Namaste India

In Hindi the word Namaste essentially means hello and goodbye. However, literally it means I bow to you (Nama=bow, te=you). It is with this word that I now bid farewell to the place I have spent the past 10 months. I will not lie and tell you that every moment has been spectacular, there has been moments of sheer wonder and moments of utter boredom. Regardless, I leave this place a changed man, India has a way of doing that to you. However, I am very excited to get home. There is a quote by T.S.Elliot that I think is rather appropriate for this situation, "We shall not cease from exploration and at the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started ...and know the place for the first time." This is what I am looking forward to.
Friday morning I board a plane for Singapore, then on to Bali for 3 weeks of relaxation, my brother's wedding and family time. Stay tuned for Bali stories.

GHARD WARE - Here it comes!!!

High in the Himalayan foothills lies the sleepy town of Landour. It is here that the beginnings of an amazing clothing concept was begun. GHARDWARE, a rugged, stylish, functional line of hard working wool clothing. Equally at home in the woodlot, construction site, around the campfire, on a rainy fall day, or around town. Your GHARDWARE was designed, tested and handmade in the Himalayas...

Sounds like a commercial doesn't it, well guess what it is. I have decided to try and launch my own line of awesome wool clothes, that are all of what is mentioned above but so much more. Tailor services in India are cheap and highly skilled, it is for this reason that I began playing with different designs for work and play. What I have come up with so far is two amazing pieces of clothing that I feel are too good to not try and market in the US. I just know if I only bring home the few pairs I had made for myself, tons of people would come up to me and say, "Hey, where did you get those awesome pants?" And I would have to kick myself for not trying to market them. So to keep my ass from getting kicked I decided to go for it!! What do I have to lose? So I am importing 100 or so pieces to see if I can stir up some interest. I am starting my line with a nice pair of wool work pant, that blow Carharts away. Both lined and un-lined. The flagship piece of my line is a sick two-toned wool hoodie sweatshirt that features, windproof nylon lining, reinforced shoulders, longer tail hem to cover that plumbers crack, pitzips, thumb holes at the cuff and a few trick pockets. If these pieces take off I have plenty more designs to drop. Stay tuned for pictures. Pre-orders will be accepted.

Hoodie action pose

Hoodie will also come in a great lightish blue and charcoal gray combo

Pants-will come in two diferent colors charcoal gray and the green on the hoodie.

Rockin' Rishikesh II

So I thought I would take a little weekend getaway to Rishikesh this weekend. Why not right? It is an easy 2 hours on the motorcycle along some great road. I went down there Friday night, Saturday I rented a kayak (Drago Rosi) and kayaked the Ganga between Shivpuri and Riskikesh. It was a nice little stretch. Exciting after not being in a kayak for 9 months. There was one big ol' rapid about like a medium/ large sized on on the Grand Canyon. Big waves. Now I can add another country to the list of places I have kayaked. Sorry no pictures, I didn't bring the camera, didn't feel like keeping up with it. Another reason I went was to do some souvenir shopping. Did some of that, went OK. Got some nice things. Anyway, that's it. It was nice to get away from here for a while.

Bir is Brilliant!!!

Mission accomplished!! I have just arrived home after an amazing, yet too short flying vacation in Bir/Billing. The drive was long but 14 hours in a bus goes by fast when you are excited and anticipate great things. I finally arrived in Bir at 6:00am after my bus/bus/taxi journey. Found my guesthouse and crashed for a couple of hours. Upon my return to relative lucidity, I met a few of the pilots I would be flying with. A few old schoolers named Jim, Andy and Bruce; these guys have been coming here for a while and were great sources of beta on the site. We hopped a taxi for the 45 minute, winding ride up to launch in a little place called Billing.



My flight the first day gave me a true taste of the greatness Bir produces in the form of large columns of hot, rising air we call thermals. They are everywhere, they are huge and they go up like a freight train. I toured the area to get the lay of the land and then the lack of sleep caught up with me, I was done, it was time to land.

Saturday turned out to be a tricky day. I awoke to a cloudy sky, not conducive of creating those poppin' thermals of the day before. The funny thing is it switched back and forth between clouds and sun all day, as soon as it looked good it would close out with clouds again. But I had the itch to fly, I only had 3 days. I convinced a few Frenchies I met in Pokhara that we should do it. We cruised up in a taxi to find that 3/4 of the way old Mother Nature had something other than flying on her mind. Rain began to fall, when we arrived the rain turned to rain/sleet/snow/lighting/thunder. We where shut out. We tried to be patient over chai and conversation with a group of Hungarian pilots. But in the end the cold wind and muddy ground hastened our retreat.

