05. First lesson

Bir, India

Prior to taking our tandem flight, Bruce gave me my first paragliding lesson at Dhelu, an easy paragliding area about 20 mins taxi from Bir.

Dhelu practice ground 

There’s a hell of a lot to learn. I think of a paraglider as being like a giant kite with dozens and dozens of strings. So first step after unpacking the chute is to make sure the strings aren’t tangled.

Checking the brake lines 

The goal of my first lesson was to do a forward launch, which is what you do when there’s no wind – you need to run forward to generate enough wind to lift the paraglider above your head. Once it was up I’d just keep running and running down the hill, steering it slightly if need be, and occasionally taking little air-steps as I’d slightly lift off.

Getting the chute up 

Easier said than done of course… sometimes I’d get running and it would drift to the side and into the ground.

Like learning any new activity, there’s a lot to think about and it’s just a matter of practising and practising until you don’t need to think and it comes automatically. I’m nowhere near that yet.

After the lesson a shepherd walked his flock of sheep and goats past us.

Shepherd and his flock 

The shepherds here spend their whole day amongst their flock and the sheep seem very obedient. He’ll just whistle and tongue-click and they’ll follow – no sheep dogs necessary. I suppose it’s because the sheep see him as the leader of the flock, not like in NZ where the farmer will just boss them around from paddock to paddock every now and then, using barking sheep dogs to keep them in line.

04. To the North of India

The peaceful towns of the north of India are a stark contrast to the melee that was Delhi.

We took a night bus north from Delhi to Bajinath in the state of Himachal Pradesh, and from there chartered a taxi half an hour to the town of Bir, where Bruce lives.

Let’s see if I can find a map for you.

There we are, up in the north between Punjab, Kashmir, Pakistan and China (Tibet).

Bir is an interesting place. Bruce lives pretty much within the Tibetan quarter of Bir. Around there most of the population are Tibetan refugees who’ve been there since the early 60s. Dotted around the area are numerous beautiful Tibetan monasteries. Most of the businesses are owned and run by Tibetans. So it’s more like being in Tibet than in India.

<cue photo of Tibetan stuff>

Bir sits at 1500m altitude nestled in a green valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s early spring and it’s warm enough for shorts and T shirt during the day, but it gets a little chilly at night.

As well as the Tibetans there’s also quite a few expats around, mostly for the paragliding scene. Since it’s early spring the season is just beginning. It’s fair to say that Bruce is the Godfather of the paragliding scene in Bir. He’s been living there permanently for like 10 years, has taught lots of locals how to paraglide and they now make nice livings taking tourists on tandem rides. This flows on into other areas of the economy, for example the taxi drivers make nice livings dropping paragliders at the top of the hill. Hotels, restaurants too of course.

Bruce flies solo

So our first day in Bir and Bruce was quite keen to go for a solo flight since he hadn’t had one for a few weeks. We rode his Enfield 500 up to the launch site at Billing (2440m) 14km away. I watched as Bruce mingled at the launch site, greeted old friends, asked other paragliders the about the weather conditions (“bumpy”), and was greeted by the some of the local Indian and Tibetan paraglider pilots, many of whom past students of his.

Many of the pilots were cautious and waiting for the right conditions, but some were taking off anyway. Not always successfully – their chute (or wing in paraglider terminology) would inflate and rise above them for lift off, but then it would get blown sideways into the ground.

The view from the launch site at Billing

After a bit of waiting Bruce decided the conditions were right so he unpacked his chute and and off he went. I stayed on the hill quite a while watching him circle upward to 4000m and chatted with the other paraglider pilots, then rode the Enfield back down the hill into Bir and around town a bit.

Tandem time

The next day Bruce’s tandem paraglider arrived from nearby Manali so we went up to Billing for a tandem flight. This was it! This was what I came to India to learn how to do!

