The 51 Hour Journey

You may have heard the term “long haul flight,” but what does that mean? What’s a “long” haul? Many common carriers (airlines) consider long haul to be at least 2500-3000 nautical miles. Los Angeles to New York is about 2450 nautical miles. This means there are only a few domestic flights for Americans that are long haul, like Miami to Seattle, which is a 6.5 hour flight. If you’ve just gasped while reading that, grab a couple of Xanax before you continue.

So, if 6.5 flight hours gets you from one end of the United States to the other, what does 51 travel hours look like? Before I get into the details, it’s important to recognize that American destinations are easy for Americans—they are either direct flights or short connection regional flights. That’s just not the case for remote locations in other parts of the world. Some of these destinations can only be reached by modes of transportation aside from commercial airlines. Think boat, train, or small aircraft.

We’ve done what we call “ultra long haul” before. The direct flight from Dallas to Hong Kong is nearly 17 hours. When you chain together ultra long haul flights, you don’t get ultra ultra long haul; you get pure insanity. I like pure insanity. It’s my happy place, and if you follow me for a few minutes, I’ll take you there.

The most remote location we have traveled to is Konotta Island. We chose Konotta because it is a very small resort island in the Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll, which is just about as far south as you can go in the Maldives. It’s about 325 miles from Male, which means the air traffic is non-existent. The resort islands closer to Male have a lot of air traffic and boat traffic as well. The resorts in Gaafu Dhaalu Atoll are less visited, because travelers don’t like to take the extra time to get down here. Good thing we’re not your average travelers.

From Dallas, there are only 3 routes you can take to get to Konotta. They are all similar pure insanity, but here is the one we chose:

We boarded the 9 hour flight to London on the red eye (overnight, if you aren’t up on the travel lexicon). 9 hours isn’t an awful flight for us. It’s actually on the low end of the spectrum for our transatlantic or transpacific flights. The red eye to London leaves around 9pm local time and gets to London just after noon (London time). Sleeping on this flight is ideal, and I have no problem sleeping on planes. I slept, because when we arrived in London, we had the day to spend there before our next leg. And, we sure as hell weren’t spending the day in the airport when there are things to do in London.

We arrived in London, not quite exhausted. We placed our bags in luggage storage of the terminal so we could go play empty-handed. We took off from Heathrow and headed for Paddington Station, which is far more centrally located. We walked around Hyde Park and Westminster, so we could see Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Big Ben, etc. A lot of the main attractions are located in this area. By the time we got back to Heathrow, we were on the verge of exhaustion.

To recap, now we’re at a 9 hour flight from Dallas to London plus about 9 hours in London, before boarding a 10.5 hour flight to Colombo, Sri Lanka. Are you exhausted yet? We were tired, but we had to go on. This leg of the trip was another red eye, which gave us the ability to sleep again and be ready to go in the morning. Sleeping on this leg wasn’t easy. If you’ve ever experienced that feeling of being so overtired, you can’t sleep, this is where we were. But, it would be many hours before we reached an actual bed again. And, what exactly did we need to be ready for? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

We landed in Colombo and had an unbelievably short connection. When I say short, I mean like a pair of exhausted turtles trying to get from one gate to another before the door closes. We knew this would be hit or miss. The connection rate was around 68%. We made it. Barely. Yet, there was still another 1.5 hours in the air to reach Male. In Male, we had a hotel for the night with a bed and a shower. After nearly 33 hours without a shower, it was most important before passing out in the first bed we’d seen since we left home.

We arrived in Male about 3:00pm. The airport was small and rather crowded. A large number of the resorts had a presence there, either with booths, employees, or physical office space in the airport. All the travelers arriving and departing, each handled by their respective resorts. For someone who isn’t easily overwhelmed, this was overwhelming. We weren’t heading to the resort until the next day, so we were on our own to find our way to Hulhumale. We managed to locate an information booth, where the representative dialed the Ocean Grand to send the shuttle for us. We arrived about 4:00pm and showered, before immediately passing out. We awoke for dinner on the roof of the hotel and immediately went to sleep again.

The following morning at 7am, after much needed rest, we boarded the hotel shuttle back to the airport we just arrived at the day before. This time, we wouldn’t be flying long haul or even international. This flight was a domestic flight 350 miles on a twin turbo prop to Thinadhoo. What or where is Thinadhoo? Thinadhoo is the most disgusting, tiniest, mosquito infested airport in the world. And, we were dying to get there, because it was the only way we could get to Konotta.

From the air, it was magical. The aircraft was flying low over the many gorgeous shallow water islands. We had never seen anything like it. We weren’t even at Konotta yet and it all seemed worth it. We touched down in Thinadhoo after the hour flight and still had one more leg to go. This last 30 minutes of the journey would be aboard a private speedboat. Once we reached the arrival jetty of Konotta island, it had been 51 hours since we left Dallas… or the same amount of time as nearly 8 long haul flights from Miami to Seattle.

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