From Cuba to Socotra: Inside the World’s Most Unique Paragliding Tours

Welcome back to Paragliding Atlas Podcast. I'm your host Aninder Singh, and today a very special guest is joining me. The reason why I say that is because I have a very special announcement to make and that is Paragliding Atlas would like to invite you on the most exotic tours available in our sport to the most exotic places available on this planet. And why I say we have a very special guest because there is somebody who has been there, done that and inspired some of us to do the same. I'm talking about none other than Chris Garcia. I hope I got your name correct my man Did I?

Yeah, yes, absolutely. All right, buddy, thank you so much for joining me. You are the owner of Convergence Para Lighting, which has got a super cool logo I believe. Please tell us about you and how do you make so much awesomeness in the world of para lighting? Awesome. Thanks so much for having me and in there, yeah, I, I started conversions paragliding in 2023. And the start really impetus for this whole thing was that I'd always wanted to run a paragliding tour in Cuba. My my father's from there. I have close ties on the island still and, and years ago I was developing sea kayak tours there, cycling tours, walking

tours. And so my natural background coming from the adventure travel industry. And once I fell into paragliding, all roads started pointing me into this direction of having a travel company. And I did not think it was going to grow to what it is today in a short amount of time. But yeah, Cuba was really the impetus for it, and that's what kind of kicked me off on starting to go to unique places that are going to connect people in a unique way to those destinations. Cool. All right, Chris, when it comes to exploring, you know, there's something about exploring new places with your tribe and that is why I have been very

fascinated by, you know, sharing my passion with others because vibing with your tribe is what life is all about, right? Like, like you chase similar feelings and you chase endorphins in a similar way and that kind of creates shared value for everyone and you end up spreading smiles. So how did the idea, you know, as you said from the onset, you kind of were very curious about making tours in the industry, which is not the usual go do thing for any paraglider pilot, because a lot of them are more than happy just with the part of flying. But I, I can relate it to relate to this mindset a lot. And I, I want our listeners to

know the, the ideology that both of us have, I would say for this. Yeah, I think that there's, obviously I'm passionate about paragliding, but I'm also passionate about travel and having the background that I did in the adventure of travel industry for so long. The the company that I worked with, they instilled a few important things. And one of those was making sure that people felt like they were connected to the resource where they're going. And so often when we travel, especially as pilots, we're really concerned about how far we're flying, how long we're in the air. And yes, that stuff is valid. It's important and we can learn,

especially on on tours and clinics with the right people. But we're just passing through space, right? We're just, we're flying through, we're not really getting a sense of what it's like to be there. And you, you take the 2 classic examples, I would say would be like Via and then Columbia in the winter time. You know, any time that I've gone there, when I go, I have a great time. I fly a ton and I hang out with my friends, but I hang out with my same friends that I see back home in the States, right? And again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's great to travel with

friends and share those experiences. But sometimes I would leave was I even in Columbia? And sure, you can have you get the local retrieve scene, you land out. It's definitely an adventure. But then we go back to our bubbles. And sometimes I think that not only growing as a pilot in terms of our skill set, but we should be trying to grow as a traveler as human as well. And putting people in situations where they have at least the opportunity to do that if they want to. Yeah, I I feel this so relatable because I think last year that is when I probably met you or

somebody from your from your company at Carrio launch in Kenya where whosoever it was was very kind to give me my take off video which I bragged about on Instagram later that day. But it was like just going to Kenya itself was such a cool experience. And I mean, just to let the listeners know, I was not with Convergence. I was with a whole different tour run by Sky Nomad, which is again, one of those, you know, guys who who runs a very cool exploration company. And it was nice not just flying for the sake of flying and flying for the sake of exploration where you are able to see the world from above.

And then once you're done that you're still curious to go out and explore it on the ground because a lot of times, you know, it's like paragliding is maybe kind of a tunnel vision thing that you get so absorbed in the epic stimuli that you're a part of. I'm not going to lie. Like it's like such a huge blessing that as humans, you get to see a bird's eye view and do that for hours and days or like have goals and, you know, things to to kind of accomplish. But a lot of times we do forget that how amazing it is to be a man or like a mankind that you can walk and still explore the

planet that way. And intertwining both of these deliverables and exploring remote places is like, it just blows my mind. And it's like, how much more fun can life do that when you add the fun factor of doing with people who are chasing the same endorphins as I said earlier. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's, but again, it's these types of tours, they're not for everyone. Some pilots are more they're focused on the numbers side of thing, which is totally fine. It's a noble pursuit as well, but some folks when they go on a flying vacation, it's also a vacation. It's not supposed to be this kind of pressure cooker of having to perform.

