So I went paragliding. It was awesome. The “on the count of 3, run off that cliff” thing was a bit daunting. But once you’re up it’s so peaceful. We took off from 1450 meters and got up to 2200 meters, and could see 7 of the 10 highest peeks in the world, before descending to Pokera lake (770m), after about 45 mins. I even drove for a bit. It’s amazing you can fly with just a harness and a big kite. I spent the rest of the afternoon on the net finding out how much courses and equipment are.
Seems one of the cheapest places to learn is abergavenni and the black mountains.
One of the things about paragliding is getting to take off and back. Seeing as my other new love is motorcycling it wandering if there is a way to combine to two. A sort of paramotorbike
So I’d like to put a design team together of…
Roy H (Aerospace engineer)
Lester L (Aeronaughtical engineer)
Chris M (Motorcycle engineer)
Tony R (Crash test Dummy)
The next day I went up to Sarnangkot (the hill the paragliders take of from) to meet up with Jon and Robbie. Robbie is helping a family up there build there house into a guesthouse. We had dinner round the fire in the tipi the father of the family and I played tigers and goats. We stayed in a room on the roof with windows on all 4 sides. 2 sides face the Himalaya, one side towards the Glider take of points and the top of the hill. And the other toward pokera and the lake. Pretty spectacular views. It's on a very narrow ridge maybe 20m wide and very steep drops on each side. In the morning it was really windy and cloudy as you could see the snow falling on the highlands (or even higerlands, or what the Nepali refer to as upside). But there was no sun rise sadly. It was still amazing with the moody skys.
Wednesday was Shivaratri a big hindu festival. Unfortunately this isn’t the most traditional area but there was still lots of bonfires and people drinking and eating lots of stuff containing Bhang or Cannabis from the sadhu’s. I wondered around I bit on a few occasions but spent most the evening around the fires of the Shiva café (bamboo huts on the lake type place)
This all lead to yesterday being a bit of a hungover write off. Tho I was sat in shiva café again for a awesome thunderstorm. Beat a 1800 rated german at chess :-) spent the eve trying to fix Robbies laptop but the power kept going and the internet was too slow to get vista SP1 on there. Grrr.
Today I was planning on sailing on the lake. But there’s no wind so I don’t know what I will do yet. More Chess i guess.
Catch you all soon
Dan
All taken from the paraglider
One way (the lower mountains) from Robbies place
Breakfast chess
Afternoon chess
A drawing from Rich based on this entry...
Seems one of the cheapest places to learn is abergavenni and the black mountains.
One of the things about paragliding is getting to take off and back. Seeing as my other new love is motorcycling it wandering if there is a way to combine to two. A sort of paramotorbike
So I’d like to put a design team together of…
Roy H (Aerospace engineer)
Lester L (Aeronaughtical engineer)
Chris M (Motorcycle engineer)
Tony R (Crash test Dummy)
The next day I went up to Sarnangkot (the hill the paragliders take of from) to meet up with Jon and Robbie. Robbie is helping a family up there build there house into a guesthouse. We had dinner round the fire in the tipi the father of the family and I played tigers and goats. We stayed in a room on the roof with windows on all 4 sides. 2 sides face the Himalaya, one side towards the Glider take of points and the top of the hill. And the other toward pokera and the lake. Pretty spectacular views. It's on a very narrow ridge maybe 20m wide and very steep drops on each side. In the morning it was really windy and cloudy as you could see the snow falling on the highlands (or even higerlands, or what the Nepali refer to as upside). But there was no sun rise sadly. It was still amazing with the moody skys.
Wednesday was Shivaratri a big hindu festival. Unfortunately this isn’t the most traditional area but there was still lots of bonfires and people drinking and eating lots of stuff containing Bhang or Cannabis from the sadhu’s. I wondered around I bit on a few occasions but spent most the evening around the fires of the Shiva café (bamboo huts on the lake type place)
This all lead to yesterday being a bit of a hungover write off. Tho I was sat in shiva café again for a awesome thunderstorm. Beat a 1800 rated german at chess :-) spent the eve trying to fix Robbies laptop but the power kept going and the internet was too slow to get vista SP1 on there. Grrr.
Today I was planning on sailing on the lake. But there’s no wind so I don’t know what I will do yet. More Chess i guess.
Catch you all soon
Dan
A drawing from Rich based on this entry...
Those photos are amazing dude! I'm really envious. I'm liking the line-up for you para-moto-gliding team :)
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