Panchgani Above My Weight

I’m waiting for the Indian Treasury to decide if they can give me back my bail money in cash. They won’t accept my bank card as proof of my UK account details, and they won’t pay the money to someone I nominate, in case that person rips me off. How thoughtful, far better that they keep my bail money safe for me, forever.

So in the meantime I am slowly heading to Delhi hoping to get there in time for this to be sorted, but I certainly don’t want to get there sooner and have to wait it out in the capital. I am using the time to call and email sponsors and fund-raisers in the hope of meeting my €5000 target I need to continue the journey. I’ve already got cash and pledges of €1000 so quietly confident there is a good chance.

I’m also taking full advantage of not having to be anywhere to go paragliding, and at the moment I’m in Panchgani, which is another amazing world class site. It’s great for cross country flying. You set off from one place and hop from one thermal to the next covering huge distances. I’m not that good, and the season has finished so the weather isn’t ideal anymore, but with a lot of patient waiting (nic-named “para-waiting” by pilots) keeping an eagle eye on conditions I and a couple of friends here, Arabind and Chetan, have managed to get some good flights in and improve my skills.

I’m parked at the top of the take off site, so in the morning I can check the windsock streamer from bed. Strawberries and mulberries are in season, and haven’t tired of fruit salad and yogurt for breakfast. There is a 14 year old boy who sells freshly squeezed lemon juice who brings his cart next to the truck around 9am, and we chat in sign language about the wind. He can’t fly but knows well enough when the conditions are good from having watched countless pilots in the past.

The police have clamped down on the un-insured tandem wallahs who offer a 20 minute flight for 2000Rs to the wealthy Pune weekenders, after an accident last week, so we have the launch site to ourselves and instead of having to wrestle for a takeoff slot we’re surrounded by tandem wallahs with nothing better to do but help us lay out our wings and lend their experience to assess the wind.

The rival tandem pilots have to collectively pay some cash to the police, but as the wind is too strong and the tourist season is still a few days away from starting they are holding out before paying up and starting work. On a good day they can earn €400-500, but it’s a short season and most pilots are in endless hock to their backers who paid for their wings and harnesses.

Andre, an expat from Montreal who’s run a campsite here for solo-pilots for 11 years, usually turns up to offer meteorological advice in his drawly French Canadian accent littered with Indian idioms, “Yeah-er, Wat-to-do?”. He’s even run us 3 km down the road in his pick up to another launch site when the wind was backing. There’s a thermal over his campsite which means his windsock regularly points upwards.

The conditions have been unusually strong here, making take off risky and flying even riskier. Landing back on the launch site is a near impossibility in strong winds so the only option is to “land down” in the valley which stretches out 1000ft bellow around the manmade lake and dam.

The black areas of burnt grass provide good sources of thermal air, warmed by the hot ground and sent upwards like the goo in a lava lamp. I’m learning to “core” thermals, finding the centre and circling upwards in it.

For landings, I’ve mostly used the fields zig-zagging around trees and shortening my approach with plenty of brake as the as the terracing cheats me by dropping the ground away from me the further I travel. I’ve landed by the lake a couple of times, and today I took my togs for a swim. After stripping naked in front of non-plussed washer women I then balked at the mirky waters. The ladies shrugged grunts eventually persuaded me in. I didn’t want them to think I was another of these exhibitionist from Mumbai come to flash at the village girls. Usually I catch a local bus which winds up the mountain switchbacks to the cooler air of Panchgani or hitch a ride in a truck that’s going that way.

When I get back I’m greeted by the concerned lemonade boy who asks me where I landed and how the flight was. Nods, grins, hands and pointing, our conversation is completely silent apart from the word “Wind” which can mean strong or weak, depending on the wind.