And so by going to these unique places, it takes a little bit less of the pressure off flying of maybe you have bad weather, maybe the conditions are marginal or you don't have the skill set for it. And there's so many other things to do on the ground that it's, oh, yeah, you know what? Today it's not a big deal. I'm not going to fly. I'm going to go to Africa's first locally owned elephant orphanage and see how they bring elephants up from babies who have been abandoned and then reintroduce them into the wild. So there's tons of stuff to do out there other than just fly.

Yeah, there's numbers game is pretty fun, but like just adding more pluses to it or more deliverables. But I'm curious what kind of pilots are usually the target audience for this? And of course, I'm asking for myself, but for the listeners who are like curious if this is these kind of tours are for them, Like how do their flying type or you can say flying trajectory looks like in their lives that they know that they can have fun on these kind of tours? Yeah, I think we take the pilots of wide variety skill sets. I've had folks come who've just gotten their beginner license or their P2 known in the US and

I've taken pilots who have thousands of hours. One of the things that we really try to focus on is that we have a small guide to guest ratio. And so we'll run with three to one or sometimes 2:00 to 1:00. And we run small group sizes as well. Some of our some of our bigger tours, Kenya, Bhutan, Socotra will limit those to maybe four people, sometimes 6 at most depending. But then something in like Cuba, for example, we might have as many as 9, but we always have enough staff on hand that we can break the groups up as needed. So no one ever feels like

they're holding anyone back and no one ever feel they're being held back. And again, it's a paragliding company. We want to fly, we're here to fly. And if the day presents itself that we can actually go out there and send it. We do, but sometimes we don't and we keep it easy, we can work on. Again, it depends on the destination and what we can do. Like the classic example of one that's been more XC and skills focused over the last few years is our Macedonia tour. So I partnered up when I first started conversions with Martin Jovanowski. He's the local legend there and Khrychevo and Martin's been just

such a great addition to the team. And we really dive in on, you know, whether it's route planning or route choices throughout the day over there in Khrychevo or working on more of the technical side of things in terms of thermaling. And we've had pilots who are brand new P twos show up on that trip and pilots who have thousands of hours again, who are learning in the same format side by side from another. Yeah man, flying is is fun, no matter at what hour limit it comes in in different like when it comes to learning is what is what I meant to say. But yeah, Cruciva is Mecca of racing is one way to put it.

But just exploring the nitiquities of flying a paraglider because of the possibilities that it offers you. Flatland, mountains, gusts, normal conditions, everything the place throws quite a fun mix at you every time you take this kind of. Absolutely. And that's been Christian has been a popular destination for quite a while now, especially in the European and there's been plenty of operators over there for a while. But on the American side of things, there really wasn't anybody going there to run proper tours. And so that's why I started off of Macedonia. And what was that? July of 2023 was the first tour that I ran. And the reason I picked that was 1.

I had a little bit of a relationship with Martin Reddy and knew the insurance and outs there from having raced there from a few years ago, and I had to find a way to be able to fund my reconnaissance trip to go to Cuba and set the whole thing up there. So that's what kind of ended up snowballing from Macedonia and then to Morocco and then right into Cuba. It's all about getting the momentum, then everything else just figures itself out. So I'm hoping to jump on a similar bandwagon when I start my journey in this, which is fairly soon. Any anytime now when I fix my you can send numbers in the bank

account to to get it going because that is 1 commonality that anybody who flies can relate to. Yes, it's not easy to make it in the sport. There are those of us who do. And yeah, it's, it's a grind like anything, right? It's, I think it's a very fun job that we have, but it's still a job at the end of the day and it takes time and effort. You know how I look at it is that of course you can find 100 reasons to whine about it, but it's buddy. It's either this or sitting behind a 15 inch screen for a nine to five or someone else

who's just paying you to give up your time. So you have two options. Which one do you want to whine about? OK, I'll happily take the flying part. 100%. Yeah. Well, Chris, three years, man, that's insane With the amount of offerings that you have. Is there like some things that you have done that you notice or? OK, I can say that this could be a bit of like curiosity of mine because I want to be a part of the tribe and grow the whole thing as well. Of course there are one things running professionally, doing everything by the book and making sure you're not slacking off, but just being able to grow

in a safe manner, which is the paramount in any sort of flying activity and still keep pushing the bar when it comes to exploration. Some sort of mantra. What is your go to thing that that allows you to scale on on that level? Yeah, I think, you know, first, no, no tour is really complete without the heartbeat of it. And the heartbeat of it is our local staff in in places where there are local pilots, they take Cuba or even using Martin and Macedonia, for example, connecting with them, making sure that we have them on board and that they feel that they're a part of the whole thing. Because when the weather gets

