This page contains An Indian Odyssey Part I: South, which describes two months spent exploring and flying paragliding sites in Southern India. This article was published in Paraglider Magazine in the spring of 2004.
AN INDIAN ODYSSEY PART I
SITES AND SIGHTS OF SOUTHERN INDIA
India, one of the grand countries of the world, is a masala of countless regions, people, and cultures. The insanity of a billion people all moving in different directions at the same time quietly contrasts with soaring in smooth evening ridge lift watching the sunset, or even locking into a thermal and coring out. This is paragliding in India. It is hard to say which part is more intense.
In January 2003, my wife Ursula and I quite our jobs at a resort in Sri Lanka. I was there to teach a group of ex-commandos paragliding and rock climbing. Naive about the reality of working in a country in the midst of civil war, we've been told our situation wasn’t unusual concerning our payment and safety. We made the best of our situation and bought plane tickets to India. As tourists we spent the next four months discovering the smells, tastes, sounds and rhythms, people and dress, religions, customs, language and landscape. We also found several of India's premier paragliding sites.
An overnight bus took us from Bangalore to our first stop on Goa's famous beaches, on India's Southwest coast. The tourist haunts felt well worn. The restaurants, shops and bungalows perfectly fit the European winter vacation theme. I got some airtime above sandy beaches, but soon our simple hedonistic needs were satisfied and we left in search of a more real, potent India.
Finding some unadulterated India in a hill station in the Southern reaches of the Maharashtra State, Amboli was forgotten even by Indian tourists. Presented with a multi-page menu, we ordered a half dozen unavailable items, then realized they had only dal (curried lentils) and bhat (rice). This was the India I had described to Ursula: a waiter gives you a fifty-item menu when nothing on it is available, then doesn’t admit to the situation until you have exhausted all possibilities. This is an example of the different cultural mindset and social behavior of India, reminding me of the classic man in the cheese shop skit by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. So much of India has an underlying sense of non-reality. People live with the perception that what goes on really doesn’t make any difference in the grand scheme, and simply play along for the time being for lack of anything better to do. You see this reflected in the faces of people sitting out on roadsides not engaged in anything, content to let time slip by unheralded. This displays a consciousness so different from the West’s frantic grasping at impossibilities. An American paraglider pilot, having lived in India for years, told me he attributes some of the underlying differences between Eastern and Western cultures to the Hindu religious and spiritual beliefs in karma and reincarnation.
A few kilometers from Amboli lies Mahadeo Viewpoint, aptly named after this part of the Western Ghats (Ghat means range of hills in Hindi). This inland range lies close enough to the coast for an afternoon Westerly to blow, adding to the strong thermal wind. The launch is off a very long, narrow finger of land dropping thousands of feet on both sides. The view north of forested ridges receding into the distance is amazing. The fence around the viewpoint has just enough pieces removed to layout. Sinking out from this launch involves a cross-country flight to a valley on the other side of the finger. I haven’t heard of anyone actually sinking out, but it would surely take several hours to get back. In typical conditions, flying the several kilometers back to Amboli where there are fields to land is easy. This is an advanced site because of a small committing launch and required cross country flight to any landing zone. The challenges, commitment, and views all make a visit worthwhile if traveling nearby, but I would hesitate to call this a paragliding destination.
I ate a two-kilo papaya, then spent 24 hours in bed, barely able to get to the bathroom. I needed a day of recuperation. Rested, but still with a sour stomach, Ursula and I endured a full day hopping local buses north to the twin hill stations of Mahableshwar and Panchgani. With few details and unconfirmed rumors of good flying, we arrived to find a small welcoming community of pilots. Staying at Andre and Megan Savard's Eco-Camp, we immediately felt part of an international family. There was a single person from India, Canada, France, Austria, Italy, England, Denmark, my Peruvian wife, and myself from the US. More than just paragliding, we cooked delectable international meals together. At restaurants or traveling together, the conversation was always entertaining in Hindi, French, German, Spanish, and of course English.
The Western Ghats lend themselves to paragliding. Most ridges are barren with multi-direction launches. Landing fields, crossed with electrical wires, are everywhere, though access is limited due to a lack of roads. The range runs from north of Mumbai (Bombay) and Pune to the southern tip of India.