In the evenings I cycle into town for dinner with Chetan and Arabind, my co-pilots, after washing off the red dust in the bus shower. My water pump has burnt out and I have to take the motor apart to check it, so in the meantime I’m using a bucket filled at the nearby spring. Before bed I sit on one of the benches near the hotel and use their free wifi with the black valley below lit only by a smattering of village lights and the red lines of grass fires spreading up the opposite side.

So as you can imagine , until the bail money is ready, I’m not in any great rush to leave for Delhi to be shunted from one heartless government office to the next.

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Next to the launch site is a gypsy camp of tarpaulin tents. Their donkeys compete with the mosquitoes in the truck to keep me awake at night. I’ve been watching how they live, and really impressed how little they consume. Their energy is from firewood, and they draw water straight from a spring at the edge of the launch site.

India is one of the few countries that emits less than 2 tonnes of CO2Te per person, thanks in large part to people like this. At first I’m struck with the thought that if everyone lived like this the global carbon footprint would disappear overnight. Ironically, the famines and mass-migrations which will result from climate change, will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents.

The battle to find sustainable solutions of energy creation and consumption is in many ways more a battle to maintain our standard of living rather than to save the environment. We have to turn unsustainable consumption into a responsible and globally fair use of resources, or expect a reduction in the standards of living we take for granted. Probably we’ll have to do both, and probably we won’t do either enough.

So we, as a planet, could ration energy now and see a drop in our standards of living, or we can take small possibly ineffectual steps which will result in more people living under tarpaulin tents. Those people will probably be from poor countries, because poor countries are typically dependent on agriculture and poor countries are in the tropics where weather patterns are most likely to be affected. In Croydon we will struggle to find Zimbabwean Bok-Choi in Tescos

No one knows with much certainty how much climate change will really impact on agriculture and sea levels, so it’s hard to know how strictly to ration energy now, but not doing it allows richer countries to take advantage of their wealth to exploit global resources, to the detriment of people living in poorer countries (again – see oil, , fishing rights, minerals, diamonds, agricultural land, holiday resorts...).

Wherever I fly I’ve found out about the local agriculture, to know which fields I can land in, and even more importantly I find out about the local weather. Really understand it in detail, how it should be, how it is this minute, and how it changes during the day. Everywhere I’ve been, from Annecy to Panchgani, pilots tell me the weather is unusual for time of year. Maybe it’s me! Or maybe it’s the human nature of pilots to be diffident of the winds, but I believe it’s a sign that weather patterns that are changing, and it makes me feel that the changes will become quite radical.

As long as these gypsies can scavenge pressed sugar cane for their donkeys and don’t have to move in to a city, they’ll be ok. It would be hard for their standards of living to drop further. But in the valley below the fields are all empty at the moment. It’s great for me as it provides endless choices of landing areas. They are waiting for the first signs of the monsoon season to start planting. I wonder if they can afford the irony to call it agri-waiting?

Going Down and Bowing Out

So after all it turns out I’m not a terrorist, so I’m not going to prison again.

But it’s not a happy ending, because its resulted in the end of my journey. This court case has cost me €6000. To put it in perspective; from the UK to India I spent about €3000 on 3 months travel. India was meant to be one of the cheaper legs of the journey. My contingency cash is wiped out, and quite a lot more besides.

While I could afford to carry on for a bit, but I could only get to a place where I couldn’t afford to come back from, so I’m going to head to Nepal and then finish the trip and then head home via the lowest carbon route possible, unless I can find some cash sponsors here in India that can save the expedition.

It took 18 months to get the sponsorship together to set off for this trip, and most of that was support in kind. The vast majority of the cash was my own savings, so I know how hard it is to raise cash from organisations, and I’m under no illusion how difficult it will be.

However I am able to muster a lot of press interest here, and during the last few months I’ve met some pretty influential people who have been very supportive so perhaps they will be able to call on their networks to rally the support needed.

The final insult is that it looks like I won’t be able to get my €600 bail bond back either because I’m a foreigner which means I fall into yet another Indian bureaucratic catch-22. That, and I still have to undergo the timely, costly and dehumanising make-it-up-as-you-go-along procedure of getting my visa changed so I can actually leave India.

