My New Office...In the Sky

September-November 2012

Well first I must apologize for my blog being dormant lately, but I promise you that I won’t let it die, there just won’t be too many posts for the next while...reason being is that I am now plying my new trade of being a tandem paragliding pilot!

While up in Manali I acquired a tandem paraglider (an Ozone Magnum II) and a couple of tandem harnesses.  The wing was delivered in mid September to Goa and my first “guinea pig” was Naomi who visited me last year from Israel for a month and she was back for another holiday.  I was pleased to share this first flight with her and even more happy that it went well (although my wing did drape over a makeshift sun shelter on the beach after landing on our butts but no big deal).  Thanks Naomi!

Hiking up to launch:

Getting Naomi ready to take off:

The first flight with the new wing:

Before taking my first paying customer I wanted to build up some more experience and confidence with the new wing.  It definitely is a nice paraglider and launches, flies and lands superbly.  I first took a number of foreigners that I had befriended in the Cock’s Town restaurant but was then happy to take some local people including Laxmi, a 16 year old girl who goes to school but also sells sarongs and jewellery on Sweet Lake Beach when she’s not studying.  She had never flown before, not even in a plane (which is quite common here) so it was a joy to share the sky with her and her beaming smile.

Happy Laxmi:

Julie from Quebec gives her seal of approval:

As did Aaron a Texan who now lives in Israel:

Naomi back up for another flight...hmm, perhaps this helmet's a bit big for her...

On the main takeoff:

 Looking down on my Goan friend Sanjay:

Charlotte who I met last year in Manali came for a visit and a flight:

Flying my Finnish friend Sakke:

Martin, my Swedish neighbor from last year is back too:

Touching down on Sweet Lake:

Eventually I felt ready for a real customer and it happened to be a Sikh fellow from the Punjab.  Ironically, although I feel I’m super safety conscious my first paying passenger didn’t wear a helmet as he had a turban on!  What to do?

My first customer:

Thumbs up from Rata from Slovakia:

Don't need any words here:

My plan is to continue flying here in Arambol for the tourist season in order to continue to build my flying experience.  It is fun sharing free flight in the sky with many different types of people, both Indian and foreign.  I’ve taken two actual pilots now, one a Canadian who flies big commercial jets for Cathay Pacific and another guy who is an Indian fighter pilot...it was fun to show a different type of flying to those guys.

So now that I have a “job”, my days are Groundhog Days.  I wander over to Sweet Lake Beach when the wind is blowing in from the sea (usually around 2pm) and fly any willing customers until sunset around 6pm.  It’s a short work day but often requires climbing up the hill 3 to 4 times with my wing which is a good workout.  I must admit I do love my new “office”!

In light of this, there may not be too many blog entries over the next few months since my days will be quite repetitive in nature but please check back once in a while...you never know what might transpire here...

Finishing the Monsoon

August, 2012

Arriving back in Arambol Beach in Goa, I was surprised by the relatively decent weather.  June and July are the heaviest months of rain but I remember a stint last year of 9 days in August when the sun never showed its face.  Thankfully that didn’t seem to be the case this time...at least for the first half of August.

I was also surprised that one of the regulars during the tourist season was already here, Juan from Chile.  I’ve written about Juan before and he’s quite the character although he does like his “Tooki Tooki” (rum) a bit too much but he’s a very talented musician.  Juan greeted me with a warm hug and expressed how this was the first monsoon season in Goa and he was glad to see a friendly face.

A few new foreigners started showing up and one day as I was sitting at a table outside of Cock’s Town restaurant when two Dutch ladies came walking along the beach with their backpacks and promptly sat down with me.  Marielle and Maya had walked for over an hour along the beach from Mandrem where their taxi had let them off so they were quite pleased to sit down and have a beer...which was followed by many more over the course of the next few weeks, some of which were over serious games of Carrom or cards.  It was nice to have some new company and I acted as their local tour guide.  One day we ventured to Old Goa in a sweet retro taxi to check out the numerous churches including the mummified body of St. Francis Xavier.  For some fun amongst all of the religious seriousness of the area I made the ladies hunt for the strange painting in one church of a saint receiving a 6 foot stream of breast milk from an angel (see this previous post for a pic of it).

