ANOTHER flight, another selection of aerial photos.
This trio was snapped as my Emirates ride cruised high above Iran on the way from Dubai to Vienna, and that's Iraq out past those snow-capped mountains.
After leaving the ground in Dubai we did a right, and flew over the sapphire blue water of the Persian Gulf until crossing the Iranian coast, then we cruised parallel to the invisible line that marks the border with Iraq.
When the land out to the left stopped being Iraq and became Turkey we did a left and flew a straight line to the Austrian capital.
These photos were taken as we flew above northern Iran, where vast lakes dotted the landscape and snow-capped mountains stretched towards the horizon, but this wasn't what the whole country looked like.
In the south it was sand as far as the eye could see, with little hamlets of just a few dwellings presenting the only signs of human habitation, then mountains began climbing out of the desert.
And those mountains seemed remarkably high, we were flying 10km up and the tallest peaks didn't look to be that far below the plane.
At first the hills were naked and the same colour as the desert, while the valleys were green and covered with the squares and rectangles of the farmers' fields.
My camera was in the overhead locker, and at first I resisted the urge to retrieve it, but when we flew over this lake I jumped up because the colours were just so vivid.
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