tricky or there's no flying to be had or there's an incident, the locals are going to know best how to deal with those situations. And again, like this, every company runs things a little bit differently And sometimes people, they go to a place so often that they just get it dialed. And I go here every year and I feel like I'm the local now. And sure there's you're using local hotels, retrieved drivers and whatnot, but I really try to focus on including the local pilot community, even if they're maybe not up to par in terms of the skill set of the other guides or staff on the trip. They learn from it too, and

pilots really like getting to know our pilots that come on the tours. They want to know what it's like to be a pilot in whatever destination that we're in. So I think that's that's really important. There aren't any local pilots flying there. We're making sure that we have proper local contacts on the ground for our local operators that are handling everything. And there I'll get my hands involved a little bit more in depth with things to shape it and structure it how I think it should be. And yeah, apart from the local side of things, I think that a, a mantra and so to speak is.

And what I tell people when we go to somewhere we've never taken off before, like our entire tour in Mongolia is you got to have a beginner mindset behind it, right? As guides and pilots who have travelled the world and experienced a variety of different conditions and sites, we're doing the best we can with what we're seeing with our eyes, what we're experiencing with weather in the in the moment and based what we see on the forecast. And, but we're still taking it with a grain of salt. That's yeah, we're just happy to be here, you guys. And so when you're on a in a remote location, that's not the

time for anybody to push it, whether that's me as a pilot or me as a guide and also someone else that's coming on the tour. And so I like to tell folks that we have, we have our margins that we fly with daily basis. And when you go somewhere completely new, even if you're under the wing of a tour, you know, especially in places where emergency retrieval or access is not going to be quick, you got to make them a little bit bigger and take a step back that way. And again, that's where coming into the point of going to unique places and giving people the option to either not fly or take a shorter flight because

there's really cool things to do just makes it easy. There was so many points that I wanted to jump on, but before I forget, I just want to let people know that. Head over to convergenceparaglighting.com. Of course, we're going to put the link in the show notes and then just go to their missions and values. That itself tells you what Chris just explained in the past few minutes about how cool it is and giving back I think is a lot more satisfying than we think. And the essence of including the locals. I completely vibe resonate with it because I think there's something special about your home ground because there is a comfort zone that no other place

will give you. We know this from big teams which play like the big leagues for conventional sports but in para lining as well. Like I started my journey in beer billing in the Himalayas and even today the art of exploring those giants is bigger comfort than I would say exploring the Alps where I have flown for much longer than I have in my home ground. But just the you can call it psychological, you can call it like placebo, whatever it is. But there is something about home ground which local pilots will thrive at much better than than the than the foreigners. So natives versus foreigners at the angles coming to my mind.

But yeah, I kind of want to come to your home ground because Cuba, man, as an American, the Cuba country itself, and I know you have a whole section listed on your website about travelling to Cuba as AUS citizen. I don't know. Let's dive right in. Yeah, please. Do. You know, it's funny because I have, so I have a tour that actually one of my guys is coming by my house this afternoon to pick up stuff to take. They fly out tomorrow and I have a tour starting on Sunday in Cuba. And so I just got back five days ago, I believe from our first week there and have another one going out here.

I'm going to be at home. I'm on daddy duty while my wife is on a certification. She's been putting up with me going on these trips for a number of years now, so it's nice to see her. That sounds fun. Yeah. There's a lot of exotic places. I can't wait to talk about. Mongolia, Socotra, goddamn, how cool is that? There are only planned expeditions by brands and there's somebody's like, hey, give me a chance and I'll make you fly sock coats, right, man. So like we'll talk about like all of these, but quickly, Cuba, what is it all about? How is it? Because the only reference that I have of that country is from

the colorful, you know, vintage cars and these buildings and Instagram photos and stuff. I don't know anything more about that place. So for me, being a Cuban American, I was born in Chicago, but my father immigrated in the 70s with his whole family. Cuba was a super special place for me and it is one of the most unique places in the world. It's full of juxtapositions and it just contradicts itself constantly. And it's been in the news. What's that? Well, just like a conflicting ideas, it shows you one thing here and then the next where you look, you're like, wait, how can those two exist side by side?