Our sweet taxi ride to Old Goa:

Frances, the incense loving driver who incessantly adjusted his side view mirror:

The church that houses St. Francis Xavier:

The domed church with the strange painting, just in the bottom right:

Checking out the church in Panjim, the capital of Goa:

A well deserved drink back in Arambol:

Juan being Juan charmed the ladies and especially Marielle, so much so that they wanted to get married and asked me to be the priest! (Obviously not a real marriage but something to do for fun).  The weather happened to be decent that day so I thought it would be funny to be a “paragliding priest” so I had a short flight near sunset and landed in front of them at Cock’s Town while donning a little white collar around the neck of my Hawaiian shirt.  Needless to say everyone was speechless.  I performed a little ceremony by the water with the “Power invested in Tooki Tooki” and they were a couple until “death or she leaves Arambol does them part”.  Later that night Juan entertained us with a small acoustic guitar concert after a lovely dinner at 21 Coconuts also known as “Chez Phillippes”.

Juan with his priest:

The ceremony begins:

An excited couple:

Marielle and Maya:

Juan puts on a show:

As the Dutch ladies left I met two Swiss couples: Valentin & Sarah  and Mirco and Melody, along with a long haired, bearded fellow Sakke from Finland.  Many more games of Carrom, cards and a bit of Frisbee ensued.  Now living in a modest “apartment” (really a guesthouse room with a TV, fridge and a two stove top burner) I invited the Swiss over for a pasta dinner one night and repeated a week later with Sakke over after Sarah and Valentin left India.  Fun times.

Sakke, Valentin and Sarah in a post dinner card game of Halsta:

Sarah taking a shot in a heated Carrom game:

Sarah and Valentin's departure: 

Just after Mirco and Melody left the weather turned sour.  The monsoon wasn’t finished with us yet.  It rained pretty steadily over the next week and a half with one of the first days recording over 40 millimetres in 24 hours.

There’s one aspect I love of travelling ...the lovely people you get to meet and befriend.  Thank you all for lots of fun and camaraderie.  Travel safely everyone.

Kicking It in Kasol

July 24^th – 27^th

For my last days in northern India before I head south again, I wanted to visit my friend Panna in Kasol.  Panna is one of the managers of the Olive Garden restaurant on Arambol Beach in Goa where I’ve spent a good chunk of time.  I was hoping to see what his other seasonal job was like.  His family has another guesthouse also called “Purnima” (Full Moon) like the one in Manali where I’ve been staying for the past 3 weeks and they also have an Internet cafe/money exchange/shipping parcels/travel arrangements type office.

Panna’s older brother, Manu who also works at the Olive Garden restaurant in Goa, offered to take me in his bright red Tata Nano car (the cheapest new car in the world that ended up being a bit of a flop...thankfully so as more cars on the Indian roads would fall nicely into the “bad things” category).  Manu hadn’t seen Panna for many months so he was happy to go on a daytrip...cool.

My driver, the man Manu:

Starting into the Parvati Valley:

Driving through the valley:

I'll admit it's a super roomy car but I wouldn't want to be inside of one in an accident:

The 3+ hour drive first took us south to the city of Kullu and then east into the Parvati Valley with its raging Parvati River lined by steep mountains on both sides...it was a gorgeous drive.  Thanks Manu!  I was warmly welcomed by Panna who even offered me a free room on the top floor of their guesthouse overlooking the powerful river 100 meters away.  I felt like a VIP!

The large building it the Purnima Guesthouse where I'll be staying:

Me with the brothers, Panna on the left and Manu on the right:

Kasol is a hotbed for Israeli tourists, usually ones in their early to mid 20s who have just finished their mandatory army duty and they come to India to let off a lot of steam...or really more “a lot of smoke”.  But what I didn’t realize before was that there is a town called Manikaran 5 kilometres away that is a holy Sikh place with hot springs so there’s a constant migration of orange turbaned Sikhs either riding motorbikes adorned with orange triangular flags or stuffed into buses or even packed in the back of big trucks like cattle with a crudely constructed second level to act as beds in order to accommodate the maximum number of worshippers possible.

Panna and I had been planning a day hike on my second day but an intense thunderstorm during the night and some continuing rain in the morning put a damper on our intentions as it was a steep trail which would now be a bit treacherous.  The sun came out in the afternoon and instead I decided to walk to Manikaran.  It was a nice walk although I was stopped a few times by excited Sikhs saying “One photo?”  Sure, why not?  But it did slow my progress a bit.

