Arians - Arians always talk like they are about to set out on a mission to save the world while all they will probably save is the milk for the coffee from burning over.
Aquarians - Aquarians are always dreaming of saving the world fifty years in the future but all they will really accomplish is to decide which Darshini to have their next cup of coffee in.
Cancerians - Cancerians will get equally emotional about their coffee or about saving the world but will quickly forget about both as well.
Geminis - Geminis will switch back and forth between saving the world and having their daily cuppa at every given instance.
Librans - They are too lazy to bother getting up from the sofa to save the milk for their cup of coffee from burning much less endeavour to save the world.
Sagittarians - Sagis can never decide whether it is more important to save the world or to drink their cup of coffee. Finally, they will do what the rest of the world does.
Scorpios - Scorpios will sometimes talk like they care about saving the world, but in reality, they live life in the present and all that matters in everyday life is the daily dose of Latte.
Capricons - Capricons will assert that it is everyone's moral duty to save the world when the time comes. Cup of coffee comes later.
For the rest, I don't know anyone well enough to comment on how they would react to saving the world.
Well, what can be the perfect way to end a two week long trip to UK and scenic Scotland than two days of extreme adventure. This time I was with my family which is generally expected to be more of a sight-seeing trip. However, I seem to have given my brother-in-law the adventure bug and he also convinced my sister to take part in our adrenalin shots.
Nae Limits near Perth in Scotland is an award winning Adventure Club and is known for White water rafting, adventure tubing, zorbing and extreme canyoning among other things. We tried Sphering (zorbing), white water rafting on the Tummel River and Bruar Canyoning.
Sister and BIL posing before their roll
Sphering is this gaint rubber ball that they strap you inside and roll it down a hill. It was a weird and bumpy ride and lasted all of forty seconds. The second time around, my sister decided to give the ball a very hard shove before it took off. BIL and me were strapped inside and screaming as the ball made us do somersaults at something like ten kms per hour. Which is quite a bit of somersaulting. Overall, different but not worth the money.
The Sphering site, Nae Limits
Negotiating rapids on the Tummel River
The afternoon was spent white water rafting on the Tummel River. The last time I tried this was exactly a year ago on the Sita Nadi in Agumbe and I was disappointed. I volunteered for the front seat in the raft and got it without much trouble unlike last time. :) Most of the rapids are a grade 3, but there is two tier waterfall right at the end and is rated grade5. That fall was amazing and we took it going backwards! Apparently, in every rafting trip, atleast one of the rafts capsize on that rapid but ours was a record of sorts with none of the rafts turning over. Again, rafting was good but nowhere close to the adrenalin shots that me and BIL were expecting to get high on.
Going down a Grade5 rapid in Reverse!
The best part came last. Bruar Canyoning. This involved one and a half hours of high octane cliff jumps, waterfall slides, scrambling and rappelling. All this on a furious river rushing down a gorge. There are very few places in the world that offer this kind of an experience I reckon. It was just mindblowing. It was like this natural water amusement park ride laid out by nature. In an amusement park, its perfectly safe. This has a high degree of danger to it and thats what made it all the more exhilarating. I volunteered to do a cliff jump first and ended up getting swept into a cave. Finally, I had to be hauled out by a rope. That was scary. Luckily, the cave was a dead end! BIL and me couldn't stop grinning after the experience. We thought it was totally worth the trip. All in all, I would recommend Canyoning to any guy who is not scared of water and has good swimming skills.
BIL executing the jump
Our Canyoning guide Mia, hauling me out of the cave!
Whoa, thats high! Gotta be mad to jump off from there.
Did I mention the practice flights from the BSF hill that we christened as the "Firing Hill or Bullet Hill"? Perhaps I did not. That is for another day and time. Now, shall we concentrate on our latest achievement of successfully completing high altitude solo flying? Yes, I suppose you must listen to what I have to say for you have the misfortune of chancing on my blog at this opportune moment.
Take off at roughly 1100metres above sea level and landing at 450 metres above sea level. Need I say more? Indeed I must. Yelagiri came to our rescue while Nandi repeatedly played spoil sport with the weather. One weekend saw us getting up at absurd morning hour to set off on the drive to Yelagiri. The highway is brilliant I might add, letting one cover over 150kms in less than two hours in the morning when traffic is sparse.