And that's the beauty of Cuba. It's that until you go there, you don't. And even then, I've been going there for a decade and I still come back with more questions than I have answers for each. It's been in the news recently. Lately, obviously everything that's been going on with after Venezuela and talk of regime change and whatnot, I don't. Want to say after everything that's been going on with the orange man and then everybody will get the right that is 1. But Cuba is, they're very resilient and it's a beautiful island and the people are extremely kind and they're very friendly. Most people, when they think of

Cuba, they think of the old cars, they think of Havana. It's just a quick 40 minute flight from Miami. And I spent a lot of time in that part of the country and a decade ago when I was developing different types of tours. But when I wanted to set up the the paragliding tour in Cuba, that made the most sense to go down to the southeastern end of the country in Santiago de Cuba. Santiago, located in a nice little Bay right there. We stay right downtown and our main takeoff is 30 minutes from our hotel. It's one of the only drive up sites in Cuba that you can

actually go and thermal flying cross country from pretty much everything else you have to hike up to. That's why we picked it there. And just to the West of town is the Sierra Maestra, which is very large mountain range and believe it or not there's 2000 meter peaks there which is hard to meet. Ground level or sea? Like on ground or from sea? From sea, yeah. Yeah, OK. That's how much is the altitude from ground from like how high. Yeah, it's it's 2000 meters above the ground. Oh damn bro. Yeah, you're just right on the ocean, just the mountains go straight up. It's pretty. Dude I want to see some photos from there.

Damn that sounds super nice. Yes, it's beautiful. We had actually had a really nice flight on the South Coast that hadn't been done before in this last trip. It's it's this big S facing range that runs east West and it's very similar to what I fly here at home in in Santa Barbara. We have a similar set up close to the coast and so it it made sense in a lot of ways. And I was going around on X contest. It's usually where I start. Most of my research is so if I want to go somewhere, let's see what's been done and who's the pilot who's flying the most there.

And that's how I reached out to a few different folks in Cuba and ended up getting in touch with the Huello Libre club from Santiago. And they're the heartbeat of our entire trip. We have 4 of their pilots who work for me. Pablo, he's our main fixer. He does all of our logistics in terms of getting everybody on the right car, making sure everyone's retrieved. And then we have 3 local pilots that fly with us. Frank, Ernesto, Sergio, those guys are super nice. They're really sweet. And while I'm trying to convince them to take English lessons and I've said I've paid for it, a big part of their main function is not only supporting the main

paragliding guides that come down in terms of decision making on the weather, but it's also if someone lands in a really weird spot, their main function is they go down, they land with them, and they make sure that they get out in a timely manner. It's timely, it's Cuba things, it's island time. Things can happen a little bit slower than you want, but we get to you eventually. I mean, that itself is the kind of own experience when you're like especially I feel like, I mean, like I can generalize this in developed economies or Western countries where life is super damn fast that, you know, it just blazes by. And then you go to these island

nations especially, where like people are still having the same 24 hours in the day, but spending it in a lot more indulgence. Indulgence maybe is the right word. They're just existing. And time is, yeah, like it's, it's like the the planet revolves a lot more slower in those in those places. But yeah, for travel is an American citizen coming to Cuba. It's relatively straightforward. We have a license that's from the OR the Office of Foreign Assets and Control that allows us to travel under one of their thirteen different categories for the Cuba, it being support for the Cuban people. And really what that means is it's not about it's not about

donations, it's about dialogue so much. And so the way that the US government has put it is that if you're going to Cuba and you're interacting with people who, you know, everyday people on the island, they think that therefore they'll adopt our, you know, belief system in terms of capitalism and that it's better. And that eventually they'll use that energy to overthrow the regime, which it's, that's, it's, it's funny that they do that, but that's what allows us in the government's eyes, for us to go travel down there to Cuba. I've always just gone on a family visa. I still do that every time I go. It's a much more straightforward

process than people think. Again, we set it up, walk you through the entire process until you're there in the country to make sure you're good to go. Does Cuba has oil or they just want to overthrow it for the fun of it? Yeah, you read the reports. There hasn't been oil that's I think been shipped to the island and there's some people are saying three months. The traffic's always been just there, non existent on the island. I'd say as far as on the road, it's probably down about 60% from what our driver had told me from this last week. We have enough gas allotted for us.

We've piled back our operation a little bit. We're limiting ourselves to a box triangle area so to speak. And again, it's we can get some fantastic flying in there. You can. Fly. No, what I meant was like, is it a natural resource heavy country that was like. You're shifting away? No, definitely not. I'd say it's, I think it's biggest export is nickel from a mine that's up in, up in. Yeah. So it has something if not oil. So that makes. Sense, yeah, I think a good. Regime overthrow thing is on the cards always. No, but let's talk about flying man. How does flying look like? Is it possible to sign 150K?