Conditions weren’t exactly ideal, the wind was gusting a bit so we sat at the launch site for about half an hour waiting for it to die down, mingling as before. The wind seemed to blow for about 10 mins and then die for about 1 or 2 minutes and then start to blow again. Bruce’s girlfriend Petie went up first and although she hadn’t paraglided in a month she did a nice reverse launch and in less than a minute she was circling 100m above us, whooping with joy.

Bruce strapped me in to the tandem paraglider which are much larger and stronger than a solo glider. He pulled on the strings to lift the glider above us, while I was instructed to sprint forward as fast as I could. Unfortunately the first launch didn’t go exactly as planned, the chute went straight over our heads and crashed in front of us, and we went down in a pile of dust and grass stains. The same thing happened again, but on the third go we decided not sprint forward straight away, and that time the paraglider was strong enough to lift us straight up off the launch site and we were away!

We’re up!

Wow, it’s a lot noisier in the air than I expected, with all the wind noise and the wind whistling past my helmet and through the paraglider’s strings and the chute itself. Duh, really noisy!

Woah it’s actually scarier than I expected too. To think we’re only held in the air by strings and fabric. And we’re fucking high – we’re flying at about 3000m altitude, and the town of Bir is 1500m below us.

It’s quite cold too, duh, but I’d been told to expect that.

What a view though! I’d thought the view was wicked from the launch site, but the higher you go the more you see, and now we could see over more and more mountain ranges and behind every range was a new green valley dotted with houses and towns.

Then we descended a bit and looked at a house Bruce was building just out of Bir – I hadn’t seen it at ground level yet.

Petie was miles away from us and Bruce was wondering what she was up to, since it was her first flight since she’d broken her wrist. So we gained altitude by riding the wind up, and then headed over to where she was. But she was just having a ball, practicing “wing overs”. We flew towards her and she flew under us, whooping some more.

Every now and then we’d get blown around a bit and I’d feel a bit queasy, like airsick. Bruce said that can happen.

We descended to the landing site and made a nice landing. Petie came down behind us and overshot her landing slightly, landing in the barley fields growing at the edge of the landing site.

Now that you’ve read my version, here’s the video:

 

Mum, relax

So overall verdict was it was scary, but amazing. Mum, try to relax, OK: Billing is an intermediate to advanced site, and the day we went up many pilots chose not to go because it looked a bit rough. Bruce knows the area and the wind patterns like the back of his hand so he knew where we could fly safely. I won’t be starting my training at Billing! I may not even get good enough to fly off it. I’ll be learning at much smaller training sites nearby.

03. Delhi… hell

Delhi, India

The next day (Sunday) we were intending to leave Delhi and head north up to the state of Himachal Pradesh where uncle Bruce lives. He’d booked our First class train tickets for the 9pm train that night and we were on the waiting list. We spent the day hanging out at the hotel smoking and having the occasional pool dip, while old friends of Bruce’s stopped by to say hi.

As 9pm approached we realised we were still stuck on the waitlist for the train so we wouldn’t be leaving that night. So we would have an extra day in Delhi which I would try to make the most of and do some sightseeing.

Warning: whinge alert ahead…

First on my list was Delhi’s Red Fort. By the time I got there at around midday I found out the bloody thing was closed on Mondays. It would have been nice if the rickshaw driver had’ve told me that beforehand.

So then a cycle rickshaw driver offered me a tour of Old Delhi, which sounded worthwhile.

First stop was the Jama Masjid, India’s largest mosque, where I was turned away because it was midday prayer time.

I really can’t be bothered writing in detail the rest of the afternoon because now that I look back on it it was a shit time. Here’s the quick version.

I was starving and just wanted to get to a restaurant but the fucking rickshaw driver insisted on doing a tour of Old Delhi before lunch. He took me to a spice wholesaler which was interesting cos you’d walk in and the smell of chillies was overwhelming, dudes were carrying massive sacks of chillies over their shoulders and coughing the whole time. Lots of eyes watering, sneezing and coughing from the guys working there too.