No one has admitted responsibility for the decisions which resulted in the case becoming such an unnecessarily costly affair and no one has apologised, and this has added to my bitterness and anger over the whole affair. I’m trying to let go but it’s really hard, and it’s certainly no fun for me being this angry.

Getting my phone back only served to vindicate that this has all been an unjustifiable waste of time and money at the hands of idiots. Under Indian law, I’d have had an easier time of it if I’d been dealing drugs to school kids.

I’ll be gutted if I have to can the trip here over this bad luck. It was going so well. Almost 20,000km without using fossil fuels, and more fuel-from-waste supplies lined up across India ready for the next leg into South East Asia. It would be terrible if it had to end over something as stupid as this sat phone case.

Sat Phone Update.

A quick news update on the sat phone trial. And hopefully the last time I blog about it cos I am truly fucking sick of the whole affair.

When I was arrested over 100 officers were drafted in to search for evidence against me. Why this was done is a mystery to me, as the lead officer from Military Intelligence, Captain Jatinder, had already seen the bus and my website. He must have had sufficient doubt to think it was all an elaborate cover story. What a fucking idiot.

The police or Captain Jatinder tipped off the press that they had apprehended a terror suspect and briefly basked in the glory, but I think the scale of the press response took them by surprise. As a result they got scared and cornered themselves and me with them. After such a fuss they couldn’t let me out without a court ruling so they charged me with an anti-terror law because it was a non-bailable offence, meaning only a court could grant bail, even though they were in no doubt by the end of the first day that I was not a terrorist risk.

I in the meantime had to go to prison awaiting a bail judgement and freaked out, hiring the lawyer that the Italian consul recommended, and because he was great, and had to travel 300km, he cost me a small fortune. Not only did he reassure my family, but he killed all the press speculation about me being a terrorist on his first day on the case. The cost spiralled each time the police delayed hearings.

By now the Times of India were writing pretty critical articles of the police’s behaviour, but instead of them dealing with it and ending the criticism, they hoped that by procrastinating, the media interest would die down. Clearly the police need a PR advisor to tell them that dragging things out makes the reputation damage worse. The most frightening thing about this experience is how much power stupid frightened people, can have over me.

In the meantime a Polish guy was caught on his sat phone in Jaipur. The police there, not being the village yokels found in Ajmer, had the good sense to charge him within 24 hours with a technical offence, the judge fined him and gave him back his phone on condition he didn’t use it in India. Speaking to the press, the Jaipur police said “We used our common sense.”

As a result of that arrest and the 2000 petition emails received by the Home Affairs Minister orchestrated through facebook (thanks everyone), the police in Ajmer couldn’t justify continuing the 7 weeks of procrastination in my case,. Not they have dropped the anti-terror charge and a technical offence against me. Thankfully the Polish case has also set a sensible legal precedent for the judge to follow in my case.

It seems that the Rajasthan Military Intelligence have a new piece of kit to play with; a sat phone detector, which they pull out for special occasions (Bangladeshi Presidential visit to Ajmer in my case, a cricket match in Jaipur in the case of the Polish guy). However they still haven’t mastered how to use it. They were adamant they had tracked me making calls in India, however I didn’t. All the gear and no idea. RTFM morons.

I still have a visa that prevents me from leaving the country, and will need the Ajmer police help to get it changed when this is all over. I’m dreading going back to that visa office in Delhi.

The whole experience has brought me much closer to my family, and helped me understand my personal motives for doing this trip and I am facing up to some important personal demons. With hindsight even prison was a really positive experience for me, one I hope never to have to repeat. But let’s not get too gushy about it, this has probably cost about €6000 and killed the dream I’ve been working on for 2 years. I can afford to carry on the journey for now, but I now can’t afford to finish it.

