Instead we flew east, south of the Himalayas, then veered north to pass over China and Japan before crossing the Pacific to land in San Francisco. The route was horribly bumpy. Later I tried to ask a climate expert if this massive amount of air turbulence could be caused by climate change and hot seas. I had my answer in a couple of days when a Singapore Airlines flight over a slightly more southern route fell 1800 meters in five seconds due to turbulence. I was not looking forward to the sixteen hours long return flight.
As it happened, we travelled north from San Francisco. Within a short while we were over Canada. The flight was rock steady in this cooler air. Eventually I took my drink and stood at a port near the rear galley of the Dreamliner. Canada passed below me, mostly covered in clouds, but intermittently with large gaps which allowed a glimpse of the landscape. There were extensive plains dotted with frozen sheets of ice, metling at the edges. We were flying over the Northern Territories, then the Tuktut Nogait National Park, home of gyr falcons, arctic wolves, and bluenose caribou. Now that would be a place worth visiting! It was still early in the year, and the northwest passage was still blocked.
Much later, after I had a nap, I went back to the port by the galley. We were now flying south over Greenland. We would be flying in daylight until the plane landed. As the clouds cleared I could see massive ranges of snow-covered mountains visible in the slanting light of a northern summer. The flight had been very smooth; the seas here were still too cold to generate any atmospheric turbulence. From this height the landscape seemed to crawl past at a terribly slow pace. It is only on flights like this that you realize how vast the planet is, and how small we are. Eventually we came to a coast, where glaciers were dropping into the sea: the nursery of icebergs. Beyond that was pack ice. Then warmer climates. Soon we were flying over Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, and the west coast of India. I could see the Asian monsoon clouds begin to form over the sea. And then we were down.
Don't hold your breath 
