Air-traffic controllers and Swiss diplomats were recruited to open the way across Egypt, Yemen, India, China and Japan, showing that a circumnavigation is also a world tour of countries, people and regional politics.
Strategic decisions were often painful. Go north to faster winds, or south to the slower currents?
As they approached the Pacific, the decision became critical, for the southern route added 4000 kilometres to the journey. However, storms raging in the north forced the meteorologists to choose the southerly route.
The vast ocean made them homesick for the reassuring splendour of the African desert and the Indian plains that the balloon had flown over during the past 11 days. The seemingly infinite extent of waves became a mirror before which Bertrand and Brian were alone with their emotions. In winds of 30 km/h, surrounded by threatening clouds and cut off from the rest of the world by satellite-antenna problems, they watched helplessly as their prospects of success receded with their diminishing reserves of Propane gas. They could only learn to accept their fears because it is as futile to fight one's emotions as it is to try to master the wind.