The only lessons I can really take away from this is that people in power can be really stupid, and even more so when they are acting out of fear. Secondly, there is nothing you can do about it if you are in the wrong place at the wrong time

The Terrorists, the Cops and me.

[Ed - Written in February, when I was fucking angry]

The thing that really pisses me off is that there are a load of Taliban fighters holed up in Afghanistan somewhere reading about me on the internet, probably pissing themselves laughing at my expense. I now have a heightened awareness of the things I do and have done which could be used in evidence against me at my Kafka-esque terror trial.

• Wear sandals (a heinous crime in and of itself)
• Grow a beard (an equally unforgivable misdemeanour)
• Visit Pakistan and the Afghan border region (usually only terrorists or opium smugglers, but actually it’s the only way to drive to India)
• Drive a heavy truck full of fuel (You say “Truck Bomb”, I say “Biotruck”. Let’s call the whole thing off)
• Carry multiple passports (I have dual nationality, it’s not a crime)
• Have a passport full of stamps from Muslim countries in North Africa (its full of stamps from Christian countries too, doesn’t make me a KKK supporter)
• Hang out near the a town where a contentious neighbouring country’s president is visiting (It was 20km away and how should I know where the hell the Bangladeshi president is going next week)
• Go to Pushkar and say I’m a tourist (Lots of tourists do that too)
• Carry a sat phone (So do many overlanders, mountaineers, sailors, foreign journalists and the British Ambassadors in India, but actually not me any more)
• Take photographs of tourist sites (Lots of tourists do that too)
• Buy local PAYG SIM cards when I am abroad, and then call people with it (cheapest way to stay in touch)
• Take pictures with Mumbai hotels in the background (I hadn’t noticed the hotels until I got stopped by beach security for taking pictures of people who happened to be in front of them – seem Mumbai Romance in the Gallery)
• Speak with Muslims (I worry about this every time I ask a hajji with a beard for directions – will they be photographed and rounded up for questioning later just cos I’m looking for a shop that sells milk? And in 2 months time how will it look when I the police show me this picture and I tell them I don’t have any recollection of this person.)
• Have a laptop with Aircrack, software that theoretically allows me to log on to secure Wifi networks so I can upload a video declaring responsibility for my latest blog entry (Sadly I’ve never got Aircrack to work and had forgotten it was installed until talking about it with a friend tonight. I should really delete it cos it is a pretty dodgy bit of software any way you look at it [Ed – now deleted])
• Receive support from Iran (OK tenuous here: but my regime-hating Iranian friends helped me find veg oil for the truck bomb, er I mean Biotruck.)
• Go to hear a hard-line Muslim leader address a rally of supporters. (In Esfahan I took pictures of Ahmedinejad when he declared they would step up their nuclear enrichment programme, but even though I was surrounded by his supporters, I resisted joining in the chants of “Allah Uakbar” on cue, so I’m obviously not quite ready for my suicide mission yet)
• Speak Arabic (not much, and Hassania is a dialect from the far west of the Arab world which is so corrupted no one outside Mauritania really understands me)
• Go to the desert with Muslim men and learn new things while I am there (paragliding in Iran, 2-wheel-drive off-roading in Mauritania, panning for gold in Algeria, horse riding in Egypt)
• Fly a paraglider (There’s a terror group in India that were, allegedly, planning on using them for an aerial attack – Oh please, do me a favour! If the winds are wrong they’ll end up blowing up the local bingo hall instead of the parliament building. They banned paragliders over Mumbai for the National holiday, despite the fact that the laws of physics have already banned it permenantly)

Reading this back, it looks like an application CV to Al Queda. Can you imagine the covering letter; “Dear Mr Laden, I know you have regular vacancies in the suicide bombing department. Others have commented that my skill set would be a good fit with your team...Salary expectations; not so bothered about the virgins, but a pension with eternity in paradise... Happy to work abroad...References available from Captain Jatinder of the Indian Military Intelligence and Superintendent Tak of Ajmer Police, they’ll tell you I’m a terrorist alright.”