Saturday was not a very good start. My tandem flight with Vrata was barely ten minutes while Bharat and Naveen had both managed 45min+ tandems from Nandi2. I was not very happy with my short flight. The tandem glider it seems is a beast to control. You need to really pull at the brakes with all your might and even then the glider responds slowly and almost in protest. The landing happened right in the middle of thorny brush and Vrata happily used me as a cushion and got away unscathed. :)
The evening saw us waiting for the winds to settle down from the Hanuman takeoff but to no avail. I spent the time catching up on some reading of Ashok Banker's Ramayana Book4.
On Saturday night, I was still not sure whether I was ready for my solo the next morning given that my tandem was of a very short duration. However, I decided to take the "leap of faith" alone the next morning since I was fresh from a good sleep the previous night.
Wiggling into the harness proved a challenge on my first solo flight. I finally gave up and decided to fly standing. Landing went more or less according to plan with Vrata guiding me on the radio. Didn't really enjoy much of the first flight since there was a lot going on through my head at the time. We came back to RK take off in the afternoon for a second flight. This time, once in the air, I let go of the brakes and pulled myself into the harness with both my hands. (Its really amazing to see that the glider which can be packed into a backpack can actually carry your weight in the air while holding rock steady. You really begin to appreciate the engineering marvel. ) After that, it was really smooth sailing. I turned back to catch a view of the Yelagiri range which I am told extends for about 8kms from one end to the other. It was really a sight to behold. I was flying at the level of the mountains and from up there and close, you could see that the mountain was really lush green and beautiful as compared to the hazy brownish green look that you get when you look at it from the ground. Up there in the air, everything is very calm and pleasant and you can hear the whishing sound of the air through your glider. I only wished that I could ridge soar, so that I could stay up in the air for about an hour. Impatience, my lad. All in due course of time. Landing went well again with me landing on my feet after completing a couple of eights above the landing site.
The third flight in the evening happened in low winds. The landing site was much further than the previous sites and the lack of wind meant that I sank faster than I expected. This meant I could not reach the designated landing site and my landing turned out to be less than perfect. :P However, its all part of the learning experience I guess and I escaped unharmed.
Vrata says that we graduated to the flying club with "flying colours". Personally, I think there is quite some way to go before we perfect the landing approach. Take off seems like child's play now in comparison. But I guess thats only because I have now had seven take offs while I have only done two proper landing approaches. I guess I can maintain a flight log now. I could probably log about 50 minutes of flying time total in the book now. :P
By the way, Bharat gets adventurous on his second solo flight and gets a in-flight video. This is a must see!
To sign off, I must say that I have always been a little scared of heights and overcoming this fear was indeed an "uplifting" experience (and how!) and memories I will cherish for a very long time to come.
Thanks to Vrata, Rajesh and Robin for helping make my dream successful. And of course Bharath for learning with me and also for taking my videos.
Kitty(Krishna), Bhat(Anand), Bacat(Bharath) and I set out to see if we could fly solo. Everyone has heard of tandem paragliding flights where you are strapped to a harness along with a trained pilot. The pilot has all the controls. All you do is sit back and enjoy the scenery below. Now whats the adventure in that. Vrata had the answers...
Three days of ground handling training at a dry lake bed @ Hoskote prepared us for the reverse launch technique. For the uninitiated (which most of us are), refer to launching techniques here.
Kitty practicing some ground handling at Hoskote
The small take off zone at Chotta hills (which is actually the base of Nandi hills roughly about 10X10m), and the moderate steady winds in the mornings and late evenings makes reverse launching the most suitable launch technique.
The above is a picture of the wind sock. A steady wind sock indicates a steady wind ideal for launching.
It may look easy, but believe me, its not. It took us three days to get the basics right. Even after that, we still needed to abort some launches since the wing used to come up sideways or due to too strong or too low winds or because we were just plain scared in the beginning. Here is a look at what a strong wind can do to your ego. (Courtesy Bhat)
Here, the sideward wind seems to take the glider to the left and pulls Bhat along with him as he turns around to launch. He has no option but to kill the glider but has a hard time doing it since he is not facing the glider at this point.
