towards the end

The countdown has started. After six and a half months (even I can’t believe it’s been this long) it is getting near the time to depart.

Today I moved out of the apartment that I have been calling home for half a year and into a cheap hotel. Well its 100 rupees a night less than I was paying for a two bed apartment, so it’s all relative. Mind you the garden looks nice.

“Andrew” I hear you say “sod the hotel and tell me about the paragliding”
“Glad you asked”

The paragliding here has been for the last 6 weeks, for me at least, a scary nervous experience. The sky conditions have been turbulent, gnarly, ragged, punchy and keen to over develop. The flights have been on the most part short, I’m talking 15 to 20 minutes at a time. However, during those minutes I am learning a lot, mostly how nervous I am. On the Brightside my take offs and landings are really good. On one flight I had a 30% collapse, it was quite a small run of the mill affair for most people but for me it was HUGE. I was “lucky enough” to watch it all happen it what seemed to be very slow motion.

To calm down and soothe my frayed ego I usually end up at Maya Devi for the rest of the afternoon enjoying a cheeky cold beer or two. Strangely, I was not the only one.

There are still many places in Nepal I wouldn’t mind seeing but I can’t really be arsed if the truth be told…I want to go diving!!! At least 30m under the water I know what I am doing because 1000m above the ground I ain’t so sure

So the countdown has started but I need a bigger bag and then I still have to throw away half of my possessions….

All in all I have enjoyed my time here running off the sides of a perfectly good mountain, flying in thermals with wild eagles for company, annoying Ragu at Maya Devi on the apparent warmth of the beer on any given afternoon and generally just trying not to let the 16 hour a day power cuts get to me.


Thanks go to:

Adam for teaching me how to fly
John, Mike, little Matt, Michele, Carlos, Helena, Julian, Pete Bella, big Matt, Graham and various others for all those helpful hints; some of them were even about flying
Jen for making sure that amongst other things chocolate brownies were on the menu
Ragu for understanding what my hand signal meant every afternoon
All the people on my course, has anyone been flying since?
All those crazy acro boys and girls…it will never happen okay!
Sebastian for trying to teach me how to thermal
The barmaid whose name I can never remember
That old guy I went passed everyday who always tried to sell me drugs unsuccessfully for 6 months

And who could forget the “Kat in the hat” and the “umbrella lady”