Adventure travel is yet another categorization for some travel enthusiasts. I say some because it isn’t a priority for me. I definitely love to try and explore new things never the main motive. Until…I did my first ever Paragliding in Bir beginning this year.
2021 had to be a new start we were all inside our houses in 2020 so since things were opening up, I decided to the least have a week-long vacation in the mountains. And it did happen. Also, there were many firsts on this trip. When I say, “MANY” I mean it.
Each and everything will unfold, with the unwrapping of each destination on this blog. So, you will have to be constant with the blogs that I have published regarding this trip.
Speaking about the initial firsts, I had not planned the destination. Of course, I knew Himachal to be the destination but where in Himachal, what is the journey we are going ahead with. Are we going the Shimla, Manali path or is it going to be the Manali to Dharmashala one? We left everything to the spur of the moment. Whatever comes to our mind after we have got our rented car. Yes, we took the latter journey – Kasol to Manali to Bir to Dharamshala…
So, Bir was one of the destinations that we chose because I had heard of the Paragliding opportunity available in the area. I was on cloud 999 when I had decided to try out paragliding. The concept excited me, the thought made me go all gaga. But, yes, there is always a but. When we reached Bir – one of the locals told us, “The paragliding area is closed. Two people died a few days ago while paragliding.”
And my heart sank.
The smile was kind of disappearing from my face. But both my brother – Ishu and my friend – Kumar was like…”Hmm…since we have come up until here, why not just take a turn and reach the place.” Well, the best decisions were made. We went up to the location and a lot of people approached our car to negotiate and offer paragliding prices. And I was happy again. I had been wishing to indulge in some sort of adventurous thing, off lately. That itch was becoming unbearable now. Ultimately, the time had come.
We negotiated a great deal and went all the way up to the take-off spot. It was a smooth drive, however, 20mins long. And then since the winds were favorable to us, the glider who would paraglide with me (I genuinely hope that is making sense?) told us to trek a little since that would be a better take-off position. So, we did – it was breathtaking – quite literally!
Oh! I did vlog my whole experience: Do watch my blog up on the Youtube Channel!
And the time had come, all that I was instructed was to run the faster I could. The faster is the running, the better is the take-off. And I guess I was pretty good at it!
The complete 15/20 mins experience flying up in the air, the bird’s eye view – it was all so amazing. I could make sense of the fact that how small and tiny creatures we are. The world seems so huge. The Himalayas surrounding from all the sides, the green layer below, fellow paragliders, and it was all so fascinating. Ah! I could be there all day long. The experience was so surreal – hard to put into words, difficult to explain.
Well, the instruction for landing was to land on our foot. Let me explain – as we are about to land, we need to put bout our feet on the land like sitting on a chair and then jump a little and keep running a little. This will make sure we don’t fall on our bums! or hurt ourselves.
The whole landing area was full of people landing and learning to paraglide. The whole experience, to sum it up, was an experience worth taking. As simple as I can keep it.
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