Some of the things to keep in mind are the A-risers, leading edge of the wing, brakes, harness, strapping up, wind velocity and direction, flaring and a lot more. Suffice to say, there is a pretty steep learning curve initially at least.
Rajesh doing some pre-flight checks before take-off
Thanks to Kitty and his brilliant camera for all the videos. He patiently stood there and took a video of everyone's flight so that we can have something to show others and also watch it again and again and get excited all over again. Will put up Kitty's flight also here soon.
I managed to run like crazy and also seemed to get a lucky gust of wind just as I took off which took me really high up compared to others. The typical flight from Chotta hills lasts about 50 seconds. You take off from the launch site. As soon as you clear the relief of the hill, you turn right, fly parallel to the mountain for about twenty seconds and then turn left back into the wind for a landing in the fields below. A small 'Z'. However, when I turned in for the landing, I had barely lost altitude. As a result, I ended up doing one and a half S-curves to lose altitude before I could finally land safely on the fields. Just before you land, you pull on both brakes to "flare". This brakes your forward momentum. If you do it just right, you ll be able to just step down right at the spot kind of like how a chopper lands. If you don't do time it properly, you'll end up running a couple of metres or fall like a deadweight once you lose speed. As it were, my landing was perfect. :P By now, you might have noticed that I like to brag about my flight. Well, what do you expect? I just flew solo for the first time in my life!
Here, you can see how Bharath didn't pick up enough forward momentum on account of low winds. As a result, he had to do a last minute hop and run to take off right at the edge! It took me sometime to gain the confidence to just let go and run like crazy. The first time before I took off, I was nervously wondering if I would be able to generate enough forward momentum to take off before the edge. Once I saw a couple of people taking off, especially Bharath, who has a 100% success rate till now (two launch attempts and two successful take offs), I decided I could do it too. On my third attempt, I said a silent prayer and launched. And by God, what a feeling it was to be air-borne. Mindblowing! By far the most adrenaline pumping thing I have ever done in my life. Going back and listening to "Learning to fly" by Pink Floyd, I could really appreciate Roger Wate's thoughts and connect with the same emotions.
In the end, all the training came to those 2 flights of roughly a minute's duration, but it was all very well worth it. I'm definitely going back again. I always used to love water, waterfalls, rivers, beaches and oceans. Now I think I have found my new love, the sky! Can there be anything more liberating than to spread your wings and fly.
Big thanks to Rajesh and Arvind for their patience, encouragement and amazing tips! You guys rock!
For once man has tasted flight he will forever walk the earth with eyes turned skywards. For there he has been and there he longs to return.
I always wanted to go to Kamshet in Pune to do the Paragliding course. However, I could never find the correct time or the company to go all the way to Pune. Then BMC comes as a saviour by organising the course in Nandi hills right here in Bangalore! The moment I read about this, I pounced at it. After aggressive marketting, I convinced both Kitty and Bhat to come along. Starting this weekend. I can hardly wait for the weekend to start!
Meanwhile, this is a link to a solo flights partaken by one of the students who trained under Vrata last week at Nandi hills. I was blown away after seeing this!
I'm sure anyone who's seen this will want to take the course and learn for himself. More updates and photos on my experience after the weekend. Stay tuned!
Wow, its been two weeks of just eating and drinking out. Ever since Sundaresh Kumar came to Bangalore for a month long holiday, its been a fight of gastric juices over the food stuffs. Luckily, my stomach has proved the superior opponent thus far. Just for fun, lets make a list of all the places I visited in the last two weeks in no particular order -
1. Banjara, Jayanagar 2. Kaati Zone, Church Street 3. Barbeque Nation, JP Nagar 4. Gufha, Jayanagar 5. Corner House, Jayanagar 6. Mojos, Residency Road 7. The Only Place, Museum Road 8. Windsor, Jayachamaraj Road 9. Bombay Post, Airport Road 10. Tandoor Express, Banashankari 11. Kamat Upachar, Tumkur Road 12. Pizza Corner, Jayanagar
Not to mention the six meals at Sakleshpur. Phew! No more eating for another two weeks.
