Garuda is a legendary bird-like creature in Hindu mythology, the king of birds, in fact. He was a protector with powers to go anywhere. He's also part of Indonesia's state insignia, and with particular importance in mainly Hindu Bali, where they're constructing the world's biggest statue in his image.
Here's a smaller version, courtesy Wikipedia, of a National Museum of India Garuda.
Back to Indonesia, and it's of course also the national airline. I'm more than happy to fly Garuda these days on my annual Indonesian explorations. They had an unfortunate bad patch for a while, with a few (unprotected) planes falling out of the sky and coming into unscheduled high speed contact with planet Earth. Along with all other Indonesian carriers they even got banned from flying to Europe. But that's all changed now. They haven't had a crash for a good while, they've been winning various international airline awards, and my experience this trip was one of efficient, friendly and comfortable service, and almost perfect on-time flying.
Indonesia's major airports too have made massive advances. They have some of the world's biggest, and most comfortable and best-organised ones these days. Vastly better places to deal with than Sydney's tired and crowded international airport.
On the subject of airline safety, there was an extraordinary incident at an Indonesian airport last week, when passengers on low-cost Indonesian airline Lion Air took it upon themselves to evacuate onto the wing of an airliner, after a disgruntled passenger claimed to have planted a bomb because there was no room in the locker for his hand baggage. Watch here: Lion Air evacuation
Another Garuda bird about to fly? Actually no. This was a tourist in Bali posing as one, I think.
My Garuda-enabled trip this year took in South Sulawesi and Bali. Watch this space for further reports.
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