Nearby was a flower warehouse, and the view from up on the roof of that was pretty good. In fact that was probably the highlight of the day, seeing the flowers drying on the roof alongside the busy street full of spice sellers and the rundown buildings of Old Delhi.

He kept trying to take me shopping, and of course you know the story – he would either get commission on whatever I buy or he’d just get a fee from the store owner for dropping me off. I agreed to one stop if it was on the way to the restaurant but I knew I wouldn’t buy anything, and I figured I’d play along so that the driver would get his cut. So off we go, out of the way down a maze of back streets and side alleys to a pashmina scarf shop. I pretended to be interested but really, fuckface, do you think I’m going to wear a pashmina shawl? One for my mother? Oh yeah, I can see her rocking that on the golf course. That’ll help her swing. My sister? Fuck, if she wants one she can buy one in NZ for cheaper than whatever inflated price you’ll try and sell it to me for. Can we go now?

After that we headed towards the restaurant but the traffic was insane. The main wide street was filled with bikes, motorbikes, trucks, cars, moto-rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws and pedestrians, all side by side, and none of them were moving anywhere, except maybe the pedestrians.

Cue detour down some real narrow streets:

By the time we got to the restaurant it was past 3pm and I was fucking over it. The romance of the cycle rickshaw had long worn off – slow, little sun protection, and a bumpy ass-bruising ride.

The restaurant we went to, Khalid’s, had high recommendations. Its walls were plastered with positive reviews. The meal wasn’t all that cheap though, the bill for a meal with a drink was 450 rupees, NZ$14. The lunchtime special at Raviz’ in Auckland is the same fucking price, and at Raviz I won’t sit on a plastic outdoor furniture, the service will be good, and the food just as good. Fuck.

Finally we went back to the Jama Masjid mosque, and I paid 200 rupees to get in. That seemed a little expensive and I was grumpy enough to not enjoy it, so I walked in, took a photo, and left (the photo is at the top of this post). Apparently for 50 rupees (NZ$1.50) you can climb one of the towers for an awesome view but I was really over it by then and spent all of 3 minutes in there. I just wanted to be out of the heat and noise. And now for the real kick in the guts – I just read in my guidebook that admission to the mosque is free, and you should be on the lookout for fake guides insisting there’s an admission fee. Mother fuckers. I was pissed off enough about it then, now I’m entertaining fantasies of returning to the mosque as a tourist again and stabbing the fucker who ripped me off.

Back to the rickshaw, and the driver suggested I check out the Mahatma Gandhi museum. Dude, I’m tired, fuck, how far is it? Only 5 mins sir. Well, I’d heard this was good so off we went. 15 mins later we arrived and guess what – it’s closed on Mondays. Awesome.

Across the road was Mahatma Gandhi’s tomb so I went and checked it out. This was nice because it was set in the middle of a large grass park so I could at least chill out on the grass for a bit. Until another friendly Indian approached me for a chat. I’ve developed a strategy, I ask them what they do for a job. If it’s tour guide or whatever then they can fuck off, but this guy was an air conditioner mechanic so I invited him to sit and we had an agreeable conversation.

Back to the rickshaw and I asked him just to drop me off at the nearest Delhi metro station so I could find my own way back to our hotel. He dropped me off “just around the corner” from a metro station, and I gave him a decent tip cos I was still feeling rich. I soon regretted the tip when it took me half an hour to find the metro station, and I doubly regret it now that I realize he had an active part in the fake-entry-fee scam at the mosque.

Delhi has a nice new subway system but it’s ridiculously inefficient – lots of queuing to buy a ticket (Delhi: take a lesson from Tokyo – ticket vending machines only), then even more queuing to stand in line to go through metal detectors (which beeped even if you had no metal, so everyone gets the pat down), get patted down, oh, and get your bag X-rayed, just like at the airport. Just to catch a 10 min subway ride. For fuck’s sake!

