Paragliding Course, India

Temple Pilots, Kamshet The day started early. You have to be at the school by six in the morning, and I sleep in an Airbnb a 25-minute walk away, so I am up very early every day. Kamshet sits on the edge of the Deccan plateau, where the high ground breaks away to the plain, and that is the whole story of the place: wind coming off the plain has to climb that wall, and the air it pushes up is what holds you there. The season opens in October, once the monsoon is done. And the first thing worth knowing — a paraglider is not a parachute. A parachute slows a fall. This is a wing: it has an aerofoil section, it fills with air through openings along its leading edge, and it generates lift. You hang beneath it in a harness and steer it with two lines, one in each hand. You do not start in the air. You start with ground handling. You learn to bring the wing up, hold it steady overhead, feel which way it is starting to run, and pull it back to centre. It looks dull, and it is the thing that keeps you alive later. At the end of the day we worked in the simulator harness. That is where I met Samuel — 23, about to start a master's, and fresh off two months in the Andamans where he became a divemaster. We went back, ate, and played chess.

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Kamshet — training hill Breakfast at the club and straight out, about twenty minutes' drive to the training hill. They gave us radios. This is not a beginner's accessory, it is safety kit that has to be there always, at every level. An instructor stands below and watches you side-on, from an angle you cannot see yourself from, and talks into your ear as you go. We carried on with ground handling, then went a little higher — this time on a slope steep enough. You need steep because a wing only starts flying above a certain speed, and only a steep descent lets you build that speed before the hill runs out. I managed a few seconds in the air. It is a bit nerve-racking. It feels like you are about to land on your face at any second. But it is also a genuinely fun, freeing feeling. We worked until ten in the morning, which felt like forever. Then back to the club, lunch, and drills for tomorrow — moving into the seated position, getting properly into the harness instead of hanging off it.

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Kamshet — training hill After two days on the ground, the next step is bunny hops: running down a low hill until the wing picks you up a few metres, then landing straight away. And today I already had a flight on my own. Only the third day of the course. It might look frightening to some people, but with all the drills you build up experience and confidence, and then you feel far more comfortable up there. And anyway, flying is the easy part. The two hard parts are the launch and the landing. On launch you need a lot of force and control to get the wing off the ground. It is lying flat behind you, and you pull it up until it fills with air and settles overhead. Only then do you run. Landing looks easy and it is the most complicated thing there is. Your hands are high for the whole flight, and in the last seconds you bring both of them all the way down — the move is called the flare. The wing trades its speed for a stop for a moment, and you touch down on your feet instead of hitting the ground. Too early and you stop in the air and drop the last metre; too late and you arrive at flying speed. Two or three metres above the ground, exactly. Afterwards I finally got to the supermarket, did laundry, and tracked down a SIM. I did not think that would be one of the complicated things in India.

Kamshet — training hill After four days they finally let us do a real flight, about thirty metres above the ground. I still need some help at the start, mostly with the initial lift of the wing. But the flight itself is simple, and not really frightening. You feel a lot of confidence and a lot of control. As someone who used to be afraid of heights, I was sure this would be the part that got to me. Now I am sure that is behind me. And maybe that is the point. At thirty metres, hanging under a wing you are flying, it does not register the way standing at a railing does. There is no edge and no distance to fall down — there is an aircraft you are operating. The landings still need work; I want them softer. But one stage of the course is done. From here it is only higher, and we start learning manoeuvres.

Kamshet One of the new things today was kiting. Kiting is flying the wing without leaving the ground. You stand in a flat field, bring it up overhead and hold it there — walking with it, turning it, letting it down and bringing it back. The wind does the work and the wing really is flying; you just stay below. That is where the feel comes from, knowing what the wing is about to do before it does it. We also did a lot of simulator work — a harness hung in a metal frame, where you practise getting into and out of the seat without being in the air. It sounds small, but the moment you sit down is exactly the moment you are busiest, so you drill it until it is automatic. Seven flights today. The volume is part of the learning; every lap is another launch and another landing to fix.

