Paragliding

(This post is nearly a year late)

My flatmate Manas had been persuading me to go paragliding with him for the past two years. Either I was scared or was lazy or a mix of both, that I have been avoiding his offer. Finally just before the monsoons I was convinced. Not the person to die alone, I dragged Sandesh and Akhil with me. H and K from work wanted to come along too. So off we went one fine evening, Manas on the expressway and me on the NH4; to the paragliding school in Kamshet. It was a 3 day course where on the first day were to do ground handling and on the second bunny hops and the third actually fly.

We reached there in good time given that had we lost our way. My Bult had to be revved to wake up sleeping villagers for directions. We reached the guest house and to our pleasant surprise we found bunk beds. Next morning we were off to Ashram for our lessons on ground handling. Before that there was a small lecture on how the glider works and what each part of the glider was meant to do. At Ashram we unrolled our gliders and tried for the first time to take small runs without the glider toppling over. I found this task superhuman as gliders are designed according to a flyers weight, and mine was a 90 kilo one and I was being dragged from one end to another by the monstrosity over my head. I switched to a training glider that was lighter. After getting a hang of running we went back to Nirvana for a yummy lunch and a short nap.

Come evening the whole area turned festive, the guest house was lit up and there was a faint aroma of tandoori chicken wafting in the air. I forgot to mention, the guesthouse is located next to a lake and the backyard opens into it. So in the evening you can go relax by the lake and watch the sun go down and then stroll up the roof for the tandori chicken. The best part was the Carlos, Amit and S had come over in the evening and joined us for dinner.

Next day it was Shellar ( the place is named after the old guy that serves you tea) and we unrolled our actual gliders and tried handling them . Paragliding, like most adventure sport is done in a step by step manner. If you can handle the chute then you take the hops. If your hops are perfect then you take the flight. If your flight is perfect then you move on to more adventurous flying. There is no way you can skip a step. By the end of the day all of us had decent ground handling skills and could keep them up for a decent bit of time(the lighter ones were doing a lot better than Akhil and me who would still periodically get dragged by our heavier chutes). The only problem was that there were cross winds and we couldn’t do our bunny hops. That meant that we wouldn’t be able to take free flight the next day.

We spent the next day hoping that the winds would be fine and we would atleast get to hop. The day was spent in watching paragliding films and packing our stuff as we would be leaving for Mumbai from Shellar itself. We settled our accounts and drove down to Shellar.

We had to wait a bit till the winds were down before we started our hops. Here the heavier ones have an advantage as the heavier gliders are not as unstable as the lighter ones. Seven bunny hops and I could make the glider do exactly what I wanted, unlike Sandesh who thought hops means he had to hop all the way or Akhil who for some crazy reason after every perfect hop would get himself dragged. The Instructor Sanjay thought I was ok so off I went for my first solo.

There is nothing like jumping off a cliff hoping the canopy above is open and going to hold. The feeling is very similar to rappelling down a cliff when you walk off the edge. So off I went on my first flight, I think it lasted for about 2 mins but to me it felt like eternity. I understood why man always wanted to fly like a bird. The ability to move in all 3 dimensions is such a kick. Thanks to gravity I finally came down and then had to gather my chute and go all the way up.

By now Akhil and Sandesh had got their go ahead, so up we went the three of us. My second flight went as good as the first, but since it was my second I had more time to explore and experience. Akhil had a decent flight but Sandesh as usual forgot that he had to land and kept on flying straight. He just forgot that there was a landing zone and he had to land there. The sad part was that K and S couldn’t fly as the winds were too strong and they were too light to have a stable flight. So I started back to Mumbai and made it in good time to meet N and P for dinner with the rest of the gang.