Far more spectacular, however, was the flight made from London to Delhi. A Handley-Page machine, which had flown from London to Cairo during the war and taken part in the final military operations against the Turks, left Cairo, on November 30th, shortly after the armistice. Five and three-quarter hours later the airplane with five passengers reached Damascus, a trip practically impossible except through the air because of the ravages of the war. At 7.40 the next morning they set out again, flew northeast along the Jebel esh Shekh Range to Palmyra, then east to the Euphrates, down that river to Ramadi, and thence across to Bagdad, a flight of 510 miles made in six hours and fifty minutes without a single stop, part of it over country untrod even by the most primitive travelers. Thence they went on _via_ Bushire, Bander Abbas, Tcharbar, and Karachi to Delhi, where they received a tremendous ovation as the first fliers to arrive from the home country. From Delhi they continued on without mishap to Calcutta. This distance from Cairo to Karachi, 2,548 miles, was made in thirty-six hours' flying-time; from Karachi to Delhi the distance is 704 miles, and from Delhi to Calcutta 300, a total of 4,052 miles from the main city of Egypt to the greatest commercial port of India. No route had been surveyed, no landing-places obtained, no facilities provided. Territory inaccessible to ordinary travel, land where the white man is almost a stranger, was crossed. Yet it was all done as part of the day's work, in no sense as a record-breaking or spectacular trip. The certainty of flight from London to India was demonstrated. A bi-weekly service for both passengers and mails was at once planned. Almost immediately preparations for the route were worked out, twenty-five airdromes and landing-fields were designated, of which the main ones would be at Cairo and Basra on the Tigris, with subsidiary fields at Marseilles, Pisa, or Rome, Taranto, Sollum, Bushire, Damascus, Bagdad, Bander Abbas, Karachi, Hyderabad, and Jodhpur. It is estimated that the flight of 6,000 miles, at stages of about 350 each, would take seven or eight days as against the present train and steamer time of five or six weeks. At the same time another route far shorter than that which would be necessary by following the sea route lies over Germany, Russia, and the ideal flying-land along the Caspian Sea, Krasnovodsk, Askabad, Herat, Kandahar, and Multan. As with Asia Minor and Asia so with Africa, the British at once made plans for aerial routes. Only a few weeks after the armistice announcement was made of plans for an "All Red Air Route" from Cairo across the desert and the jungle to the Cape. This could all be done over British territory, with the part over Lakes Victoria Nyanza and Tanganyika covered by hydroplanes. The moment men were released from the war, surveying of this route was begun and tentative plans made for landing-fields every 200 miles over the 5,700-mile trip.