Was Lord Rama a Frequent Flyer?

It's good to hear about Ravi Ram's welfare today via e-mail, after a long time. About 15 years ago when I was working for the Government of Gujarat in Rajpipla, Gujarat, I used to hang out with Ravi Ram (Sea Sands # 17) once in a while - Ravi used to work for BHEL in Vadodara then. I used to go to Vadodara quite frequently as we had lots of weird holidays. I still can visualize the shocking expression on Ravi's face when I mentioned to him that Maharishi Valmiki's birthday was an optional holiday for us!

Anyway, he once mentioned about descriptions of Vimanas in the book Bermuda Triangle by Charles Berlitz. This book is in my "to read" list and is yet to make it to the top. Here is an interesting excerpt from this book that I found on the web.

In another ancient Indian classic, the Ramayana, there are curious descriptions of travels by airplane, thousands of years ago. The details of the landscapes over Ceylon and over parts of the Indian shores are described with a so great naturalness and are so similar to those we can see today, the beach reeves, the curve of the Earth, the slopes of the hills, the appearance of the cities and of the forests, to almost convince the reader of the fact that some aerial travelers of the ancient past have really seen the Earth from the sky, instead of imagining it. In a contemporary epitome of the Ramayana, the Mahavira Charita, the good hero Rama, returned from Lanka, where he just saved his wife Sita, receives as a gift a special vimana, described in this way: "Without obstacles at the motion, capable to maintain the desired speed, perfect in controls, always obedient the will (of who drives it) supplied with little sitting-rooms with windows and excellent seats...", a case in which an ancient classic seems a modern advertisement for the Air India. In the same text we find a very amazing dialogue, if we consider that it precedes of several thousands of years the reality of the space flights, and also the observation on how things look from space.

Rama: "It seems that the motion of this excellent vehicle has changed ".
Vishishara: " Now this vehicle is going away from the closeness of the center of the world ".
Sita: " Why this circle of stars is visible... even at daylight? "
Rama: " Queen! It's really a circle of stars, but because of the huge distance we can't see it at daylight, because our eyes are darkened by the sunlight. But now, with the ascent of the vehicle, it happens no more... ( and so we can see the stars)".

Random Quote:

The greatest events - are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours - Fredrich Nietzsche