Kamshet Only the sixth day of the course, and you can already feel the progress. Until now the instructors have helped a lot on the launches. The goal now is independence — getting the wing up and getting yourself going before you start flying. One of the hardest things is the launch. There is usually a strong wind and you have to apply pressure precisely. Not too hard, or the wing overshoots you and collapses forward; not too soft, or it never comes up at all. Today the help was minimal. They are starting to trust us and give us another free hand. Tomorrow, hopefully, a high site, flying with an instructor who will talk me through all the small things in the air, turns included.

Kamshet — high site We finally moved off the low hills to a site you fly from at real height. Until now we had been flying, but not really. I was about two hundred metres up, and the first flight lasted around ten minutes. I have to say it looks far more frightening from outside than it feels from inside. All the previous days built enough confidence that I could simply enjoy the whole way down. And that is exactly the word — down. Two hundred metres and ten minutes is a glide: the wing is descending the whole time, and only your starting height decides how long you have. To stay up longer you need to find air rising faster than you are sinking. From here it is much more theory, air currents, and the start of the manoeuvres.

Kamshet — high site Three high flights today, and they started teaching us soaring. The idea is simple. When wind hits a ridge it is forced up and over it, and a band of rising air forms along the ridge. Fly inside that band and the air lifts you at the same rate the wing sinks, so you hold your height. From there you can run back and forth along the ridge for as long as the wind blows. That is the difference between a ten-minute flight and an hour. For the first time you are not only asking where to land. You start asking where the good air is. We practised it with an instructor talking us through everything so we would feel safe. They still help a little with the wing and give instructions on the radio, but tomorrow's goal is clear: do the whole thing alone, launch to landing.

Girlfriend, Kamshet Another day at Girlfriend, our first high site. We try to get there as early as we can, because by ten or eleven the wind is already too strong for us. The sun warms the ground through the morning, the air starts moving, and the further into the day you get the rougher it becomes. So we aim to be there by seven, for a window of a few hours. Today, the first flight start to finish: preparation, launch, flying it, landing — with nobody standing next to me correcting anything. The landing came out really well too. It was one of the first days where I felt I was not just following instructions but starting to understand what I was doing.

Kamshet — new site Every time you arrive at a new site, you start at the landing field. That sounds backwards, and it is deliberate. The landing field is the one place you have to be able to reach, so you plan everything else backwards from it: obstacles, wind direction, where you want to come in and where you do not. Only then do you go up to launch, check the wind speed and where it is coming from, and decide whether the conditions are right. It sounds like a small thing, but it is one of the important lessons of the course. A flight does not begin when you run with the wing. It begins when you read the site.

Kamshet I am about to finish the second level. I bring the wing up on my own now, without the instructors. From here on, what they want to see is manoeuvres in the air. Three main ones: Big Ears, pitch and roll. Big Ears is folding the wingtips in on purpose — it cuts your area and brings you down faster. Pitch is the wing swinging forward and back relative to you, and roll is the swing from side to side. The point is to control the wing better. When wind moves you side to side, say, or starts throwing you hard forward and back, you have to know how to get control back — and stay comfortable while you do it. That is also why they teach it now rather than later: these are exactly the three that get examined further on. At the end of the day Samuel and another friend came over for a meal. And I just enjoy meeting more people every day.

Celebrity Hill, Kamshet We got to a new site called Celebrity Hill. Not especially high, but the landing area there is far less forgiving — a slope, rocks, and less room to be wrong. The goal was precision. You cannot just aim for the middle of a field and be done: you pick a spot, hold your speed, and time the flare on a gradient rather than on the flat. We went out very early, so we took breakfast with us and ate it at the site. Around this point APPI 1 Discover came through as well. APPI is the international body I did the ratings through, and Discover is the first level: a minimum of three course days, a full day of ground handling, and a theory exam. So what does it actually give you? Not independence. At this level you are a student — flying under instructor supervision, on the radio, with a reserve on every high flight. And a note that applies to all the levels from here: the dates in the APPI system are the dates the instructors entered the approval, not the days I passed it. They uploaded them late.

