Pokhara Kathmandu EN-A
march
2017, the story
After
roaming around in a hesitant random way the three high end wings,
that are flying the cloud in front of me, make a sharp turn and head
straight back to Pokhara. I am climbing the ridge over Tumako Danda
together with a Nepalese-dusty-coloured-Mantra but suddenly I can't
see it anymore, i look back twisting on my risers … disappeared …
The
radio that I usually carry turned off and that today, by chance, is
working but at minimum volume, is talking something from the bottom
of the pocket where i forgot it; I can't hear properly but it sounds
like... “Bibo, come back, there is a big cloud developing “...
Peter is going back too ...
Hmm
...Yes, ok... cloud is sucking, but… I can pass. No way I go
back... I spent Too long time waiting in Pokhara for a good day.
Because of the unusual dry winter lots of dust was at lakeside and it
made me sick, too many dinner at the restaurant, too little hiking, I
got lazy and bored. I also got tired of playing FAI triangles and I
start to be bored of the take off chat environment. Warm and friendly
but I am becoming too famous for the many times i bombed out in
Damphus because my wing cannot penetrate the wind to pass the ridge
on the way home from the “big triangle”. I know most of the
villagers down there, at the end of Pokhara valley, and I know every
couple of birds habiting on the Panchase ridge where I usually end my
days soaring for ours over the huge beauty full trees covering the
village. I learned a lot from those birds, even from the young one
that is always turning the thermal in the opposite direction than the
others. But it's enough...
Today
springtime has arrived, rain has passed, cloud or not cloud it is the
day to go, no way I go back. The decision of going comes out suddenly
and unavoidable. And I go ! Big hears, speed bar, freezing hands and
adrenaline. After the cloud everything is again good, sky becomes
puffy and sunny, I am exiting the Machapuchare valley system and
slowly abandoning the Annapurans massif. Overdevelopment was for the
guys that wanted to close the triangles and go to drink a beer at
Sunrise landing, I am going another way, on a straight line, alone. I
go east !
Finally !
so many times I dreamt to fly in one direction “to the unknown”
with my tent and my backpack. When I bought the glider my 11 kg bag
exploded and I had to spend the winter building a backpack to be
used, in flight, as a back protection with a ultralight harness.
Finally I managed to pack again all my life in a 15 kg bag and went
back to travel ... after months the idea becomes real: travel and
fly, and hopefully, in future, travel by flight. Finally free !
Of
course “the unknown” Is personal, this places are on a map and
the flight area is known for Xc. But all my life I have been
fascinated of finding out what's next after the mountain I am facing.
It doesn't matter a lot if other people has already been there, what
fascinates me is more about the evolution of the perspective in terms
of motion; climbing to se what's next. Hike and fly arrived late in
my life but it appeared to be the perfect solution. And of course I
go slow; i am just a beginner. In this days Other two guys are flying
double
the distance I can fly in one day, and they travel longer journeys:
The Slovakian Juraj Koren and a
green dressed-with-green-wing Russian whose name I don't know. One
flies lower than me and the other one higher, but both fly on much
straighter and precise trajectories than my zigzags.
I admire and envy them, of course, but here I am, I
fly since one year and half, I neither consider myself a Pilot. In my
mind this name is related to a sunglassed elegant man being able to
conduct and land aircrafts, and being able to manage serious aspect
of flying and procedures. Quite different than a dusty covered long
haired guy hanging under a coloured spinnaker whose main flight
thecnique is screaming “halloooo !!!” to every children in the
below school with the aim to clam them and finally find himself in
silence, able to be concentrated enough to climb the thermal and
hopefully fly away.
My
new high B wing arrived too late; the season was already too bumpy to
try to go Xc with the new red rocket and it did not fit into my bag,
space for the tent was not there anymore, a new bag design and
construction would have been needed and a new cycle of too many
things to do and too many things to learn was going to start in the
wrong moment. So after a week of troubled mind and collapses with the
new wing I switched back to my
low-porosity-dusty-reddish-ex-white-Yeti.
And
Flying with the Yeti today is like travelling with my Fiat 500 in a
springtime day along the Po river in Italy: air is fresh and colours
are bright. New, small intense green leafs are on the trees, I can
see the flowers and I can smell the cow shit sprayed everywhere on
the fields.... I drive with open windows, so slow that I can nearly
talk to the people cycling on the river embankment. I have time to
appreciate everything. Safe, nice.
While
contemplating the marvellous landscape of the Annapurans I discover
myself too low and I land quite early before Besi Sahar. But is not
because of landscape: Peter's voice from the radio kept talking in my
head all the rest of the 40 km flight, warning me about
over-developments. Other people advise tends to put my psyche in
trouble and doubts sometimes become too big, unmanageable rationally.
This process usually induce me to make mistakes. In-fact some big
clouds are there, but far away, and not dangerous at all, Annapurna
is far now. So ... I suddenly bomb out near a rounded paddy field on
a sunny side slope surrounded by huge red flowered trees populated by
white monkeys, eating bananas. As it happens in the Himalayas I am
nearly in paradise and finally out of the dusty development of
Lakeside suburb. It is warm here, and I have a big smile on my face.