Of course, 2000, that's like huge. No, 100%. Last year from Porto Bonato, which is our local launch that we use out at Santiago, we had a group fly 120 kilometers. Unfortunately, we had to land early that day. We accidentally broke a presidential TFR that we didn't know about and got the word we have to land. There's no big deal. It's a little stressful there for a a bit, but again. How did you work? With the white people on the island. So what's that? How did you get the word? What? How did somebody notice? My main fixer there, Pablo, he's the president of the Air Sports association for that entire

region in Cuba. So he got a phone call and then radioed through SO. They had eyes on you. Yes, they do. And that's The thing is I we don't try to ever go there and pull a fast one on these guys because they definitely pay attention and it's all just about open dialogue and working with them. And a couple phone calls later, everything was fine. But I know that the crew is bummed because we're 120 kilometers in, there's three hours left of daylight and everybody's at cloud based 2000 meters above the island. Another day my family, like last thing you want to be is like have some projectiles coming at you from the ground.

Definitely not there anyways. But yeah, no, there's a lot of potential there. I think the, let's say three years ago, Cuban Canadian guy, he set the national record of 230 K So there's definitely potential for some distance there. You got it's got to be the right day and the right convergence line up. But yeah, you can have some seriously big flights. Yeah, no wonder I I get the essence behind your name. Convergence, Fire lighting. Tell me about Socotra, man, what is this place? What is it called? Yeah, Macedonia, a lot of other places. Super nice. But holy shit, Socotra, which is the only exposure I think any flyer has, is from the Nova

movies that they made a couple of times. And other than that, it's in the news for every kind of a bit of a trouble, but yeah. What is this little paradise all about? And how does life look like in the air over there? So Sokotra, it's known as the Galapagos of the Indian Ocean. There's over 500 different endemic species of flora and fauna there, and it's quite the place. And the flying there is absolutely amazing. And yeah, as most of us, all we know about Sokotra is from the Nova videos. I believe it's like 2010 maybe. And then Theo did one a little bit more recently, and that kind of sparked a lot of people's

interests. Again, this one's probably one of the more complicated places that I've run, even more so than Cuba. Sure. It was brought up to me by Sean Mosley. So Sean, he's a Kenya pilot and he approached me sometime after our Kenya trip. This is 2025, and was like, hey, I have a friend who runs logistics on the island. I think it would be really cool to do a tour there. Do you think you can pull it together? And I started researching. I was like, wow, like this looks absolutely incredible. Wasn't even on my radar. And so I reached out to some of my regular guests that come on

my tour and I was like, hey, this is a potential we have to act quickly because this logistically with flights, permits, everything else, it has to be done way in advance. So I hit up some folks, I said, hey, this is what we're going to do. Are you in? And they said 100% yes. So we got enough pilots signed up early on and we were able to make it happen. This was, I think Sean called me end of April with this idea. And we had the deposits in by middle of May ready to go and just took advantage from it from there. Yeah, it was pretty great. And again, it's all about

knowing the right people to get you in and to get you set up for success there. And Sean, he's my main Kenya guide, one of the guys that I use most when I'm in Africa. And he was also guiding with me there in Socotra. Sean and our local operator, they went in the week before and they went and just scouted a few different places, options based on wind direction, whether it was northeast, northwest. He went and found a few different launch sites and then we just planned the tour out from there and we were on the island for seven days and we flew six of those seven.

So it was pretty good and consistent I would say too. The first question that I want to ask you is that in reality, is it looking as spectacular as it does in the video or is it just color grading doing it's magic on the screen? No, it looks just as spectacular in real life. Absolutely. Yeah, it is. I would say too, that, you know, on on some of those shots that you see in the videos, we had quite a bit of overcast days just in terms of cloud layer that were coming in. Still very much flyable. There's more to be had in terms of color there. But yeah, it's just such a wild

and magical place. And not only the coastline there and the dunes and that stark contrast, but also going up deep into the mountains and the Dragon's blood trees as well. It's breathtaking. Yeah, those trees, man, they look out of the place. Like honestly, they're out of the world. That's what I wanted to say very much. There's something about Africa that is quite fascinating, the way the way flora and fauna thrives and that kind of you can say belt of the planet, the ecosystem, even though it's so arid, dry and like it's got it's own harsh environments, but like quite fascinating.

Africa has been drawn more and more to that continent over the last few years and that's where a lot of future trips are going to be taking place that we're starting to get into. I'm very curious about Madagascar, man. Imagine flying over ball and stuff. I think there was somebody because Reunion. There are some tours that go, especially Frenchies. But I did see a video super old, like maybe a decade old or something. Somebody vinching in Madagascar with a tour or something? Yeah, there's been a few people who've flown Madagascar. That one's definitely on the list. Future projects right now in terms of Africa this December, hopefully going to South Africa.