I finally got back to our hotel and we weren’t taking the first class train north – Bruce had passport issues and you need to show your passport to buy train tickets, so we took the night bus. We arrived 5 mins late but fortunately we still caught it. I’m sure we only made it on time cos I was telling the rickshaw driver to jump lanes and I was hanging out of the rickshaw stopping cars so that he could change lanes.

Despite the let-down of taking the bus, on the bright side I was able to buy enough Valium at the pharmacy to knock me out for the trip, so it went by quick enough. That’s the great thing about pharmacies in developing countries – a prescription isn’t often requested and the medicines are real cheap – 10 x 5mg Valium for 15 rupees (NZ$0.50).

02. Arrived in India

Delhi, India

I spent my last day in Kuala Lumpur booking a couple of flights and lounging by the sweet pool at my hotel, before boarding the 5 hour flight from KL to Delhi at 7pm.

India? WTF?

Some of you might be wondering what the hell I’m doing in India. The short story is I have an uncle, Bruce, who’s been living in the north of India for around 20 years, doing paragliding with tourists. I’ve never been to India before and what better opportunity to visit a country than when you’ve got a local contact. The plan is to be in India for 4 weeks. Bruce is going to teach me how to paraglide in the foothills of the Himalayas, around the towns of Manali and Bir in the north, where he lives.

So I arrived at 9pm at night and had my first Indian bureaucracy experience, getting my visa on arrival, which is a relatively new visa option and only available to not many countries (NZers, Japanese and a few others). Hrm, I see on that page it’s US$40, I got charged US$60. Was I ripped off before I even set foot in the country?

Bruce picked me up from the airport and we headed back to his hotel in Delhi, the ‘Prince Polonia’. Once there the first thing I was offered wasn’t water, a drink, food or a snack, but a pipe. Welcome to India!

After Bruce and his girlfriend crashed out, I went out to try find a beer and some cigarettes.

You expect the first time you walk the streets of India to be quite a culture shock, and in my dazed jet-lagged state I was doing my best to contain my excitement and amusement, so hence all the swearing in the video.

It’s 12 or 1 in the morning and just about everything’s closed but there’s still heaps of activity on the street.

After that I found a bar and met 2 drunk French backpackers smoking outside and chatted with them. Pretty soon we were drinking out on the street and surrounded by dozens of friendly Indian guys who were all interested in hearing my life story: Where you from? How long you been in India? 2 hours!? You having a good time? When you leave? The guys were lovely but I wasn’t sure if some of them were hitting on me or not. Hoping they weren’t. We had lots of laughs though and everyone thought I was funny.

Amongst everyone but ignored by all, some construction workers were loading up baskets of sand and carrying them on their heads into a building. To the amusement of the locals I put my beer down and tried picking up one of the sand-loaded baskets and it was bloody heavy and unwieldy – it wouldda weighed about 30kg. I hoisted it up onto one of the carrier’s heads and off he went.

The French dudes were trying to organise a session of something, I wasn’t sure what, at some random’s apartment somewhere, and I was semi-keen but also hesitant to tagalong. It was my first night in India after all. The situation was getting dodgier and dodgier as the night wore on and we got further and further from my hotel. Marco, one of the French dudes was getting a bit macho-drunk and cheeky with some of the locals and he asked me if I was carrying a knife on me just in case. Wha?? Then he changed his tune a bit – “Don’t worry, you’ll be fine, you know why? Cos you’re white. If you have any problems all you need to do is start yelling and make a scene and it’ll all dissolve. The police will beat the shit out of any of these locals if they’re hassling you.”

OK cheers mate, how about you just behave yourself and not get yourself into those hairy situations, I’m thinking. And what was all that shit about a knife?

I called it a night not long after that; by then the streets had emptied out except for the construction workers, all of whom were getting their hands dirty, yet they were attired in dress pants and dress shirts with the sleeves rolled up!? Go figure…

Both sides of the street were lined with people sleeping, which actually looked quite comfortable – it was so hot outside you could sleep quite nicely and it wouldda been cooler than inside. Not that many of them had a choice.

