I woke at 0615, and our Uber dropped us off at the airport a little earlier than planned, just before 0645. Our handler had suggested we arrive at 0700 for our intended 0900 departure. The bemused gate guards invited us to wait with them in their office (the airport is also a military base) until our handler met us ten minutes later and escorted us through the airport and out to Planey. The Avgas truck arrived, but parked with the hose reel facing away from Planey, instead of towards him. The driver quickly repositioned the truck, but this did leave me wondering exactly how much refueling he had been involved in.

There was no ladder, so I performed the refueling myself by climbing up on the access steps on the strut and fuselage that are provided for this purpose. We filled the wings and put some fuel in the ferry tank as well. Although we didn’t need ferry fuel for today’s flight, the next three fuel stops (in Kuwait, Karachi, and Chittagong) would all have fuel provided in barrels. I had therefore needed to perform my fuel planning assuming we would take fuel at these stops only in discrete quantities of 55 gallons, or 200 liters (also allowing for some wastage, as not all fuel can be pumped out the barrel, and often some is spilled). The ferry tank is super helpful in these situations, as you can put excess fuel into it and not leave it behind, wasted, if it won’t fit into the main tanks.

Surprisingly, as it hadn’t been that cold, Planey was once again covered in frost. Fueling was finished by 0730, but our flight plan had been filed for an 0900 departure, so we hung around by Planey waiting for the sun to slowly melt the ice. After a while the control tower called our handler and complained that we weren’t wearing high-vis jackets, so we retired to the handling company’s truck to chat and wait. A little before 0900 we wiped off the remaining slush, installed the new GPS database, and called for start-up permission. This was granted, and we back-taxied down the runway to the turning loop, where we had to wait for some minutes as an arriving A320 freighter from Egypt’s Sky Vision Airlines touched down and taxied out of the way.

During this ground movement ATC had been working on our flight clearance. They initially cleared us for FL150, which we could not comply with, despite the fact that I had filed for FL090. They revised our departure routing as a result of this, switching us to the KULDI 4D departure and then on to the N318 airway. This departure would take us on a long loop around to the west and south after take-off before we turned towards our destination, Kuwait. A silver lining of the longer departure routing was that it gave us great views of the city, including the Citadel, as we flew overhead.

Our route took us west of the new Queen Alia International Airport, before turning us east toward the border with Saudi Arabia. This would be my second crossing of Saudi Arabia, with this one being rather to the north of the previous track. The terrain below us now was not quite as dramatic as the terrain I’d seen first time around; some of this feeling no doubt came from the fact that the first time I’d had no idea what to expect, and some from the fact that the landscape was undoubtedly a little less varied and rugged.

ATC called us to let us know that Restricted Area R-409, laying on our route a little way ahead, was now active. We were flying at FL090 and the Restricted Area extends up to FL100, so he offered us a 300 mile corner-cut direct to the HFR VOR to keep us north of it. We gladly accepted; even though it only saved a few miles in overall track, any shortcut is welcome. It did bring us a little closer to the Iraqi border, and we thought we could just about make out Iraqi territory off to our north.

We lost contact with ATC for a while when out over the desert, but the good old message relay option came to the rescue and we communicated with Jeddah with the help of Saudia flight 505, a commercial flight from Kuwait City to Jeddah.

Saudi ATC handed us over to Kuwait well short of the border, and they let us know that we should expect the ILS Y approach to runway 33R. We were pretty much already lined up with the runway so flew straight-in, being quickly overhauled by a Kuwaiti 777 which was landing on the parallel runway 33L. We touched down gently (my landings had quickly recovered after the first bumpy effort in Maribor) and taxied to the nearby General Aviation terminal, led by a follow-me car that met us as we turned off the main taxiway. I was impressed to discover that, unlike almost all large international airports, Kuwait City had tie-down points for us to secure Planey to.

The fuelers arrived after a short wait, with a pretty well organised setup of barrels in an enclosed trailer, and an electric barrel pump. The level of sophistication of refueling from barrels would only go downhill at subsequent stops. The two guys manning the rig were friendly and efficient. The manager of the fuel company had come along to participate, as a visit by a Cessna 182 was a rare event; they told us that they typically only refueled one or two Avgas burning aircraft each year. The fuelers and security staff all insisted on selfies, and pictures with the aircraft, before we all went our separate ways.

