Gliding into the capital

ISLAMABAD: The exclusive Hawk Adventures Club, which previously only catered to armed forces and other selected clientele, will open its doors to the public in August. The club has been operating since 2002 but was primarily catering to personnel training in the army, navy and air-force, along with foreign delegations and a few adventure societies, such as the Lums Adventure Society.

A number of adventure activities are offered by the Hawk Adventure team, which include paragliding, paramotoring, air safari and skydiving, among others.

Chief Executive Officer of the club, Major Hamid Raza, is now making these sports commercial to popularise them and encourage their participation amongst the masses. “The main aim of our club is to introduce a sports culture to the younger generation,” he said. “The sports would be open to both male and female enthusiasts,” he added.

Membership for the club would be on offer for Rs5000 and the targeted clientele would be from the colleges and universities of the capital.

General Manager Marketing Saad Majid said, “We have chalked out a plan to visit academic institutions first but we would also be looking for young professionals under the age of 35.”

The club is run by ex-army professionals, with no less than 15 years of experience in the field of “air adventure sports”, in which they have trained about 6000 army personnel in paragliding. These individuals have also been trained by instructors from Germany, France, Holland, Italy and Thailand. The club boasts of equipment that is at par with the international standards.

Furthermore, the club has also engaged in a lot of community work. After the earthquake of 2008, the hawk Gliding Club played its part in facilitating the rescue teams sent to far off villages. French pilots were also invited to Pakistan, by the club, to fly paramotors to the affected areas.

“Those with a penchant for air adventure did not know how to reach us previously. We are going commercial for them and it’s a useful skill to learn, as we proved in the post earthquake scenario,” said Majid.

The club previously held their gliding activities in sector E-11 but due to security reasons they have now shifted their base to Khanpur Dam. “Khanpur has fewer distractions; it has good heights and there is water, so we can arrange many different types of activities.”

The club is also importing equipment from Thailand and a plane from UK for skydiving. They will also hire a professional skydiving instructor from UK.

Hawk Adventure Club has sub offices in Peshawar, Chitral and by August the club will officially launch from Islamabad as well as Lahore. After the launch, the club also aims to introduce camping, paintballing, fishing and sailing, along with other activities for its members.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 26^th, 2010.