I appreciate that for a country which saw violent terrorist shootings less than 18 months ago, [Ed – and the Pune bombing since I wrote this] this is a raw nerve and my comments will seem in very bad taste. Well if there are any Indians that are offended, don’t think I am unsympathetic to the shock of those events and the losses. But don’t be angry at this blog entry written from my rage at being imprisoned for a week and deprived of the money to fulfil the dream I worked hard to make possible. Instead be angry at the fact you have an incompetent police force and illiterate Military Intelligence officers who shouldn’t be put in charge of a train set let alone terrorist investigations. Alarmingly for you, these people are responsible for protecting you but have no clue how to use their resources effectively, missing the real terrorists and wasting the time of 150 officers to investigate someone who is clearly innocent.

For the 3rd time (twice with David Coleman Headley, and once with me) SP Tak and Captain Jatinder of MI have let India down. If you want to investigate risks to Indian National Security start with them.

9/11, 7/7, 28/11, Now it’s 24/7

[Ed - Written in January, when I was fucking pissed off and on the verge.]

Trying to be philosophical about my predicament I tell myself this is a measure of the post 9/11 world. I remember watching the live news coverage as the towers collapsed almost 10 years ago and prophetically thinking, “Things are going to be different, shitter, from now on.” That morning I’d just had a great meeting with a travel company and pitched them some tours I wanted to operate in the Algerian desert. They asked me to prepare some itineraries and prices so they could put them in their brochure. This was going to be my first big break in organising proper adventure tours, a new business I was really excited about. Then I came home to see the rolling news of planes flying into the twin towers. Islamaphobia took hold in a major way and there was no point preparing the itineraries and the prices. No one was going to holiday in Algeria.

That winter I’d just got back from an overland drive from the UK to Niger, crossing the stunning Djanet plateau and discovering what North Africa looks like when it has petrodollars. I’d established contacts with some local ground operators and together we agreed to I’d market their amazing tours in the UK via some adventure tour companies.

This week I was arrested under suspicion of terrorism in Pushkar, India, but I was arrested as a suspected terrorist once before, that same year, when I crossed the border from Algeria through the northern Tenere Desert into Niger arriving in the abandoned town of Djado. Terrorism was a comparatively gentlemanly affair before we all saw images of Twin Towers suicide attacks.

Unbeknown to me I’d driven the route taken by arms dealers that were smuggling weapons to Tubu rebels in the North of Niger. Niger, like several Saharan countries divided by the tropic of Cancer, had a Muslim population in the north in conflict with the non-Muslim government in the south. In Niger, at that time, the Tubu tribes in the north, who happen to be Muslim, were waging a pretty successful uprising over rights and self governance. These days it would be called an Islamic terror campaign, and the US would fund the government forces.

As a result of stumbling into this very tense situation I was arrested and spent 3 days held at a desert military camp in Dirkou, a seedy smugglers outpost full of traffickers taking Nigerian prostitutes and fake dollars bills up to Libya. The military explained they were acting under orders from the capital and then the call came that I was to be interviewed in Niamey by the National Chief of Police. I was made to drive my crappy Datsun Patrol 1500km across one of the world’s harshest deserts to Niamey, where I was interviewed by a French secret service agent. The French still run Niger and the Ambassador parades around the capital like royalty. The French spook paced confidently behind the broad leather chair of the National Chief of Police, aggressively asking questions. The police chief, a man so dark I couldn’t make out any of his features in the shuttered office, apart from his glistening perspiration on his forehead, stayed silent throughout. The interrogation didn’t take long to reveal I was just a muppet who had no idea what this was all about, and after an afternoon of repetitive questions, he instructed the police chief to find something to fine me and I paid £4 for a bald tire. “When do you think Niger will obtain independence from the French?” I asked as I handed over the money, probably the finest example of my unerring ability to piss off people in high places by not being able to keep my mouth shut.

