Most of our trips to Mumbai have been evening flights and so there was nothing to see outside. We’ve done day flights regionally, but I can only remember two other daytime flights to Mumbai in the last 20 odd years. Both times, we flew Singapore Airlines and both flights were in wide-bodied planes, perhaps an Airbus. Earlier this year, when I flew to India, I flew Vistara, the airline that was created due to a partnership between Singapore Airlines and the Indian conglomerate, the Tata Group. Vistara uses a smaller aircraft which is single aisle and so probably flies much lower in the air compared to Singapore Airlines flights. So this time around, I enjoyed the flight because I could see the ground while flying. Up until we entered the Bay of Bengal, I enjoyed the scenery below and took many photographs of the journey. This photographic essay is the result of that trip. My apologies if I shared some photos previously.

This scene greeted me almost as soon as the plane took off from Singapore’s Changi airport. You can see the buildings of Changi in the left and the National Service Resort & Country Club in the front and centre.

A minute later, this is one of Singapore’s offshore islands, maybe Pulau Ubin or Pulau Tekong.

About 30 minutes into the flight, we were flying over the Malaysian peninsula, probably flying over the North South expressway, on the way to the country’s capital of Kuala Lumpur.

About 45 into the flight, you can clearly see the island of Penang and the famous Penag bridge.

The next island is the island of Langkawi, which lies almost on the border between Malaysia and Thailand. We visited the island more than a decade back and have very fond memories of the place and hope to visit it again soon.

About an hour and 40 minutes into the flight, we flew over the Thai island of Krabi.

After Thailand, we veered course to fly over the Bay of Bengal and try as I much wanted to, I could not see much out of the window and the next time I saw something interesting, we were flying over Ahmednagar in my home state of Maharashtra, about 20-25 minutes before we landed in Mumbai.

This photo was taken as we approach Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus for landing into Mumbai. This is the Vashi Bridge which seperates Mumbai from Navi Mumbai or New Bombay, the planned city and part of the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR). Seeing the bridge brought back so many Mumbai memories of school trips and seeing the bridge I know we are on the verge of landing into Mumbai.

We were on our descent for landing and this is taken just a couple of minutes before touchdown. This is most likely the Eastern Express Highway in Vikhroli East, a few seconds before landing in Mumbai.

And finally touchdown after flying about 5.5 hours. I was back in the city of my birth after more than two years. But now I doubt I will fly into Bombay anytime soon, but never say never!

I hope you enjoyed this photographic journey as much as I liked searching through the photos I took during the flight and remembered my journey.