On board Air India One, Sep 18 (IANS) It was a very relaxed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who met the media aboard his special aircraft as he returned from an arduous weeklong trip to Brazil and Cuba.

There was an unmistakable sense of achievement in his bearing that came through in his confident answers to questions and in his body language. Wearing a buttoned-up white shirt and trousers with National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan by his side, he talked about his almost back-to-back meetings in Havana with world leaders that included one with Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.

The meeting with Musharraf, the prime minister said, produced "no tension" - unlike last time in New York when the Indians were angry with the reference to self-determination for Kashmir by Musharraf in his address to the United Nations General Assembly. That meeting produced no solid results,

This time, however, the meeting with Musharraf was "very frank, very crucial, there was no tension and I was very pleased with the outcome," the prime minister stated.

For a prime minister not given to display of feelings, it said a lot for his sense of satisfaction at his Havana encounters.

Saturday, the second day of his stay in Havana, was particularly a busy one for the prime minister who began his engagement with a meeting with Musharraf at 9.45 a.m. and rounded off with a 40-minute meeting with Cuban leader Fidel Castro close to midnight.

Between them there were meetings with Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the firebrand Latin American leader who has become a rallying point for the anti-US opposition, and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whom he was meeting for the second time in Havana, and Malaysian Prime Minister Ahmed Abdullah Badawi.

There was a quick lunch followed by a joint appearance with Musharraf before the media at the International Convention Center (ICC) where he briskly read out their Joint Statement. None of the leaders took any questions from the assembled Indian, Pakistani and world media that had patiently waited for the two for over an hour.

An encounter between Indian and Pakistani leaders is not without its sideshows, with the media often looking for signals and meanings that are often not there.

When Manmohan Singh's Air India One landed at Havana on Thursday evening, it had to wait for a little while on the tarmac as it was preceded by Musharraf's special aircraft. So even while Manmohan Singh patiently waited in the plane for about 10 minutes, the media spun stories as to how Musharraf had managed to be one-up on India even in protocol precedence.

But the situation was to be reversed two days later when Musharraf, while leaving the ICC, had to see off Manmohan Singh while waiting for his own car behind him - even though in strictly protocol terms heads of state like Musharraf have the right of way before heads of government like Manmohan Singh.

The media obviously had its own take on that.

In the afternoon, Manmohan Singh met with the leaders of Sri Lanka, Mauritius, Mongolia and Nepal before rounding off a long day with the meeting with Fidel Castro.

While other leaders often find time out to do some fine dining in classy restaurants or attend evening concerts in the countries they visit, Manmohan Singh doesn't believe in such indulgences, according to his aides.

His way of relaxing would often be to chat with local intellectuals to get from them a non-official feel of the country and its people - like he did during his Brazil visit.

As for food, the prime minister is least fussy, say aides. He mostly has his cook travelling with him and makes do with the traditional roti and sabzi, very rarely foraying to savour a little of the local cuisine.

Manmohan Singh was accompanied on the trip by his wife Gurcharan Kaur and the couple celebrated their 48th wedding anniversary Sep 14.

Manmohan Singh returns to New Delhi late Monday night after making an overnight halt at Frankfurt Twelve days later he is off again on a three-day trip to South Africa.