Back in Jerusalem

Puh. That was a long journey. I started from Kamsheet yesterday at eleven in the evening. First a private transfer to the airport in Mumbai – a three-hour hell-ride with several near collisions and a portion of driving against the traffic on the wrong side of the road in Mumbai. Scary stuff.

Then waiting for hours at Mumbai airport, boarding the plane for an almost six hour long flight, more hours of waiting in Istanbul and finally the last flight back to the Middle East. After more waiting at Tel Aviv airport, I caught a transfer to Jerusalem. And now I am home! It is a much harder life being a travel journalist than most people would ever imagine.

Tomorrow morning there will be lots of photos from India here.

A very small cross country flight, and an exciting return

This is where I started


this is where I landed. with the welcoming committee :-)


Kukaram gave me the first lift

This is my second lift. Great guy!

Two days ago, I did a small cross country flight. I took off from Tower Hill, where we fly everyday when in the Kamsheet area. After gaining some good height (close to 900 meter above take off) I turned north and headed for Fly Nirvana, the paragliding center where we stayed. It is approx eleven kilometers between the take off and the center.

At first, I did really well, and reached another mountain, where I could join a thermal and top up with some more height. But after that, I hit some really heavy sink and lost most of my height very fast. Soon, I realized that I would not be able to make it all the way to the center, and started to look for a place to land. A field nect to a little hamlet seemed a good choice.

While circling down, preparing for landing, the field turned into a hill. Still not to steep, so I should be able to use it anyway. Kids where running in from all directions - a sight that reminded me of the final scene in the film "Platoon".

I survived the landing and started to pack up my glider. The kids stared with big eyes. We did not have a common language, but smiles and sign language can take you far enough.
The children's eyes grew even bigger when my huge glider (it is 29 m2 big) disappeared into my backpack. 15 minutes after landing with some kind of airship, I had it packed away and on my back, strolling away. No wonder they were amazed. It reminds me of a cocoon, slowly transforming to a butterfly, but this is in reverse and a lot quicker.

It was still before lunch, so I decided to try to hitchhike back to the take off and have some more flying. First I walked through the sugar cane fields on small paths. Here and there, I met people that were all surprised to see me there - a foreigner with a huge backpack in the middle of nowhere.

Reaching the river, I turned left and soon found a bridge. Below, women were doing the laundry on the rocks. On the other side, I found the main road. It was well over 30°C and I was starting to get warm, but continued walking. Just a minute before, the only bus passed, so I was a bit unlucky. Being Sunday, not much was happening.

but then my luck changed. A motorbike showed up, and stopped to pick me up. We managed to balance both me, my glider and the driver on the little bike, and off we went on the pot hole-ridden road. Unfortunately, Kukaram, the driver, had to turn off after less than halft the distance, so I was walking again. But I probably saved an hours hike in the heat.
Maybe 30 minutes later, I was warm but determined to keep walking. But luck smiled to me again, and an enormous truck loaded with firewood stopped and picked me up. It was not much faster than myself, but somewhat more comfortable.

Reaching the village, i thanked and jumped off and
found myself a group of tandem pilots that took me up to the mountain. Three bananas later, i had had my lunch and was up in the air again!

Now in Panchgari, up on a mountain

This is the site where we fly in Kamsheet

Women picking cow dung.
Later, they will mix it with water and form them into
standard sized cow dung pancakes. These are dried in
the sun and sold as fuel.

Kids close to our take off. It is their mothers that pick the dung.

I am still enjoying myself in India, doing a lot of paragliding for a story in Hypoxia, Sweden's paragliding magazine. Today, we moved from Kamsheet to Panchgari, four hours driving eastwards, high up on a montain.

In the new hotel, there is better internet, so I will try to upload some photos.