Village grandmamas, having nothing to do all day, are the first to
run to meet me laughing and joking about my lee
side-of-the-house-nearly-falling-to-the-lower-paddy-field landing.
But they are not laughing because of the lee side but because the
next field was a huge flat landing strip with clean smooth earth and
the one I have chosen is full of long hard rice crops and It is
difficult to fold the wing, whose light fabric they appreciate a lot
and inevitably continue to touch and evaluate. The children run away
from the school despite the teacher attempt to hold them and come
greeting me offering flowers. I am touched. They are very different
from the para-beggar children populating the fields surrounding
Pokhara which at every landing run to me polluting my internal sacred
peace with their endless mantra «give me money-give me
chocolate-give me money-give me chocolate ». Here the children run
our of school a second time just to say bye-bye, calling my name
shinily when I pass by, hiking up to next take
off. They are pure kindness and curiosity. W Nepal ! Hike away
from the crowd for a day and you'll' still find simple nice and
sincere people, And hiking here is something related to everyday
life since ever: an old, wise, paved trail leads me up offering rest
areas built in stones, by the ancestors, under the buddha trees that
grew in the best viewpoints.
In
Ghale Gaun I am hosted in a nice micro mud home, warm and amazing
architecture. I am still in the Annapurna Conservation Area, just by
one km but, yes, i have to pay the 20 US fee even if It looks like I
am the first client here. The guard is not able to build a permit and
a receipt, he comes back so many times asking if my personal data are
correct that i get compassionate to him... finally next morning
permit is built, I buy a toothbrush a pen ad go to fly … luckily I
am alone on take off after the guard come to ask a last time if my
birth date is correct and after an inopportune and improbable looking
guy leaves me in peace after having understood that is absolutely
impossible that he can get a free tandem ride on my 22 sq m wing.
Crows are already playing in the air and a vulture starts to fly;
cycles are growing. Time to go !
Readers
of a Paragliding magazine would probably expect descriptions of a
beauty-full 85km flight along the Himalayas slopes in a March sunny
day but i should say I don't remember exactly anything.Views are so
spectacular and emotions are so intense that images are still
randomly roaming around in my brain for all the week later,
sensations are not at all in a linear order and places are neither at
all georeferenced.
I
am only sure that I go east. First was the Annapurnas than Manasulu
and than Ganesh Himal the sacred peaks look at me patiently through
the Tibetan painting shaped clouds, i look at them carefully and
respectfully keeping a reverential distance. The valleys disappear
into the mist on their way to the Indian Plateau. The first day I had
some waypoints on the smartphone but not having rationally programmed
to fly anywhere today I have nothing. But navigation looks easy:
Valleys are all south-north oriented and wind is mainly at beam
reach. it is a matter of climbing the ridge, reach the village, pass
the village, yell “hallooo” to the children in the school, reach
the forest, climb to the pasture lands, pass the rocks on top of the
peak, reach the cloud over the rocks, push out, skip the ridge, cross
to the next valley. And start the process again and again. Orography
repeats itself her, fires are everywhere wind directions are clear.
What is changing are the myriads of micro daily stories that I can
see from my privileged point of view down below in the villages and
in the wildlife. Incredible the amount of inputs that I collect from
here if compared to hiking speed.
Day
ends up because of too much wind to fly with my wing. I land on a
ridge on top of a windy valley just in time to avoid being blown back
in the lee, a lumberman come to greet me happily.
After
a search for spring water, in front of a sunset stunning view from
the tent, I have a muesli and chocolate dinner. I realize that I am
just 30 km from Kathmandu but not in a good position to enter the
valley, my enthusiasm for going east as gonna a bit too far. The
rhythm
of the valleys is changing and i got stuck in a dead end. Valleys get
wider and windy here, and the next day I am not able to find a way
through.
« Che garnè » , « what to do !! this is destiny » in Nepali. There are different levels of flight in this country: illuminates can fly through the world of gods face to face with the high peaks, best pilots can fly broad reach over the inversion in clear air and land to sleep in places where only animals and monks live, I can aspire only to zigzag here and there, battling with valley winds hoping not to make mistakes and sleep with a Shepard as a neighbour. If eventually a mistake happens, valley landing is waiting in the dust down there. My journey finishes on a bus witch takes 2 hours to climb the valley that i ascended in 10 minutes the previous day. It then takes one day to travel the remaining 30 km to Kathmandu. Luckily I did not try to enter Kathmandu from Thrisuly; slopes are covered by unfinished concrete houses with a myriad of metal rods pointing the sky, electric lines are everywhere wind is brutal and airspace is somewhere.
The
bus, full of various humanity and various animals, fades away and
disappears in the polluted blue fog of Kathmandu. Breathing pure
dust, tired, but happy like the last day of school, proud of what I
did, I go straight to Thamel to buy a pair of serious gloves for the
next flight !
Bibo