Few towns are as nice as Panchgani and Mahableshwar, crowded with honeymooners and Indian tourists from Bombay. Around Panchgani, the ridges run out to dramatic narrow points. The nearby tablelands are absolutely flat topped, perfect for landing. If a pilot sinks out, there are endless fields to land in, although the trip back is long and involved.
Panchgani has two main flying sites. The morning site, off a long finger plateau named Harrison's Folly, faces east. The name comes from a British immigrant who built his house here, only to have it destroyed by the gale force monsoon winds. The west site is closer to town and usually works in the afternoon, with regular evening sunset glass-offs. Pilots usually top land both sites, with optional landing zones on the mesas above as well as on the plains two thousand feet below.
The launch on the East Side of the finger of land that makes Harrison's Folly is a steep hill with a nice roll onto the flat tabletop. It is possible to side-hill land halfway down, but top landing is easy if you get up. At the base of the hill there are open fields a few minutes walk from town, where crowded shared taxis run to the large town of Wai. Panchgani is another half hour bus or taxi ride above.
The west launch is at the edge of town, an easy walk from the Eco-Camp. Launch is a nice grassy slope above a cliff with room for several gliders to layout. Top landing is a challenge because of electrical wires and trees behind launch, a three-story hotel to the right, and crowds of tourists and children running around. With practice and patience, landing becomes less stressful. In strong conditions, a good option is to fly to the huge tableland above, an enjoyable fifteen-minute walk down to town. If lift is too light, or even mid-day at the end of a cycle, a pilot may find oneself in trashy sink. Several alternate landing spots exist below launch. An open field lies next to a Krishna Temple about a half-mile to the right and slightly lower. Closer and further down are several small clear points which are barely landable. The hike back up is oppressively hot and steep. From the fields at the bottom of the hill, buses, taxis, and motor-rickshaws go to Wai and eventually up to Panchgani. It's a long way back around so it’s an ordeal to sink out. The huge man-made lake below, formed by the damming of the Krishna River, is a nice place to swim and cool off before returning home. Because the return trip is so involved, a dedicated retrieval vehicle is wonderful. At the same time, with patience and the willingness to cram yourself into a jeep taxi, public transportation can get you anywhere. Often more than twenty people shared a taxi with me. Some foreign visiting pilots hate the experience, while others thrive on the adventure, at least until the novelty wears off. Public transportation is very inexpensive. Even renting a private taxi, costing ten to fifteen times as much, is affordable, compared to Europe or the United States.
Soaring at either site is not guaranteed, although a consistent afternoon west wind provides a regular evening glass-off. Schools have used Harrison's Folly for teaching, but mid-day thermals can be very rowdy with sharp edges. As one climbs, the thermals quickly smooth out. The proximity of the coast and accompanying sea breeze influences the prevailing winds. Morning and afternoon wind direction often changes one hundred eighty degrees.
This winter, thermals topped out at cloud-base around ten to eleven thousand feet msl. Launch is at three thousand four hundred feet msl, and the plains below are at one thousand four hundred feet msl. With superb climb outs, up to nine thousand feet over, the cross-country potential is great. Unfortunately, many days are cloudless with only hidden blue thermals. Panchgani is a difficult place to fly cross-country, but all the more rewarding for the challenge. I considered a three-hour cross-country flight long. Once low it is hard to get through the hazy inversion again. Still, I had several forty-kilometer and one seventy-seven kilometer flight. Getting back was always an adventure and I needed rest days to recover from the epic travels home. Much of the flying experience is made up of post flight adventures: landing in a field near a town whose name you can't pronounce or read because most signs are in Sanskrit, being greeted by hundreds of awe struck farmers and old women kneeling to touch your feet, and climbing onto a bullock cart for a ride across fields to the nearest road. Cross-country paragliding is an amazing doorway into the culture and lifestyle of India. The discovery and adventure doesn't end with landing, it just begins. I love traveling on public buses and have no problem climbing on top to tie my glider down. Nevertheless, I contemplated the convenience of a retrieve vehicle. A two-hour flight can easily take four hours to return from on public transportation.
