Back home at 0:30 CST, Oct. 20

Back home at 0:30 CST, Oct. 20

Back home safe! Here ends my longest and furthest, and the my first around-the-world journey. Only two continents out of seven -- Africa and Antarctica -- yet to be reached.

It seems the 16-hour flight was long and boring to many passengers, but to me it's again an exciting adventure. According to my GPS, we reached 87.5N -- only a little more than 200km from the point where all longitude lines meet together!!! This will probably hold my "north limit" record for quite a long time. I observed a nice aurora show (although not gorgeous but still nice) when flying over the Davis Strait, saw half of Orion went down into the icy cap when flying over northern Greenland, again a nice Arctic sunrise with sun rising from the south. The cloud finally block the view when the plane fly over Siberia, force me to sleep for a few hours before viewing another beautiful sunset at 13,000m. A 4-hour old new moon was also been spotted!