Kamshet Two sessions today. In the morning we learned the reverse launch. On a normal launch you stand with your back to the wing and run forward. On a reverse you face it, bring it up while you can see it, and only once it is stable overhead do you turn and run. That is exactly the advantage: if there is wind it is far easier to see whether one side is coming up faster and fix it before you commit. In the evening we drove 4×4 to another site. And my landings have really improved. I am placing myself much better. There is nothing more satisfying than landing on the yellow spot, the marker laid out in the middle of the landing field.

Temple Pilots, Kamshet APPI 2 Explore came through around here. The level needs ten course days in total, a theory exam, and at least ten supervised high flights — not a hop off a hill, but a launch from a ridge down to a landing field below. So what does it give you? Still not independence: you carry on flying supervised and on the radio. The difference is that far more is expected of you — turning up prepared, sorting yourself out, and running the flight without someone managing every move. And this is the day to say that the course is not only a morning in the air. Most days come in two halves, and after the practical there is classroom work. We got booklets on weather, flying technique, and everything that can go wrong in the air. We also learn a lot about cloud types. A cloud is the only part of the air you can see with your eyes. It marks where air rose, how fast, and how far. One kind over a ridge says there is nice rising air there; another says that in an hour this will turn violent. In the end, if you want to fly alone, knowing how to move the wing is not enough. You have to be able to read the day and decide whether to go out at all.

Girlfriend, Kamshet The Dynamic soaring rating came through today. It is not an APPI level in itself but a separate certification you need on the way to the advanced ones. Dynamic soaring is using the air pushed up when wind hits a ridge, and staying up with no thermals at all. So what does it give you? It says the instructors have seen that I can launch, fly and handle myself in ridge soaring conditions safely, including in stronger wind. The training emphasises exactly those two things: launch techniques in steady wind, and what you need to know about flying in strong wind and its risks. The second of the two is called Thermalling, and it is a different world: not wind pushed up a ridge but warm air rising off the ground. There you learn to read the mountain itself, to control pitch and collapses, and to land on a U-shaped approach. I only did that one later. Without one of the two there is no APPI 3, and APPI 4 needs both. Most mornings we are flying by seven, after an hour's drive and breakfast, and the first flight is almost always at sunrise. Three flights at Girlfriend today. And if anyone is thinking of a course like this — come fit. At a lot of the sites you walk up with all the kit on your back, sometimes several times in the same day, after getting up at half five.

Kamshet The first time on the course that the wind was strong enough that most of the group could not go out. There was a man there who could barely make forward progress. After waiting about two hours, me and one other person who both weigh a fair amount managed to get a flight. Everyone else took their kit back down in the vehicle. It sounds strange that weight decides who flies, but that is exactly what happens. It is called wing loading. A wing carrying more weight has to fly faster to hold itself up, and when the wind is against you what decides whether you make progress or get pushed backwards is the difference between your speed and the wind's. It was a good lesson in there being no such thing as "good weather" in general. The same conditions can suit one pilot and not another. On the way back some roads were closed and we were stuck for a while, but the instructors got us out. And in the coming days we have an exam.

Kamshet Still preparing for the practical exam, and the thing they are toughest about is everything that happens before your feet leave the ground. You go through a fixed order: harness, connections, lines, wing, radio. Alongside that you have to know the wind direction and what is forecast for the next hour. A small mistake at this stage is critical. The moment your feet leave the ground, anything you forgot stays forgotten. They want to see you run the same process on every flight, even once you feel confident — because when there is no instructor beside you, there is nobody to remind you. The course is starting to shift from working on technique to working on judgement.

