I was flying to Jerusalem. It was my maiden flight. I was going to Israel for a three-month field trip; what a luxury. These days, financial constraints considerably reduce the JNU-sponsored field visits to a week or ten days. The support in those pre-economic reform era came with 25 dollars per diem, along with international tickets. While the university committee approved my field trip in May 1987, procedural issues, RBI clearance and budgetary process delayed it by a year. Finally, the trip was set for the mid-1988, a few months after the outbreak of the First Palestinian Intifada.
But there was a catch. Since tickets were state-paid, one could fly only by Air India or on tickets issued by it. Planning the itinerary was horrendous. Jerusalem has no international airport, and its small airport was not accepting international flights. So one has to land at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, about 60 km from Jerusalem (the relatively shorter Route 1 between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv came much later).
The time was 1988 and there were no diplomatic relations between India and Israel. Air India office suggested a circuitous route; Delhi-Rome-Tel Aviv-Cairo-Mumbai-Delhi. Cost and frequency removed Rome as the transit point for the return journey. As the ticket was paid in full, I was upgraded into Maharaja Class moments before boarding. As a first-time traveller, I was naïve about the frills and privileges of first class travel. Had my first Coke and quickly went sleep. The pilot woke me up with an announcement that we were flying over Lebanon. As I was looking at the beautiful Mediterranean coastline, the kid in me wondered: Why Rome? Can’t I parachute here and reach Israel?
After some interesting moments during transit in the Rome airport (not sure if it was called Fiumicino International Airport then), landed in Jerusalem on July 4. A couple of persons I met in the early days said the same: You never come to Jerusalem once. Thought they were courteous and generous towards a gentle, kafir, infidel, pagan Indian in the holy city of Abrahamic faiths. I was wrong. Jerusalem became the nerve centre of my professional and personal lives. I have been regularly traveling to Jerusalem since that maiden trip.
However, while going to Jerusalem was exciting, it was a logistical nightmare. A breakthrough in Indo-Israel diplomatic relations on 29 January 1992 paved the way for an Indian embassy in Tel Aviv, but my logistical complications continued. The secondary boycott of Israel meant that since the 1960s, Arab countries refused overflight facilities to any aircraft flying to and from Israel. Given India’s location, my options were limited.
The Camp David Accords of 1979 led to Egypt starting Air Sinai in 1982. Since I was residing in Delhi, this meant flying to Israel from Mumbai and this required commuting from domestic to the international terminal, a nightmare in the 1990s. It could still be but never tried in the past decades.
Royal Jordanian came to my rescue. The Israel-Jordan peace treaty concluded in 1994 and Jordan started flights to India catering to Israelis travelling to the East. Besides cost, it was logistically convenient; one could fly to Israel with a brief stopover and change of flight in Amman. The timing was perfect. I could finish my teaching assignments on Friday evening and take the early morning flight on Saturday. To manage the façade of the Arab boycott, Jordan had a feeder airliner, Royal Wings, for the Israel operations. After a short transit in Amman, the 30-minute flight took you to Tel Aviv. One hardly had the time to enjoy fruit juice before being told: ‘Fasten your seat belt’. This route served me for over a decade.
Meanwhile, Air India wanted to garner a portion of the Israeli tourism market and started Mumbai- Tel Aviv flights. By then, El Al was flying to Mumbai as well as to Southeast Asia. Due to business rivalry, Air India’s slots were almost identical to the Israeli airliner. However, since it could not fly over the airspace, Air India was flying over the circuitous Red Sea route. The route had to be abandoned. Moreover, time and cost meant flying to Delhi via Mumbai was not attractive. After a couple of trials, I returned to the Delhi-Amman-Tel Aviv route.
In the early 2000s, one could notice the transformation of the Queen Alia International Airport in Amman as it became a major transit hub for Indians and Southeast Asians traveling to Europe and America. When fog delayed arrivals in Delhi, Amman provided brief alternative accommodation in a hotel without any extra cost. Over time, the Jordanian cuisine became richer, healthier and more diverse. The shorter travel time and well-taken-care transit facilities resulted in Amman being a busy regional hub. To meet the growing market, the airport was modernised with more facilities, new buildings and even revamped runways. But the boom did not endure. Jordan could not compete with the richer Gulf Arab countries and Royal Jordanian curtailed its services.
I briefly tried the regionally well-connected Turkish Airlines and opted for the Delhi-Istanbul-Tel Aviv route. Like the Egyptians, Turkish authorities were not eager that Indians were using their airports for reaching Israel. One could feel the starring gaze of the security personnel and passport control, especially during Israeli-Turkish tensions. Then I shifted to Aeroflot. Moscow offered a perfect midway point between Delhi and Tel Aviv with multiple daily flights. Though a bit longer, the flights were comfortable, especially when Aeroflot revamped its fleet for the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. Moreover, the transit time was shorter, often just a couple of hours. Over the years, I heard that one could also try Uzbek (via Tashkent) and Ethiopian (via Addis Ababa) airliners, but I didn’t.
Nearly three decades later, I finally returned to Air India in May 2018. On 23 March that year, Air India became the world’s first carrier to use the Saudi airspace for flights to and from Israel. Travel time came down to just about six hours and removed all the other logistical hassles. This privilege caused murmurs among Israelis who felt that Air India was given an undue advantage. Eventually, the Abraham Accords of 2020 enabled Emirates (October) and Bahrain (November) to fly to Israel over Arab space with reciprocal arrangements for Israeli carriers.
As both countries mark the 30th anniversary of normalisation, traveling to Israel is now normal and even uneventful. This was not the case earlier and my journeys to Jerusalem were never simpler and were accompanied by historical memories, challenges, imaginative combinations and, of course, lots of fun.