Saturday, July 22, 2006

Flying on the Shoulder of Giants

I've been saying that I wanted to learn paragliding for years, last time when I did my research, I found out that the two flying school in Asia that is to be recommended by a veterant pilot are "Exo-fly" in Bali, Indonesia and "Nirvana Adventures" in Kamshet, near Bombay India. To learn flying in either places would make a great holidays but something feels missing.
Today I read an article in Action Asia about a flying school, Sunrise Paragliding, in Nepal, based in, not just anywhere in Nepal, but Pokhara at the heart of the Annapurna region. Now, I realised this is the missing element, when I hear about manic paragliding off the peak of Everest, I kind of thought this would be nice to do, but it will take me years to learn to fly that good let alone being fit enough to scale Everest. But with this flying school, you learn paragliding by reading thermals coming off terrace rice fields and picking 8,000m peaks as your point of reference. What a wonderful idea. The basic training last for 9 days with International Certificate.
Then you can move on to do some amazing adventures in the form of Paratrekking. It is a tour of ten days, in which everyday you trek to a launch site and take off, and then fly around the Himalaya, supported by porters in transporting your gears, you moved deeper and deeper into the Abode of Snow each day.
Another adventure is Parahawking, you get to fly with specialist trained falcons who can glide you to the thermals. Another thing to add to the to-do-list for my strife to have an adventurous life.
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1 comment:

Sanjay said...

He check out the new Nirvana Website Paragliding India

Peace, Bliss & Happy Landings