So far, in Pushkar, I’ve done my best work ever at keeping quiet, and none the less I’ve made my sister feel like I’m ungrateful and uncooperative with all the hard work she’s done, the lawyer almost dropped me completely when I tried to negotiate a lower fee, and the British Embassy don’t want to touch me with a bargepole. Thankfully Avinash, the journalist at the TOI is on my side and doesn’t print any of my libellous rants that would land me in jail for sure. And I’ve stayed friends with my interrogating officers but I think that has more to do with the lawyer passing them sweeteners to look after my welfare – which would explain why he’s so expensive. Everyone keeps telling me to shut up, and I’m trying but this situation is so nuts that I’m clinging to this ridiculous notion that I’m not a bad person, and being truthful is my best protection.

Last night a hotel turned me away. They said I was trouble and didn’t want me staying there. I didn’t shut up there and told the owner a few truths too. I was so upset and it compounded with finding out the police report isn’t ready yet so the case will be adjourned, and the lawyer broke the news to me that when this comes to trial it will still take several days more. I broke down again and felt like I had no one left to call. Everyone’s pissed off at me. It’s made me reconsider the suggestion a few people have already made that I should speak to a psychiatrist. I’m not well. So if I piss you off, just put it all down to the ranting of a mad man.

Obviously I can’t post this, so now it seems I’m typing to myself too. Call the doctor!!!

Goa aint goin' on.

Readers from the UK will remember the series of Gold Blend TV commercials in which an I-can-have-it-all feminist yuppie and an I’m-a-devilishly-handsome-new-man-from-next-door have coitus non-startus despite being regularly brought precariously close to nookie by their shared love of instant coffee. The ads were a classy documentary statement on Thatcher’s children of the early 90’s. The cringing dialogue was delivered with atrocious eyebrow acting, affirming, lest there was any doubt, that this couple was terribly clever and terribly in charge of their destiny. I wasn't the only viewer left hopping they’d both be engulfed in a dry roasted fire.

Now 20 years on, imagine he’s a bare chested, leather skinned 60 yearold playing with his silver pony tail in a cheap Mexican restaurant in Goa, bragging about his past travels in a faded Aussie accent, while she is a fresh skinned slender 23 year old German girl with thick matted dreads, and beads and bells on the hem of her long tie-dyed skirt.

Him [offering her a joint with a furtive eyebrow flick]: Would you like a smoke?
Her [raising an eyebrow]: I don’t do drugs, I prefer reality.
Him [raising an eyebrow back]: Reality is for people that can’t handle drugs.
Her [raising her other eyebrow to meet the first]: I don’t like to alter my perception on reality when I’m travelling.
Him [trying to raise his first eyebrow higher, but giving up and opting instead to furrow it downwards]: Drugs don’t alter my perception on reality, they just alter how I deal with reality.

And so it went on for a good hour. By the end they both had eyebrow exhaustion and thankfully had to shut up. As to the will-they-won’t-they? No granddad, never in a month of Sundays was she coming back to yours to smoke your gold blend. Ironically their conversation did finish up on the best filter coffee in town.

That was my table company for lunch. For dinner I was in Arambol's cheapest restaurant surrounded by dreadheads playing didgeridoos and gushing about what a great party last night was and tonight would be. They were already giving me suspicious looks when my phone rang from home and I had to discuss my company accounts submission, directors report and corporation tax filing. It was a bad line so I may have been quite loud. By the time I’d put the phone down I was surrounded by pursed lipped evil hippy stares. Thankfully before being burned at the the joss-stick, someone remembered that sunset was only a few minutes away and everyone urgently left with their guitars and bongos, for the beach to stare adoringly, and pursed lipped, at the sun dipping into the sea, again.

Everyone here is desperate to appear interesting. Everyone has their unique angle; locks, tattoos, Enfields, guitars, yoga, nudity, sequin dresses on the beach... and ironically no one is interested in anyone else’s interesting angle, apart from the sexagenarian nudity; we all stare purse lipped at that.