It was Kuwaiti immigration who gave us by far the most hassle. When traveling internationally in Planey we are treated as flight crew – this makes sense, because we are after all the crew flying the aircraft. This means that visas are generally not needed, and we enter the country on a “General Declaration” document which is stamped by customs and immigration. The Kuwaiti authorities were special, however – they refused to accept that we could be flight crew unless we presented them with a “Company ID”. The concept of a private, owner-flown aircraft, with no company managing it, seemed impossible for them to get their heads around. We did ask them to suggest, if we were passengers and not crew, who they thought may have flown this aircraft to Kuwait. No answer was forthcoming. After a lot of back and forth, and a complete lack of any intelligence displayed by Kuwaiti immigration, we eventually made it into the country on tourist visas.

Uber did not work in Kuwait, but the local alternative Careem did. For some reason the verification text would not come through to my number, but we managed to receive one through Ben’s phone. It took a couple of hours to get through the immigration nonsense and our Careem driver was kind enough to wait for a little while as the 3 KWD payment was taken for the visas, which again for some reason took forever.

Finally free, we were dropped off 30 minutes later at our hotel in Salmiya and immediately headed out to find some dinner. Our chosen venue was the Chick N Grill. We were each presented with an entire spatchcocked chicken, beautifully seasoned and cooked, with bread to accompany. We made valiant efforts but were both defeated by the amount of chicken on offer.

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We started the morning of our day off in Kuwait City with a short walk to the nearby Scientific Center for coffee, or in my case a hot chocolate. There was a Costa Coffee closer to the hotel, but Ben’s advance investigation had found it closed. As we breakfasted we discussed a plan for the day and settled on a walk along the shore to the Kuwait Towers. Google suggested this would take a bit more than three hours, which seemed reasonable. As we set off, we came across four stray cats hanging around just outside the center and decided to count cats as we went. We’d blown Ben’s prediction of thirty within about the first kilometer.

The city has a population of around three million, nearly three quarters of the entire country’s population. It was possible to follow the waterfront most of the way along the shore, with only occasional sections being blocked by marina businesses or the like. Being a Friday (the first day of the weekend in this part of the world) plenty of people were out and about enjoying the sunshine and mild temperatures, with families picnicking on the grass, and a multitude of cats trying their luck for scraps or lounging in the sun. After a couple of hours walking, we stopped in a Starbucks for juices (the only place we could find that would take our cards), and I mocked up some Company IDs for me and Ben in the name of “Adventure Air”. Ben didn’t have a passport photo to hand, so we took his ID card image using my phone with him standing up against the neutral-coloured wall outside the toilets.

We continued our walk towards the Kuwait Towers, which finally seemed to be drawing closer. A heavy American influence was apparent in the eating options available – P.F. Changs, Wimpy, Burger King, Texas Roadhouse, Chili’s, Cheesecake Factory and TGI Fridays among them. The British chain Pizza Express was also in evidence. Arriving at the Kuwait Towers, we decided not to pay the fee and climb to the top; we were getting enough aerial views on this trip as it was. We continued along the shore until we found a way to cut through towards the city center and made our way to the Al-Hamra tower and shopping mall. At 414 m (1,358 ft) tall, this building is the tallest in Kuwait, the tallest curved concrete skyscraper in the world, and the thirty-sixth tallest building in the world overall.

We continued out the other side of the tower and headed for the Al Shaheed park, the largest urban park in Kuwait. It wasn’t easy to find an open entrance, but after a short walk down the western side we found a way in. The park contains two major Kuwaiti museums – the Memorial Museum exhibits important events in Kuwaiti history, and the Habitat Museum is an exhibit about natural habitats of Kuwait. Neither were open for long enough for us to go in, and we continued on our way towards the print shops that we’d identified on Google Maps. Most would be opening in the late afternoon or early evening.

The final stretch of the walk took us across a vast expanse of barren, open ground. The area was thronging with immigrant workers primarily from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, all engaged in games of cricket. Some games were clearly very casual, but others had attracted quite a crowd of onlookers and seemed to be played to quite a high level. We stopped for a while and chatted with one fielder, who spotted my New Zealand shirt and was very complimentary about New Zealand’s cricketing prowess.

After trying a few print shops, we came away with very official-looking company IDs including clear plastic holders and lanyards. We were well pleased! To celebrate we took a Careem to Texas Roadhouse for steaks, before riding back to the hotel. Ben went off to try and find some snacks for the next day’s flight but was unfortunately foiled by their unwillingness to accept his payment card. In the meantime, I went to investigate the “Hello Kitty” store near our hotel – further inspection showed it to look a little post-apocalyptic and I strongly suspected it was not officially endorsed by Sanrio. As I conducted the final preparations for the next day’s flight, Ben reviewed the map to see how far we had walked that day. It turned out to be more than 20 kilometers.

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