Gone with the wind

Away from the clutches of his smartphone, pc, social circle, the author paraglides his way to peace ... in Karachi!.

When they strapped me up and told me that it was my turn to go, I started reciting the few prayers I know. I had seen the bearded “head of operations” smoking a cigarette earlier, as he pointed me out to his Pashtun accomplice, his eyes invisible behind dark black sunglasses that covered most of his suntanned face.

Before my very eyes, they had similarly strapped a dozen or so people earlier, most of them teenage boys from a school and a couple of ladies, and hurled them off the cliff. I did not get to see the expression on the lady’s face before me, but I did hear her scream as it pierced the serenity on the cliff. And now, it was my turn; my first experiment with paragliding!

Karachi, the city by the sea, is opening up to a number of adventure sports and activities but paragliding is not one of them as the monsoon winds lasting for over half the year pose a huge risk to paragliding enthusiasts. A dearth of suitable cliffs with appropriate landing areas devoid of hazards, such as powerlines etc, and precarious law and order in some suitable areas such as the infamous Kati Pahari, also contribute towards this shortage of locations.

But when a group from Islamabad offered paragliding opportunities during their upcoming visit to Karachi, I grabbed at the opportunity with both hands.

The site they chose was near Mubarak village. Much like its name, the village is “blessed and bountiful” for fishermen and adventure seekers exploring snorkelling, scuba-diving and angling. Our first “air-field” was a relatively flat piece of ground beyond a 25-foot hill, adjacent to the Hub Creek near Sunehra beach. As if the smoke cascading out of the sky-scraping chimney of Hubco Power Plant across the creek wasn’t indication enough, an air-sock was put up to let us know the direction of the wind.

After a bit of “theory” and “dry” warm-up runs on the ground, one-by-one we were harnessed and made to run with the parachute till it was up and providing a lift. After this, we jumped off the tiny hill. The initial flights lasted only a few seconds and were just to prepare us for the later ones, without too much risk. After all, how badly can a person get hurt if he falls off a two-storey-high building onto, notwithstanding rocks, unpaved ground! I still recall my rude but extempore/spontaneous laughter when the first person to take the jump shouted after his five to six second flight “Buss??!!” One of his buddies was even more non-discreet and blurted out “Abey kya duniya ka chakkar lagaye ga!”

After the initial training jumps, we headed to the final site of the day. With all the cars, mostly saloons, neatly parked there, the off-road terrain looked like a corporate parking lot rather than the wilderness. This second cliff was around 80 to 100 feet high with a steady breeze blowing in from the Arabian Sea, which was visible beyond the village.

We were informed that since the height of the take-off site is not much and the breeze blowing in is not too strong either, in order to provide an enjoyable experience, the weight of the backpacks has been reduced by removing the extra protective cushions and reserve parachute! Some reassurance!

The experts started off with the light-weights first and a skinny girl was chosen as the “test-pilot”. The “head of operations” thought the girl was too light and might end up “gone with the wind” so a few bottles of water were added to her backpack to increase the weight. I wondered why they didn’t just put the reserve parachute back.

When it was my turn, the paraglider had to haul a jumbo size weight, so we had a couple of dry-runs before I finally managed to lift off. Somewhere down the line in your life, you learn to let go, and this was just one of those times. All of a sudden, the realisation hits you that you are finally airborne and as a gust of oncoming wind takes you higher, you feel a sudden rush of blood, a moment’s hesitation, for in your decades of age, you are doing something for the very first time. You were too young to remember your first step when you learnt to walk. By the time you learn how to swim, you probably have had a few experiences where on a picnic a wave lifted you off your feet and you came rushing to your parents, shouting that you have learnt how to swim.

But this is different. You’re grown up and know fully well the significance of this transformation. Before this, you are a “being” familiar with a two-dimensional mode of movement — a left-right-straight-and-back routine. Now, one discovers the three-dimensional world that it really is. The addition of “up and down” to the navigational jargon also adds the possibility of “wwwaay waay down — and quick”. Yes, it is strange, giving yourself up to the thin cords of a man-made fibre, which in turn is at the total disposal of the forces of nature, wind, heat from the sun and at that moment, the most fearsome of them all, gravity! Even after the realisation hits you, you keep hoping that the “gravity” of the situation doesn’t!

For the first five seconds or so, I could hear instructions and precautions being hurled at me by the safety crew on the cliff. For the next five seconds, warnings followed along with what I believe could have been a few expletives, for ignoring the instructions, precaution and warnings sent earlier. And then, it really didn’t matter because I was out of reach!

It was my own few moments of peace, away from cell phones and laptops and social media websites. It was good that there was no walkie-talkie to communicate with the instructor, despite a commitment. In fact, it was a blessing in disguise. Who’d want to contaminate “this” peace with the coarse voice of the instructor more keen on getting you to land safely and quickly rather than letting you “explore the world anew” — which is the point of the whole activity.

After an immensely pleasurable time, I realised that if I went any farther, I’d have to turn back “with the wind” towards the landing zone. The technicalities of “flying with the wind” were something that the experts had kept to themselves. Earlier, I had put my own name and number in the “contact in case of emergencies” field in the release form, so I decided not to experiment further and swerved right towards the far end of the safe landing zone.

I would not call the feeling of getting my feet back on the ground a ground-breaking experience, but it sure was an eye-opener for me. We casually flip over the pages of National Geographic and switch through adventure channels at leisure, but now I could better appreciate the amount of training, equipment and sheer hard work that goes behind the smoothly edited pictures and videos that make us go “Wow! I’d like to do that for a living!” It also reminded me of patangbazi from my younger years when I used to wonder what it would feel like to ride a kite, if one could.

Although I would not like to paraglide every day for a living, riding my own kite was definitely an exhilarating experience that I’d love to relive.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, October 28^th, 2012.

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