Tower Hill, Kamshet A double session today. In the morning we went back to ground handling and added slalom running — running with the wing overhead while weaving left and right. It forces you to place your body correctly under the wing. Mostly it is not something you will actually use, but it gives you a lot more confidence. In the evening we went to Tower Hill. It is the highest site we have in the area, and my favourite, because you can stay up the longest there. The one downside is that there are a lot of pilots there, and that brings traffic rules into it. Exactly like a road: who gives way, how you pass each other head-on, and which way you turn. Air with ten wings in it is not a place you fly alone. I carried on with practice exams, and by the end of the day I was managing every task entirely on my own.

Tower Hill, Kamshet Some of the Indian friends from the course wanted me to make them Israeli food, so obviously I made shakshuka. That is one of the things I like about stretches like this: you turn up to learn something new, and suddenly you are cooking for a group you met two weeks ago. On the flying side I carried on with mock exams. And today we also tried a top landing — landing exactly where we launched, up top, instead of coming down to the field. It takes a wide enough open area and precise control of height and speed, because you are coming back into the same place with the wind, the wings and the people in it. This is the only site in the area where you can do it. Another step from "I can land" to "I can choose where and how to land".

Temple Pilots, Kamshet By now there is a routine, and it is probably the thing that best explains what a course like this actually looks like. Up at half five, at the base by six, on the road by quarter past. There are six or seven sites in the area and which one depends on the weather — most of them need a walk in as well. You get there between seven and eight and wait for the right window. By eleven we are on the way back, and we debrief everything we went through. Half twelve is lunch at the club, then a short nap, and at half two theory classes. On days without a class you study on your own. At half five I am in the gym with the guys. By eight, after a shower, I either cook myself dinner or order something. And then there is a decent amount of time to sleep, because tomorrow starts again before sunrise. And yes, today I also had my first puncture. On the way back we stopped for local snacks.

Kamshet On 24 December the weather made flying impossible. After nearly three weeks where every day was built around a launch and a landing, it was a plain reminder: however much you want to fly, if the conditions are wrong you stay on the ground. The days after that kept demanding patience too. There were windows we could go out in, but for the exam I needed not just to launch but to gain enough height to perform the manoeuvres. And the height is not a whim. You cannot do these too close to the ridge or too low, because they put the wing into a collapse deliberately, and if it does not recover you need enough air beneath you to sort it out before the ground. The manoeuvres are the same three we learned on 14 December: an induced collapse and the recovery from it, controlling a hard side-to-side swing, and controlling a hard swing forward and back. These are things that happen fairly often, especially when you fly in less than ideal conditions. Only on the third day did I get enough height, and I passed the club's exam. That means I can now fly on my own at sites where I am there with instructors. Then we drove out to a really good Western restaurant, me and a guy I had been with for twenty days by then.

Kamshet Yesterday morning I did not fly, but the conditions improved in the afternoon and we went out. And today the third level came through. This is the stage where you actually become a pilot. APPI 3 needs at least fifteen course days, thirty supervised high flights signed off in the logbook, one of the two soaring certifications, and two exams — theory and practical. And the theory is not trivia. Weather, the mechanics of flight, air law and equipment; plus the part they call the mental side — risk management, evaluating yourself honestly, and planning your own progression. So what does it give you? It is the first time APPI lets you fly fully independently — but at your learning site. You no longer need an instructor running the flight over the radio. At new sites you are still advised to go somewhere an APPI school, or someone who knows the place, can help. I took the practical twice. The first time there was not enough wind and I could not stay up long enough to complete the manoeuvres. Reading the weather is a big part of the exam itself, so I worked on that before the second attempt, and in the meantime just kept flying and building experience until I saw that today was the day. Instead of finishing in 20 days I carried on for another five — and started building experience towards the P4.

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Kamshet The day after APPI 3, and something small has changed: not every flight has to be training any more. Now that the third level is done I am allowed to fly with the cameras, the GoPro and the Insta360. Until now it was not allowed, and rightly: a camera on a pole is one hand fewer, and when all your attention needs to be on the wing that is not the place for it. It is also the day I filmed the most on the whole course. After three weeks of only seeing this from the inside, suddenly you can lift your head, look around, and start recording it. It made me appreciate the school more, too. It is very professional and very conservative — they do not move you up a rating until they are completely sure of you. In the end this is an extreme sport, and you have to know how to work with the conditions in front of you.