While India was a colony, the British built resort towns called hill stations to escape the blistering heat of the plains. Panchgani and its larger twin, Mahableshwar, fourteen kilometers to the west, are classic examples. Chilly winter nights are a welcome relief from the heat of Southern India. Panchgani is known for many English language boarding schools, run in the British tradition. Along streets and lanes, children in clean school uniforms greet you politely with correct British English. The schools lend the town respectability and a level of education unusual for this part of India. Fields of sweet strawberries surround Mahableshwar, and our morning routine included drinking strawberry lassies, which are yogurt smoothies, and masala dosa, a spicy potato crepe pancake.
Panchgani is just one of countless flying sites in the Western Ghats. Better known are the launches at Tower Hill and Shilar near the town of Kamshet located between Mumbai and Pune. Several paragliding schools and guesthouses in the area cater to visiting pilots. Though flying is more consistent here, airline traffic from nearby cities makes it unsafe to fly over five thousand feet msl. Still, cross-country flying is possible and this area is a popular paragliding destination.
The brown hills of Panchgani are unique and intense. A hazy inversion stretches into the distance. Smoke from burning fields shows the changing valley winds. The winds of Panchgani are complex, everyday presenting different conditions and possibilities. After two months I still headed out downwind in new directions. It is a hot and dry part of India. The challenges and reality of the dust, dirt and crowds gives a visitor a true taste of what lies at the heart of the country. Landing amongst poor farmers who invite you in for tea, seeing how people struggle, live, and get by without knowing any other way; this is what visiting Panchgani is about. I went to India to paraglide, but discovered the place and experience is so much larger than that.
The flying season in the Western Ghats begins after the unstable, windy monsoon weather has past, and the summer heat has abated. December, January, and February are the best three months, but the season extends on either end with stronger conditions and more wind. In June the hot dry weather of Southern India breaks and daily monsoon rains suddenly begin. The moisture sweeps from the Bay of Bengal north across India until it hits The Great Himalaya.
The English word monsoon comes from Sanskrit, the base language of Hindi. While over sixty distinct languages are spoken throughout India, Hindi/Urdu is common to the entire subcontinent. Hindi is easy to learn and is transcribed phonetically into English. Locals are good at understanding different and incorrect pronunciations. It's possible to get by without speaking Hindi, since so many people know English and are willing to help, but it's worth the effort to learn what you can. After one long flight, a motorcyclist gave me a lift to the nearest town. My new friend dropped me on a busy side street. Turning the corner I was immediately confronted by a bazaar full of vendors, noise and commotion. As I wandered through the afternoon heat, struggling with my pack, I felt completely out of my element. Stalls sold food I couldn't identify, yellow and bright red, deep fried and stacked in piles. One block had only scrap metal for sale. A teenage boy with several balls of string in front of him caught my attention. For a few pennies I bought several meters and he asked about my pack. My pantomime of flying a paraglider fell short and I left him with a puzzled expression. Even with some Hindi, I was hard pressed to find a cold drink and the taxi stand.
Shaking eucalyptus trees announced the winds of spring. Changing our plane tickets to maximize our stay, we dreamed of mountain peaks still under blankets of snow, the taste of cold clean mountain air and the adventures waiting to the north. The second half of our trip passed in the foothills of the Himalaya in the northern State of Himachal Pradesh. While hopping trains for fifty hours across India's great expanse, we were surprised to receive a new paraglider sent from Sri Lanka in place of our paychecks. Since it was time to retire my worn out and twitchy DHV 2 APCO Simba, I was excited to fly a new sporty DHV 1-2 in the mountains.
The roads crowded with buses, rickshaws, people, and goats all swerving and veering with horns blaring, rarely have accidents. India is a place with a billion separate beings each vibrating at a different frequency, all adding up to a beautifully modulated hum, a land of vast differences with a universal undercurrent going back thousands of years. Paragliding in India, the adventure just begins when you land.
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS...
GO READ AN INDIAN ODYSSEY PART II: NORTH OR
VISIT THE INDIA ARTICLES GALLERY FOR FULL SIZE PHOTOS FROM THIS ARTCLE!
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