Sunday, oh Sunday, what a funday. Easter turned out to be a day to remember. The beautiful thing about a sport like paragliding is it's a sport of firsts and personal records. On Sunday it was time to head back Mussoorie way, but not without taking advantage of the wonderful day that it was promising to be. One thing I did know was that I needed to be on a bus by evening to make it back at a reasonable hour Monday. I had a few options but the best one was a luxury bus leaving Dharamsala at 5:30 pm. So I needed to get to D'Sala. I thought to myself why take a 3hour, uncomfortable local bus ride there when the possibilities of flying the 50 or so kilometers there was a definite possibility on a day like this. I motioned my plans to my new found flying friends and they thought is was a great idea. So we headed up, I loaded and launched about noon. The conditions this day would not let me down (literally) once. The mountains here are not only beautiful, snowcapped and high; but hey are perfectly suited for flying. The views of, glaciers, snowfields, and peaks enveloped in billowing white couds are beyond description. Hindu and Buddhist temples dot many of the thermal producing apexes along the beautiful ridgelines. The scenery was outstanding. I climbed out and started making my transitions from ridge to ridge. Tanking up on altitude where it was possible and gliding to the next ridge. Upon reaching a larger prominent ridge called the Big Face I ran into the only sticky spot all flight. I had flown too far back into a large bowl, but to get around the Big Face I needed to be further into the valley. As I tried to penetrate further out the winds got a little tricky and started to get turbulent and a bit sinky. I wasn't worried yet, but it wasn't the greatest situation. However, before things got critical I started a nice powerful climb back up to 10,000 feet, well above the Big Face. After this is was a pretty easy flight. Thermal up to 10,000 feet and transition to the next ridge. Hopping ridge to ridge all the way to Dharamsala 50 km away. It was cold up there and my hands were frozen, that is why there is such a lack of pictures, I couldn't feel the camera. What a flight, a first in many regards. Here are some picks after I got feeling back in my hands.





I landed in a small fair grounds in lower Dharamsala at 2:30 pm. There was a small fair going on where I landed and amazed Indian tourists poured out of the tents to take a look at this white guy that just fell out of the sky. Lots of questions, lots of pictures, too much trampling on my glider lines, and I was packed up eating a nice Rajasthani lunch, like the guest of honor.


Thanks for listening to my long winded and maybe slightly confusing tale of the best flight I have experienced in my short flying career, I can't wait for more just like it.

Flying Buddhist Land

Finally something to be excited about, the long awaited and much needed quarter break. Here at Woodstock they think that 4 days in long enough of a break between the quarters. I tend to disagree but I don't make those decisions, I just have to live with them. So I am going on what could be an epic journey. Destination Bir (pronounced beer)one of the best paragliding sites in the world this time of the year. Also a place that I told myself I HAD to go to while in India. The 4 days thing is kinda a bummer because it is a 12 hour overnight bus ride to get there and back. Seriously cutting into my vacation/flying time, but I have to do it. Bir is in a place called Himachel Pradesh, directly to the west of Uttarkhand (the state I live in). One cool thing about flying there is that it is 45 km as the crow (or paraglider) flies to Dharamsala the exiled seat of the Tibetan government and the home of the Dali Lama since 1959. I have heard on a good day it is an easy flight to Dharamsala and people fly their paragliders there regularly and land in town to spend the night, I'm going to give it a try. Here is an excellent article about flying in Bir by another pilot named Jeff Cristol, if you have some spare time give it a read, good stuff.

http://www.adventuretourproductions.com/articles/indianorth.htm

Ok that is all for now, I will be back in a week with stories.

Blogworthy

I am writing to express my regrets for not having a recent blog entry. The last thing I want to do is lose my precious audience. However, blogworthy occurrences on the hillside have been less then plentiful as of late. Truthfully, they have been non-existent. This is not to say I am not enjoying myself as much as possible. I guess winter break stories are just a hard act to follow.


Here is a picture that I forgot to put in my Nepal post. This is my porter Rama, nice guy, we really hit it off the night we arrived and on the trek. After one of our rest stops he takes his jacket off to revel this sweet Tony Kukoc Chicago Bulls throwback jersey. I told him that I was from Chicago and a Bulls fan. My porter Rama's reppin' Chi-Town!!! I just thought it was ironic that my porter in the Annapurna region of Nepal was wearing a Chicago Bulls jersey. Of course I had to take a picture.

Anyway, I am going for a motorcycle ride today I will bring my camera along in case anything good happens. Hope all is well.

Video Clip from New Years Paratrekking

So my buddy Pete just put up a sweet video about our New Years paratrekking trip up Kourchon in the Annapurna Range of Nepal. That blue and yellow glider that you can see for a few seconds as Pete pans around is me. Great memories, and a great way to spend the first day of a new year, free as a bird (literally). Take a look, I hope you enjoy it a fraction of how much I enjoyed it.



Here is the YouTube link in case you want to see it a little better. http://youtube.com/watch?v=5qud0uWByZQ

Enjoy!