And then Angola and Algeria are both on the list for future projects right now. Damn, I wish maybe I had their airspace open as well. I think somebody like I, I read it somewhere that they, I don't know what reason, but they don't allow. But that looks quite spectacular too with the red side. Yeah, and maybe and maybe it looks great as well. I think that you can probably get there. But that's like the thing about making sure that you're talking with the locals when you're going to these places because that's a classic one where I think from my understanding, things got shut down there because people were flying under the radar or sites they

shouldn't have been. And that's where the government's just no, we're no more like Bhutan is one of those two where there were tours running there 20 years ago or so. And the government all but shut it down. And now there's quite a lengthy permit process for it to happen, which in a lot of ways good because it's what kind of protects free flight in that area. You don't want people just coming in and ruining it without following local rules and regulations, as silly as they might seem for some of us who are coming from more developed parts of the world. We are bound to respect the regulations and pay a huge

amount in the developed countries. Like it's just about a mindset shift that when we reach a place where you can say lawlessness, which is not really the correct word, it is the normal like we expect. Holy shit this should be easier than what it seems like. It's just like we got to respect local rules and customs, however we might feel about them inside. But at the end of the day, if I'm working closely with the government, like in Bhutan, for example, they tell me to jump. I'm like, oh, hi, what do you guys want? I'll, because I'll make it happen. And that's, that goes a long way

in, in terms of disrespect and then creating more dialogue to maybe ease the process down the road. So quotra, man, before I move on to the other one, how does flying look? Is it mostly soaring or is there some circling here and there? What is the average flight time? What are the wind conditions just out of curiosity? Yeah, I think there it's generally stronger wind. We were there at the end of October and it was a little bit lighter. It's on the monsoonal switch from southwest to northeast. And I'd say flying, it's a little bit of everything. It's it's, it's rich soaring with thermals mixed in. There is some potential for some

really nice flying in the mountains on the right day, but it's got to be the right day with light winds. If you have a strong northeasterly flow, you don't want to be high up in there. My guy Sean, he the week before, he got just an absolutely epic flight next to some of these cool Spires just thermalling around, had a beautiful, I think 30 kilometer cross country flight over to the beach. And in terms of flight time, again, it depends. I think we were in the air, we polluted usually twice a day. We would fly in the mornings from for 2-3 hours or so, then we'd come relax back at camp in the middle of the day, go

swimming, snorkeling, and a lot of that was just because we wanted to take a break and go enjoy the island. And then we'd go back out in the evening again and go fly. If it were any stronger, probably wins during the middle of the day, we might have to shut it down. But again, each day is different. I think one of the biggest things when it comes to flying in Socotra is that you have to, you can fly some cross country, but you have to be careful where you're flying over. Part of working with the right people that we do is they go around to each village and they talk with the elders and they're

like, hey, this is what we're going to be doing. This is how many people we have. They're going to be flying and they go and get permission to do so beforehand. Whereas if you just start going around flying wherever you want and it's very conservative Islam there and in their enclaves and where they're living, it's a space where people can relax a little bit, especially the women. They don't have to be fully covered up necessarily depending on the family. And if they see someone flying overhead or even nearby, it can raise alarms and it can feel uncomfortable. And that's the last thing that we want to do. So but one thing that's really

important for anybody going to the island to to know about is that you can't just go up and send it wherever you want. There's times that and conditions that we get that opportunity and we will go exceed. But it again, depends on the day. But the last thing we want to do is upset anybody on the island. Keep everyone happy. What what what does life on ground look like? Obviously when you're walking around and resting, or let's say better than local clothes like you, you stand out. Having huge backpacks doesn't help. So what is there like? How does attention from the natives look like in in that

side of the world? And how's the safety aspect of it? Oh, I think the safety aspect, it's extremely safe. They're generally very curious, especially with the gliders. That's something that they're not used to seeing very often at all. And one of the beautiful parts about working with the right people is that we're able to go to parts of the island that other tourists aren't necessarily going to. A lot of tourism on Socotra, for better or worse, is like influencer tourism where they're going to get the shop on the dune or you're going to take the photo at the beautiful Bay with the colorful water. And you these, the people that

go with the normal operators, they're going, they're all congregated in the same spots. And so we get out of that area, especially when we go up into the Dragon's blood forests and up on the Dixon Plateau, where we're not seeing really hardly any tourists at all. And the locals that are there, they're generally curious and then they're friendly too. And I think in terms of safety, obviously Yemen's another one of those countries. It's been in the news a lot up until recently. Socotra had a big influence from the Emiratis. And so they were there helping with just medical infrastructure, solar, everything, just basic needs being met.

