You get to see the sights from a bird's eye view when you paraglide in Pokhara, Nepal.
Our jeep stops in a small village near the top of the ridge and we struggle up a goat track to go the rest of the way up, old Nepalese women carrying our backpacks for us. Once there, we sit on the grass at the top to recover awhile. And then we open our backpacks to retrieve our wings - 10-meter-long parafoils in high-tech fabrics that connects to our harnesses with a myriad of small lines. We walk through our pre-flight checks, painstakingly making sure that none of the lines are knotted, that every strap is aligned, and that every karabiner is straight.
When all is ready and the wind is blowing just so, we inflate the wing, take a few short steps and become airborne, the wings curving over our heads catching the rising air and pulling us up and over the valley floor. Behind us, the Himalayan Annapurna range stretches out, mountains rising two miles into the air above us. A small plane comes in to land at Pokhara airport, passing well below us.
We turn and soar, leading our wings to any scrap of rising air we can find to sustain our flight. Experienced pilots will spend hours in the air, and the best can travel for hundreds of kilometers. We aren’t that good – yet – and we spiral above a village school to gain height from the hot air rising from its roof, and soar along ridge lines to catch the wind being pushed up and over.
Our garish wings attract attention. Down below the school kids run and point as our shadows pass over them. Up here, an eagle joins me, keeping station at my wing tip for a few moments as I rise. I’m here for fun, but he’s here to hunt, and he soon slips away in search of prey.
Eventually we lose too much height and turn in to land. The landing field is a vast expanse of padi farm, rice already harvested and neatly stacked. Really, there’s no way anyone could miss this landing – unless you make a last minute miscalculation while trying to avoid a water buffalo and fly straight into a haystack.
The lack of surprise on the farmer’s face told me I'm not the first.
Paragliding tours and tuition organised by Frontiers Paragliding, Pokhara, Nepal
0 comments:
Post a Comment