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I'm a bird!Jan 8, 2009
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| HIGHLIGHTS • Paragliding DETAIL I bit the bullet last night and went and put a deposit down for paragliding and hopefully it will be a clear day as the stars were out. I do some emailing in the morning and then head to the Paragliding School for departure at 11:30. We pile into a van and head up the mountain. This will be a tad different than when I did paragliding in Vancouver as the thermals are strong and there’s wind sheer. Having done this before I am not nervous per se, just a little apprehensive. My pilot and I don our gear and prepare for the wind. There’s no running at top speed like in Vancouver, just walk a bit, the sail fills and then we run off the side of the cliff, about 2,000 metres above the lake below. It’s seamless and Viktor, the Russian pilot is very competent and we are in the air in seconds. We glide down waiting for the high pitched beeps from his thermal indicator for the presence of a thermal and straight away we pick one up and join the others circling like birds around and around and we spiraling up. There must be at least fifty other Paraglider’s all collected together and Viktor is silent and attentive watching to ensure that we don’t collide. We ascend about 500 metres and then glide down and keep repeating the process. After about a half an hour I am getting queasy due to the continual turns but all is OK. I take close to a hundred pictures of other paraglider’s as well as the mountains. It really is something. We start to descend and go over other bumps, about 1,000 metres, pick up new thermals and we make our way down to the landing spot. Viktor lands beautifully and although I thoroughly enjoyed it I was getting a bit nauseous. I walk to a couple from Holland but their trip was not as good as she vomited three times and he’s quite white however they too enjoyed the experience. Yuri and Simone, the Dutch couple, and I agree to meet and swap photo’s so we go to a restaurant but it is closed. The WI-FI is working so I head back and get my laptop but when I get back – no WI-FI. The owner comes out and asks us to leave, nicely, for there is a workers strike and he doesn’t want the strikers to think his place is open otherwise bricks will be put through his window. There’s not one cop to be seen – bloody charming! A number of recipients of my BLOG love Nepal but for me, I am happy to be returning to India tomorrow. The Maoists apparently want to turn the clock back to 1850 – shades of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and the Ayatollah in Iran. So I am off back to India tomorrow, a long twisty-turny ten hour bus ride. Do I stay in Nepal or do I cross into India. This is compounded with whether I should continue on to Patna, another seven hour overnight bus ride or sleep at the border – decisions, decisions! |
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