And that helped with a big stability, a big portion of the stability on the island. There was not really unrest that you might hear about in the mainland as of a few months ago, that Socotra is now under Saudi influence, which I think from what I'm being told in some ways is going to be a good thing because they're restricting the amount of people who can come onto the island now. Whereas the Emiratis were allowing. There's two flights a week coming in from Abu Dhabi and now that's being back, restricted back to one flight a week. The island's really small and it can only support a certain amount of people, especially

because there's only really one or two hotels, I think in Hadibo, which is the capital there. Everything else is camp based. So if you're coming to the island for tourism, you have to have a camp set up and you're limited on your luggage intake too, so you can't just come in with your own gear. You have to go with a company who already has stuff on the island and permits and sustainability reasons as well. Sounds like such a adventure, man, which needs like it's always risk versus reward. So here it's effort versus reward that you got to put in the effort to get the gem in the air.

But yeah, do you have any experiences? What's your craziest adventure on any of these trips that you have been taking to the to such remote locations? Yeah, no, that's a tough one because a lot of these places, it's everything has its own, you know, you unique thing. I'd say culture was just absolutely incredible. Yeah. I think there's never been like any like, sketchy or dangerous situations. I see like the biggest drama we've had was probably that flight in Cuba last year that we all had to come down and land and then basically had to go apologize to the government for making that happen. But everything else, again, it's

we try to run things in a way, we streamline logistics that when there's so there's no drama, it's a drama free type tour and people are feeling like they're getting that adventure. I think one of my God, all of them are my favourites, all these tours. But you were talking about Mongolia earlier. That one's just unique in that as soon as you're outside the city, it's public land everywhere. It's a nomadic lifestyle there. People have spring, summer, fall and winter camps, and everybody will respect each other's camp as they tend to move around. But it's all public lands. We're on a mobile camp set up as

well, embracing that nomadic lifestyle. So essentially just drive around until we figure out like, all right, we have an idea of where we're going, but this setup looks nice. We'll set up camp here and then from there we decide where we're going to go fly based on weather, the aspect of the hill where the sun's going to be hitting it in the morning, and then we'll drive up as far as we can and get out of the Land Cruisers and we'll start walking from there. Land Cruisers in Mongolia, holy shit doesn't get any better than that. I know, right? Yeah, but I get it, like you

need 4 by fours for that. But Mongolia, that that's a flattish country. Of course it might have some hills. Like I've only seen photos of like vast grasslands and windy areas like. It's very mountainous, though I will say it's nickname is known as the Land of the Eternal Blue Sky, which high pressure pretty stable. But outside of that, those months where it's just the land of the eternal blue sky in, in July and August in particular, you can have some pretty nice flying. You can get some instability in there and sometimes it's a little bit too much instability. When we were there this last August in 2025, we had some

pretty big weather that was coming through. But again, we were able to fly most days. A lot of it was early in the morning. I can fly making sure we're getting down even as early as 10:00 sometimes because it can come through pretty quickly and especially gust fronts there things, it travels very quickly. It's like flying in the Intermountain West in the US You have to take any development very seriously there. But we were able to find some really magical moments and have some nice flying. I'm. Just curious, how does the like, how accurate is the forecasting? Because of course we have meteor blue, we have sky site and all

those windy and stuff like those things which function super well based on the community feedback on hotspots where the paragliding is common thing. But like in remote locations we we tend to apply similar tools, but how close do we get on figuring out the right conditions? It depends on where you're at. I try not to go 2IN depth in a place like Mongolia. We'll look at Windy. I think the ECMWF will pop up there. I'll take a quick glance at surface. I'll go up through altitude. I'll try to look at a bigger picture too and just put the isobars on the map and see what's going on in the area. But there's no better tool out

there than your own eyes and seeing what's going on. And so just taking from years of flying in other places that experience and also taking the account, the forecast, we go from there. But again, sometimes things happen just really quickly and you've gotten your intuition just as you know what, now it's time for us to get on the ground because the forecast might have said one thing, but obviously it's changing. I think that's anywhere, and in reality, we're not going to just completely redesign the tour, pick up camp and move it because of the weather. You can do that in some places like the Alps, right?

If you're on a tour there, it's OK. Like we're going to jump over to this valley. The weather looks much better there for the foreseeable future, and that can make sense. But on some of these other tours, we try to put people in the right place at the right time of year. But again, OK, we can't go fly in Mongolia today. We're going to go visit a Kazakh family who uses a golden eagle to hunt with instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what excites me about these places now like in in Kenya as well, which has been my, you can say remote ish exploration from the usual

sites. It's every single landing is not the end of a adventure. Sure, it's an end of a flight, but totally shed the amount of experiences could be good or bad, like whatever. I'm not going to label it any which ways because any experience can go either way. But yeah, you're still going to stay excited until you reach back to your hotel because the, the the stimuli is going to be so interesting from what you're used to that it, it keeps you on your toes and mostly in a good way, because people are warm when they see humans from the sky coming down and walking around like normal people. Absolutely.

