Leg 23: Bhubaneshwar VEBS to Yangon Intl VYYY
Route: VEBS PTN VYYY 698 nm, 4.3 hours (total: 11171 nm, 69,2 hours)
On this leg, we're going to cut off the top of the Bay of Bengal, and route straight across the sea to Yangon (Rangoon). Obviously, for a long flight over water there are certain necessary preparations - liferaft, life jackets, water bottles (plus a couple of 'empties'!), GPS, and of course, a good book!

After yesterday's almost blind landing, it's refreshing to be able to see where we are!

Lining up on runway 14 We're fuelled to the max -- it's 3½ hours just over the water -- and with the extra survival kit, we're at max weight. Providing you hold a few things off the sales, that is!

Once above the haze, we discover some big bruiser clouds. These certainly weren't in the TAF!

Crossing the coast. Next land in something over three hours!
Page 1. It was funny, Richard Sharpe thought, that there were no vultures in England. None that he'd seen, anyway...
Every degree of longitude we have to make a position report (hence the GPS), but we're quickly out of range of the land-based station, and so we're reliant on passing airliners to relay the reports for us. We don't have oxygen, so we're cruising at FL95, not that it makes much difference this far from land...

Eventually, we can make out the coast in the distance. Land Ho!!

We've been tracking the PTN VOR for more than an hour, and we fly straight over the top of it. No wonder I couldn't spot it out the window!

Approaching Yangon, and we're flying on fumes. They've just claimed to be IFR, which means they must be under that cloud over there.

IFR? Yeah, right! I can clearly see the runway from more than 3 miles away, and I'm out of options.
"Golf Oscar XRay is declaring a fuel emergency..." "Um, okay, cleared to land." Thank you
A few moments later...
<splutter, cough>
"Yangon Ground, Anyone got a tow rope?"