The raging Parvati:

Me and my new Sikh friends...if they take photos of me, why not have them return the favour?!?

There were some precarious footbridges spanning the angry water of the Pavarti Rivers that I couldn’t help but walk on to feel Mother Nature’s power rushing by below.  As I neared Manikaran the river slowed down a bit allowing tall buildings, some 7 storeys high to be built on the side of the river along with a large rectangular pool on the opposite side and by a temple.  I could see many Sikh men dipping into the warm waters as part of some ritual cleansing.  Can’t say I was tempted to join them as the water wasn’t...well let’s just say it wasn’t crystal clear.  Manikaran itself was pretty damn ugly...especially for being a holy place.  Why don’t they clean it up a bit?

Big hotels to accommodate the incessant flow of Sikhs:

The holy bath:

Does this sign work?

Umm....no.

Looking back at Manikaran:

The raging river:

Bit of a shaky handrail...

I left on a bus to Delhi the next day after a brief but wonderful visit with Panna which included a late night heated chess game which ended in a stalemate (I’ve never beaten him so I was pleased with that result!).  Thanks Panna!

Panna's office:

Hard at work:

My good friend Panna:

This is Manu, Panna's right hand man at the guesthouse.  This bag was given to me by Panna to bring two tandem paragliding harnesses with me and sure enough the zipper busted just before I was to catch a bus.  Quick thinking Manu just sewed up the problem...nice work man.

I then flew down to Goa where I will be for the upcoming tourist season.  My plan is to try and do some tandem paragliding so we’ll see how that goes....

Paragliding in Manali

July 7^th – July 23^rd, 2012

I didn’t expect to accomplish the same quantity or quality of paragliding while staying in Manali after my 6 weeks in Bir.  One factor was that the monsoon was approaching all of north India but another reason is that the topography and meteorology around Bir is more favourable for flying.  Nonetheless, over the 3½ weeks I planned to stay in Manali, I hoped to get some flying in.

I called Ajay, a local pilot and one of the best in India, to see about the conditions.  I flew a tandem flight with him last year from a launch called Marhi which is up past Snow Point on the Rohtang Pass.  It was a Tuesday and I forgot that the Rohtang Pass is closed for road maintenance on Tuesdays so we made plans to meet up and go up the mountain the following day but since it was a lovely day, I hopped in a rickshaw and headed off to Solang Nalla, a small winter ski hill where one can fly although its inundated with tandem paragliders.

I was a bit shocked to have to pay 500 rupees ($10) to ride up in the gondola and then further surprised that I had to hike back down 1/5 of the way to the launch spot.  I think next time I’ll just hike up as it was only about 300 meters up from the landing area.  I took off and just boated around about 100 meters above the launch area but then finally started to get a bit bored so I decided to try and cross over to the next mountain to the east.  It was a low crossing but I continued to ridge soar along the mountain and travelled about 3 kilometres to the base of the Rohtang Pass and then made my way back and ended up landing in the zoo of a landing zone at Solang (a zoo as there’s a constant mayhem of tandems landing, people riding on horses & motorbikes or rolling down the hill in Zorb balls...with a throng of people watching).

The launch at Solang:

Flying above the gondola:

Looking down at the landing zone:

Flying over the launch:

The landing zone circus:

Some guys from Delhi on holidays who were kind enough to give me a lift back towards Manali after it started to rain:

The next day I headed up to a launch called Marhi with Ajay but the conditions weren’t great and I ended up just having a sled ride (a top to bottom flight) but it was still fun to get in the air.  About a week later I went up for another attempt. After parawaiting for over an hour, waiting for the low clouds to clear, I took off and had a couple hour flight but I never got above launch and most of it was spent ridge soaring on the mountain between Marhi and Solang and I did enjoy flying around with 5-6 Himalayan Griffon vultures.

Flying over Snow Point (which is not so snowy right now):

Flying over the switchbacks:

The landing spot at Kothi...a bit hilly but it worked:

Some ridge soaring:

Flying close to trees:

Hmm...should I launch?  Maybe not just yet...a wee bit cloudy:

Hugging the hillside:

Flying towards a big rock face:

So no epic flying in Manali...at least after my time in Bir but still fun nonetheless.