It’s all disappointingly insincere and unoriginal. The art here is commercial tat, the live music is great but the ambience is so dead it kills the music. I was expecting 1000 people, hands in the air on the beach at 3am under lasers and banging trance, but maybe it’s the end of the season so instead there are 50 people stood round the walls head bobbing while the German 23 year old frees her perception of reallity the dance floor alone.

Actually I think it’s more like the end of Goa. Arambol, Agonda, Palolem, they all have the feel of places that were interesting but are now just morphing into Clacton-on-Ganges . Five, 10, 15 years ago I bet this place really meant something and dished out ideas that changed the people that came here, sending waves propagating around the world when they left. Now the ideas are stale, and the place is a Russian holiday resort waiting to happen, but prevented from happening by planning laws which keep it locked in this hippy-happy state of tumble-down shacks. There’s a lot of good in that, the world is fine without another string of Club-Med resorts and adjoining golf courses. But equally, is there any need for this centre of phoney or old ideas?

The visitors here are trustafarians, who can go back to easy money in their home countries any time. Fledgling consumers, training to join the rat race of yuppie yoga mums and office workers that had a colourful past. I’d have more respect for them if they were aware they are just on an extended cheap 18-30's holiday and behaved more hedonisticly, rather than reciting this empty fantasy of connectedness, and spirituality. Like the couple from the Gold Blend commercial, they are so introspective, they’re not even shagging.

Mid Air Life Crisis Collision

Being a psychiatrist is the perfect complimentary profession to flying tandem paragliders according to Tom who is both a pilot and a shrink.

“People tell me all sorts of shit up there” he’s not bemoaning the revelations, but doesn’t seem overly enthusiastic about them either.

I miss the opportunity to ask him “And how do you feel about that?” which has become a running joke between us, after I impressed him with my impersonation of a therapist, nodding and grunting understandingly.

“You’d get a psychology degree for those ‘hmmm’s’ Andy”, his deadpan Australian accent and straight face hiding any trace of irony.

Incidentally, Tom confirms my suspicion that the correct response to being asked “And how do you feel about that?” by a psychiatrist is to say “Hmm, well, I don’t know. How would you feel about it?”

In one of our conversations, cum therapy sessions, Tom explains that very few of us are present for very long. Most of the time we aren’t attending to life around us, but going through it in a lower state of consciousness. Presence, or focusing on the moment, is probably what Eastern Gurus refer to as an enlightened state, and as with enlightenment, being present for a sustained period can be a euphoric joyous experience.

Adrenalin sports provide a different route to the same presence, demanding a sustained focus on the moment because of the fear and imminent risks.

It’s no surprise then that the paragliding beginner class is heavily littered with gentlemen staring their midlife crisis squarely in the face. Having done well in life, job, house, car..., they have woken up to the need to live a more real, present existence. They could have ended up in an Ashram, instead they are following the teachings of their paraglider Gurus.

In Tom’s case he rented out his successful practice and home in Australia, and now lives in a dorm room, flies every day and dishes out acupuncture treatments to the bruised students.

I go for a flight with him so I can take some aerial pictures of other pilots, and sure enough it’s the perfect environment for a therapy session and provokes me to share a really weird dream I had the night before, involving a demonic girl with no eyes and a cactus growing out of her. We both erupt with laughter as I point out a narly prickle-free cactus on the hill below us which best resembles the one protruding from the girl. “Like that one but blue. What does it mean doctor?”

“Holy shit! If you figure it out you’ll get a whole PhD out of that dream Andy.” He pulls a spiral dive spinning us towards the ground, and as the adrenalin and the G-force builds, draining the blood from my head, he calls out “...and how did it make you feel?”

“Fucking scared!” I yell back, grinning euphorically, eyes wide open and totally focused on the bright world whirring beneath me.