It started with something like this... "anu chal na kahipe jate hai .. pak raha hai yar ..wohi office aur same routine...." and ended with a top to bottom flight. Ya ok gimme sometime to explain ... After a lot of mailing and discussions when none of Anu's girl friends' were ready to join us we decided to go on our own, just both of us. But then someone else also joined us Mr.VisKarthik. So finally we set off on Saturday morning ...oops it would be afternoon in sometime. Generally people get up at 5 oclk for picnics but ours was different you can call it lazy trip hehe ...
The entrance of Graceland was as scary as it could be. The rusty gate, parched trees and road, no sign of people living in the cottages. We saw a empty broken wooden chair and it frightened us even more. Finally after walking few steps when we saw the old security guard sitting under a partially green tree we took a sigh of relief. Mr. Sanjay was standing near the gate of bungalow no. 4. He greeted us and when we entered the bungalow again we got bloodcurdling sight, all guys no sign of women, dust and garbage everywhere. We could only see the parachute bags and paragliding stuff everywhere. Even Mr. Viskarthik was horrified what the heck, where have we come to, huh. But when we saw a kid playing with his plastic bat and ball we came back to life. “This place isn’t that bad”, when we saw a young married girl. Mr. Sanjay introduced us with his colleagues and friends and a trainee. We saw all the videos related to paragliding techniques, not all was truth as it seems. We were only shown the cool videos without the danger and threat involved in gliding. Anyways all the adventure sport does has its side effects. Nevertheless we didn’t go there to back out at the last stage.
We finished our free lunch and went for a walk in the dry hot afternoon. It felt so good to be away from the daily hassle and boring routines. It felt so good to be away from the pollution and overcrowded city. But still the worries about our jobs didn’t leave us alone; those talks about recession were still there.
After returning from the walk we all chatted for some time. Listened to the flute performance from Mr. Sanjay, sipped the hot Tea and set off for? Don’t know where, they didn’t tell us where were going exactly we only knew we are going to the base location of flight. Cool, who cared about name of the place. The dusty road and about 10 km drive led us to the place from where we would be flying up above the world so high. We walked for about 20-25 mins from the waterless farms where nothing grew, reached a place where there were few green trees to sit under. From there we started climbing the mountain, at its half a length was our runway.
It is not true that both the girls wanted to make VisKarthik a bakra to fly first to see how it goes out. No I would never agree to that. Oh how did I forget to mention this, since the time we left from Pune we were in touch with Mr. Sanjay and the only thing he kept us telling was winds are not that good but let’s see, let’s give it a try. When we reached the runway apparently Mr. Sanjay was gonna sit under those shadowy green trees and give instruction to all the trainee and our pilot. Mind you our pilot there was the most experienced pilot with about 10 years of experience in paragliding. The flight was supposed to be tandem flight, which means we will just sit back relax and enjoy the view while flying and all the headache will be carried by our pilot.
Finally the winds were perfect, VisKarthik was being dressed for being the highflyer. Now our pilot started comforting VisKarthik by asking his name, asking about any phobia about the height. He was cool but looked frightened, I didn’t leave a chance to capture and frame it in my camera and when the perfect wind blew they just took off. Since at that time of evening the thermals were quite good for gaining the height they just went up and up and up, we could just watch and wonder how VisKarthik was feeling.
When they reached closed to horizon we were tired of wondering about the thrill of his flight and wanted him to get back so that we could get the adventurous ride. One of our crew member asked us to take a look at the stunts our pilot was doing in air, a complete 360° rotation and a swing like pendulum. After landing on the runway and when VisKarthik “actually” landed (mentally too) we started asking him about his experience, obviously it was same the way it looked, mind blowing, amazing, thrilling awesome and so on. He told us when their parachute looked smallest of all they were at around 1500 feet from ground. We came to know that it was not just lucky but unfortunate day for him since he couldn’t capture the flight in my digital camera because of the battery down. I know he is gonna hate me for that whole of my life. But we were still less fortunate than him. It was me who was going to go next, but the wait continued and continued. The other trainee’s and tandems were taking off as and when proper winds blew but our pilot was still waiting for a good blow. May be it was not our day. After around 45 – 50 mins I wore the helmet and the harness and geared up for my flight. Since the “Winds were not good” we would have to run and jump of the mountain. It was real scary now, because I had seen others jump from there and it looked horrifying. But after a few deep breaths I was calm, confident and excited. We ran on the runway and before I could realize we were airborne. Wooooo… it was so damn exciting feeling that it’s impossible for me to put in words. Your life just depends on some few straps and a pilot’s hand, but before I could enjoy the thrill and capture it properly in some corner of my mind it was over, we had to land on ground where Mr. Sanjay was sitting and giving instructions on radio. We had a crash landing thanks to the harness otherwise I would have had a hard time. Huh……….
Anu waited and waited till the last particle of natural light diminished then she and VisKarthik climbed down the mountain with the help of light feature on their mobile phones. She was disappointed, for we had been planning about this adventure for long time now.
When I closed my eyes I couldn’t imagine myself flying but I could only see the small drop like figure in sky, someone up and above near horizon. Never mind, there is always a tomorrow. I will come back and fly, fly as if I never stepped on land.
