C1 Advanced (CAE) - Reading Multiple Choice 6

Taking The Haul Out Of Long Haul

Ask frequent flyers about their secrets for surviving long-haul flights and you'll invariably receive a barrage of well-meaning but ultimately questionable advice. Drink eight litres of water. Don't drink any water. Sleep immediately. Don't sleep at all. Walk every hour. Never leave your seat. The contradictions could fill an in-flight magazine – which, incidentally, no one has ever read cover to cover, despite countless hours of captive boredom.

Having logged more air miles than I care to calculate, I've developed a healthy scepticism about most travel wisdom. Take the perennial favourite: "Book a night flight so you can sleep." Catherine Walker, a management consultant who practically lives in the air, puts it perfectly: "Night flights sound romantic until you realise you're essentially trying to sleep in a lit-up metal tube while someone's toddler practices opera two rows behind."

The truth about long-haul travel is rather more nuanced than most guides suggest. Consider the sacred rule about avoiding alcohol. While it's sensible not to attempt to break the world record for miniature wine consumption, the occasional glass might help you survive your chatty neighbour's detailed explanation of their stamp collection. Just remember that altitude affects alcohol tolerance – something I learned the hard way somewhere over Siberia when one glass of mediocre Merlot left me explaining my theory of parallel universes to a bemused flight attendant.

Speaking of flight attendants, they're the true experts of the skies, though their advice often goes unheeded. Sarah Chen, who has worked long-haul routes for fifteen years, shares an insight that sounds obvious but is remarkably rare: "Most passengers arrive exhausted before they even board. They've rushed through security, stressed about delays, and consumed nothing but coffee and anxiety for hours. The flight itself isn't the main problem – it's what happens before."

This rings particularly true when you consider the peculiar time-warp that occurs in airports. Normal humans transform into creatures who believe a pint at 6am is perfectly reasonable, that £30 for a sandwich represents good value, and that duty-free shopping somehow constitutes saving money. By the time they board, they're already operating in an alternate reality where normal rules of behaviour and economics no longer apply.

The most useful advice I've encountered comes not from travel blogs or wellness experts, but from a meteorologist I once sat next to. "Think of it as enforced meditation," he suggested, while we hit our third bout of turbulence. "You're literally above all your earthly problems. Nothing can be done about anything until you land, so you might as well embrace the powerlessness." There's something oddly liberating about this perspective, though it's admittedly more challenging to maintain when you're bouncing through an air pocket at 35,000 feet.

What about the technical suggestions for avoiding jet lag? The apps that tell you when to seek or avoid light, the carefully timed meals, the complex calculations about sleep schedules? They're probably effective if you're the sort of person who can successfully follow a meditation app. For the rest of us, jet lag remains an unavoidable reminder that humans weren't designed to breakfast in London and lunch in Dubai.

Perhaps the most honest advice is simply this: accept that long-haul flights are inherently unnatural experiences. You're sitting in a pressurised container, defying gravity, crossing time zones, and watching films you'd never choose to watch on the ground. Your body clock will rebel, your joints will complain, and your sense of time will dissolve into a blur of meal services and half-finished movies.

The true art of long-haul travel lies not in following prescriptive rules but in finding your own way to make peace with the peculiarity of it all. Bring entertainment that doesn't require too much concentration – this is not the time to tackle Proust. Pack socks that don't cut off circulation but aren't so loose they'll get lost in the seat mechanism. Accept that airplane food will always be airplane food, no matter how many celebrity chefs consult on the menu.

And remember, as you drift between sleep and wakefulness somewhere over an ocean: even the longest flight eventually ends. Though preferably not, as a pilot once reassured us, "one way or another."