A Gruelling Journey Into the Unknown After hovering over the city of Peking (now Beijing) for a long time our plane finally landed almost at midnight. With stops in 4 cities since we departed Lagos on July 26, 1976, we had been airborne for a total of 27 hours. The Ethiopian Airline aircraft had long stops in Khartoum, Addis Abba, New Delhi and Bangkok. As a result of sitting for long hours in the very cramped seats of the Boeing 707 aircraft, our bodies were weary, legs heavy as lead, and ears blocked from the steady drone of the engines of the first-generation jumbo jet. There was no onboard entertainment of any kind to break the monotony of our exhausted conversations. No music and no television. In today’s world, that would be unthinkable! As we hung over the skies of Peking, the s...