Training Camp
Sri Lanka - June 2001

Invited by Ella Resorts to train some of their staff and guests and to study the pg potential of the central highland region. Friends & family were apprehensive about this trip due to the volatile situation on this beautiful country. But we were eager to take the opportunity to visit the legendary emerald island. Located 7 hours out of Colombo, the road to Ella winds through lush forests, tea plantations and elephant country. The area was flyable with roads leading up to clean takeoffs with glides down to the plains below and the only hazard being having to trek back up through elephant country if one did not have retrieval planned. Within a day of scouting we found a great training hill and began training the first batch of students. We also made a trip to Kandy the home of the temple of Buddha’s tooth relic and though it had immense flying possibilities there were security restrictions. It was a memorable experience. One that we will never forget. Weeks after our return Colombo airport was bombed and a large part of the Air Lanka fleet damaged.

Free Flying in Turkey
Turkey – July 2000

Oludinez and Babadag are familiar names to paraglider pilots the world over. Known as one of the best sites in the world with takeoff at 1969 m, perfect for SIV courses, with a beautiful beach to land on and all the tourist trappings of a seaside resort thrown in. This trip was dedicated to the pleasure of flying and learning. We paid homage to Babadag the father mountain, the blue skies, the sea & sands of Oludinez famed among the world PG community as the Saint Tropez of Turkey. 10 days of free flying and practising maneuvers high over the ocean. Met up with old friends, made some new ones and had a great time. Babadag we will be back, we’ve made a promise to return.

Checkout Turkey flying experience

Training Camp
Goa, India – December 1999

Goa – International travelers paradise& Millennium party destination. People from all over the world had flocked here to celebrate and the beaches were buzzing with excitement. With a lot of help from Rob & Debbs we set up shop on the beach and enticed a number of people to sample free flight. Six weeks of training & flying in idyllic Arambol. Sun, sand, surf and steady ocean breezes during the day and cool hangouts to look forward to after sunset. Lazy mornings on the beach, pilots bask in the sun and eventually head uphill to rise above the heat and soar on steady winds. After endless days of easy flying we began to get restless. We squeezed in an exploratory day trip to Vengurla and Amboli across the border into Maharashtra. Lulled by the calm winds, the sea and the surf, but tired of the sand in our wings and the easy flying we drifted back towards the heated plains and hillsides of Kamshet to indulge in more challenging wing activity.

For more about flying at Goa check out Jon’s descriptive write up on the site.

Training Camp
Bangalore, Karnataka, India – October 1999

Nirvana Adventures held a pioneering flying camp in Bangalore on public demand and conducted P1 courses for a number of PG enthusiasts. Training complete we checked out Nandi Hills and to our delight found it to be a great site to fly, with strong thermals abounding in the flatlands for miles round. We can safely assume that we were the first to fly from this awesome site (not counting the free fall of the enemies of Tipu Sultan a famed ruler of the region in the 1700’s who was known to hurl his enemies off this very rock face) Some of our Bangalore P1 students came to Kamshet within a few months to do a P2 course and acquire their own wings. We thus became responsible for setting up a nascent PG community in the garden city. Kenneth Pelander from Finland and Jon Garton from Australia were the first couple of pilots we sent in the Nandi direction. Since then we have facilitated a number of pilots flying trips in the south having put them in touch with Nirvana Pilots there.

For more about flying at Nandi Hills check out Jon’s descriptive write up on the site.

Exploration and free flying trip
Ratnagiri, Maharashtra, India – April 1998

This was a case where ‘going on a trip, must take wing along’ paid off big time. A wedding in Pendurkar’s hometown took us down the coast to Malvan, a beautiful seaside district in Maharashtra. Amidst the traditional festivities that went on for seven whole days we slipped out to explore the cliffs by the sea and were rewarded with laminar winds and hours of soaring over blue seas over desolate cliffs and white sandy beaches with only the busy swifts and a startled hornbill for company. We had no pictures to show for this memorable trip since the only camera we had leapt to a watery grave. This site is a convenient stopover when travelling down the coast.