Bonelli's Point, Kamshet These days are less about learning a new manoeuvre and more about putting real time in the air. Today I flew two hours and five minutes — my longest yet. And it went nowhere, which is exactly the point. 49.5 kilometres of flying inside a box a mile and a half across, back and forth along the same ridge, 135 passes. I launched at 921 metres, got to 1,286, and landed at sunset. That was the moment I understood what dynamic soaring actually gives you. At the start of the course ten minutes felt like a long flight; now I can be up for two hours and choose when to stop. And that night we saw in the New Year at the club, Indian style — dancing and a lot of games. I never pictured celebrating it like that, but it is the best present I could have given myself.

Kamshet — several sites From here to the final exam the course changes. Less of something new every day, and more repeating the same things until they are second nature. Between 1 and 11 January I got 19 flights and over ten hours in the air, at four sites: Tower Hill, Bonelli's Point, Shelar Site and Shinde Training Hill. Which is exactly what APPI 4 needs: at least 50 flights, 30 hours and three different sites, on top of APPI 3 and both certifications. One of the standout days was 6 January — two hours three minutes at Tower Hill. But most days were not dramatic, and that is the point. Experience is built out of a lot of ordinary flights. In this stretch I also learned to respect the weather more. There were days we turned up, waited, and in the end did not fly. People more experienced than me told me they once drove out for a whole week of flying with the club and waited the entire week without flying a single day. If there is doubt, there is no reason to take the risk.

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Tower Hill, Kamshet I came to the exam with more than thirty hours of flying behind me in a month and a bit, and I genuinely felt sure of myself. I had learned a huge amount from people who are professionals at this, and I turned up with a lot of confidence. The first stage was not flying at all. Reading the site and the weather: wind speed, direction, what the conditions are doing and what is coming in the next hour. Then I got the wing ready and waited for the right moment. That is the part that takes the most experience. A second too early and the wind is still too light — you will not gain height, and without height there are no manoeuvres, and that is a fail on the spot. A second too late and the wind is already too strong. I worked on it every day, and kept asking people more experienced than me how they read that moment. Before launching we did a BeSafe check — going over every line and system again to see that it all works and is connected. Verification on top of what you already checked. The smallest mistake in that check is a fail on the spot. And that is one of the best things I took from them: however much experience you have, stay attentive, stay humble, keep learning, and keep going back to basics. The flight itself was excellent, one of the most enjoyable I have had. I did the manoeuvres easily and then simply stayed up because it was fun. At the end I had to fly a proper landing approach and land within a fifteen-metre radius of the target — not up top where I launched, but in a separate landing area. I passed first time. And that same day turned into my longest flight of the whole course: two hours ten. And this is the level the whole course was built towards for me. APPI 4 is the level where you may fly fully independently, including away from the site you trained at, and rent equipment. At level 3 you are still not a fully independent pilot. Its exam is also built differently: there is no fixed list of manoeuvres, the instructor simply assesses how mature and autonomous you are in different environments. That is what I wanted from the start, because my aim is to fly in the Alps and in the Himalaya, and not to depend on an instructor every time.

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Shelar Site → Ghonshet, Kamshet After the exam I had two days left, and this time I flew purely for the fun of it. On 13 January I did four flights at three sites. And on the last day I went from Shelar Site towards Ghonshet — an hour and twelve minutes, and by the logbook the longest-distance flight of my course. I finished with 65 flights and 33 hours 31 minutes in the air, on the same Ozone Element, from nine different launch sites around Kamshet. It is a strange place to stop, right at the point where it all starts to feel natural. Six weeks ago I did not know how to lift a wing off the ground. The final approvals in the APPI system were only entered later, when I was already in Nepal on the yoga course — and the same day APPI 5 opened for me. But the real end was here: the last flight, the landing, and folding the wing away one more time before the next thing.

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