Back in my hotel but by now I was so overtired I was past sleeping and I couldn’t sleep til like 5am. I must have had only about 9 hours sleep total over the last 3 nights.

Up the next day at 9am and a bit of shopping, Delhi-style. Watch your step:

 

What blog would be complete without the standard Indian tangled power lines shot:

Bruce and me:

01. Getting There

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

It seems I can’t do an overseas trip without blogging it, because my friends (hi Mum) and family (hi Mum) are so interested in my travels.

It’s 5am here in Kuala Lumpur and I’m up and writing this because my head is still on NZ time, where I left yesterday.

Still, I’m sitting in a 4 star hotel with internet access, paid for by the airline, which beats the shit out of my last visit to KL in 2002, where I caught a bus from Singapore and landed in beg bug hell. From my 2002 trip log:

October 2002

We finally got going at about a quarter to midnight, arrived in Kuala Lumpur from JB at 5:30am, and I was a snivelling mess.  The problem was the bus was incredibly cold - I'd forgotten to heed Lonely Planet's warning: "Malaysian air-conditioned buses are really meat lockers on wheels with just two settings: cold and suspended animation". I already had a bit of the sniffles which I'd caught in Singapore, no doubt because of the constant hot-cold-hot-cold of walking between air con shops and outside. And on the bus I was wearing no more than shorts and T-shirt and sandals. I was so cold en route I'd even tucked my arms into my T-shirt to try keeping warm. Of course sleep was out of the question in this state.

We eventually found a place to stay - "Travelers Moon Lodge". I spent the rest of the day in bed, to both catch up on sleep and get rid of the cold. Whilst in lying in bed I spent most of the day reading, during which I killed 2 bedbugs which crawled across the bed in front of my gaze. This was bad news. You may recall the troubles I had with bedbugs in Brisbane, and in that situation in a week I only saw one actual bedbug. And already I'd spotted 2 here! I chatted to a Malaysian guy who was staying at the hostel, and he said he'd had trouble with mosquitoes all night - he showed me his forearm which was covered with over 100 bites, and I knew straight away they too were bedbugs.  So before lights-out I covered myself from top to toe in mosquito repellent, but it didn't do squat. So for the last 3 days I've been covered in dozens of itchy bites, on my feet, legs, arms, and back, all from that first night in KL. We decided to find somewhere else to stay after that first night, and whilst packing Simon killed 5 bed bugs he spotted crawling across his sheet. Unbelievably, neither Simon or Robert had any bite marks at all - the bugs must have preferred Kiwi meat to Swede! After we'd packed I was chatting about the bugs to an Englishman in the kitchen, and I was astonished to see a bedbug crawling across the top of his trousers - it's fair to say this place was infested.

A few notes from the 2010 trip so far. Malaysian Airlines are great, one of the world’s six 5 star airlines. I normally arrive as late as possible for flights so I don’t have to queue to checkin, but this time I arrived on time and I was rewarded with a queue so long it took an hour and a half! The checkin staff were pleasant though and I managed to get a window seat, probably because of my gentle complaining about the wait.

Most of the 10 hour flight from Auckland to KL was spent flying over the red earth of Australia which provided occasionally interesting views.

I arrived at 8pm on a Friday night so I considered hitting the town even though it was 2am NZ time and I’d been up at 6am the day before. So I started at the hotel’s bar, where a small glass of beer cost RM25, which is like NZ$11 (USD$7.50). Fuck. So I had a glass of beer and tried to make conversation with another punter sitting at the bar but he seemed more interested in his Blackberry. The barman told me I looked really tired, and since my hotel is at the airport and a long train ride from town, that was all the excuse I needed to call it a night.

So today I’ve got a day to kill in KL before I fly out to Delhi at 6pm.