Yeah, Yeah, yeah. Yeah. One thing that I was wondering is you had shopper tours to go to take Austin, Kenya. Let that sink in. People like to anybody who's listening to this right now, who has gone this far, who has, who has stuck with us for this far, Chris has managed to take a whole different transport to take offs. We are used to hiking, which is like the most common way to put your aircraft on your back and hike up. We are used to driving but Chris flies to his take off and then flies in a different. Yeah. That's our Kenya tour in the north that we do, yeah. Yeah, like N is exciting enough

because there's not a lot of tourism developed there. So what is? What is Chopper like? How to tell me a little bit about it? Kenya tour in the north was designed by Sean Mosley. Sean owns a safari company there in Africa and he's been a pilot for about a decade now and he runs these high end tours there. And one of the things that they do, the lodges, they take a helicopter up and they go have a nice happy hour, a sundowner as they call it in Kenya. And Sean would be standing up there with his guests. He's like, wow, he could totally fly a paraglider off the spot at the adventurer and explorer he

is. He was just like, wow, I think that this would work to go and fly, but the only way to reach that is is by helicopter or just a massive, massive hike through dense forest, leopard, Buffalo and elephant, which unless you're a local Samburu, you might not be too keen on on walking up there yourself. So when I got connected with Sean a few years ago, you know, I've tried to put together this tour in Kenya and he says, how do you feel about helicopters? I'm like, what do you mean helicopters? And I was like, all right, mate, I'll try to sell it. I don't know. This is it's so new and we made

it happen and we just ran that tour again this past January. Fantastic. And so it does a couple things. It allows us to get the access up there and it also provides safety when it's, you know, 45° down on the floor in northern Kenya, you land out in the middle of nowhere. You have the confidence that you're going to get picked up quickly because there's hardly any roads at all. A lot of it's only accessible if you take a Bush flight or if you have a chopper to get around. And I think, you know, I have to credit Nikki from Sky Nomads, who you went with last year.

He's done a lot of flying up there in the north of Kenya and Ethiopia and all that. And I know he had his thoughts on the chopper last year and. Yeah, he doesn't like. Yeah. He came around to it this year though, for sure, I think. And one of the things that that Sean did a really good job of, of explaining to people that I tried to do is that you're not just up there ripping around burning jet pool for the hell of it. A lot of the money that we're spending, especially on that tour in particular, is going back to the people who live there, the Samburu people in northern Kenya, the lodges that

we stay at or it's land that's leased from them. We're getting permission to go to these spots and making sure that we're talking with the local community so they know what's going on. I really want to bring in this because this has been on my mind for quite a few days and it's you can say it's personal, but like we can all I saw this meme, I don't know if it was on YouTube shots or Instagram reads or something. It said that I am drinking from soggy paper straws to save the planet. And then there's a next visual of this like huge oil field and it says world leaders are blowing up oil fields for fun.

It's OK man. You can talk about my carbon footprint when I'm having fun, but what about the real cost of existing on the planet for covering up your stupidity when it comes to being critical about the resource usage? Feel free to have your opinion, but be aware at the same time as well. And bottom line is, if your retrieve looks as cool as a frickin chopper, I'm signing up for everybody. Take my money and let me be a part of the drive. Again, we take cars. We take cars up to take off. We drive a lot. We're not just hiking every single time, you know? Again, don't knock it until you try it.

Yeah, yeah. But do you guys have the chopper for the whole day or is it like is that? So we, we contract it for a number of hours usually like that, it depends, but we have it for roughly 6 days total. So we go up and we actually do a family camp up on one of the take offs there in the north and that's how we start things. So we'll fly the bed rolls up there, the kitchen, everything will stay out under the stars. Wake up and go for a nice sunrise flight. It's been fun. We've had a few sites that shown his ID that have worked over the

last few years. And then OK, like it's too windy up high, we need to find something a little lower. We have the ability to go fly around and find a nice Ridge that's set up into the wind where we can actually get some proper flying. And so this past year in the north we had three or four different take offs that we had used. So yeah, it's quite the way to experience that part of the world. And again, all my tours are my favourites, but that's such a special one. Just the the interaction that you get with the wildlife there and also the local Samburu community, it's unparalleled. Are they are they friendly

Samburu's? Because I've I've heard some. Yeah, extremely friendly. Yeah, extremely. There's curious more than anything else. I think a lot of people will get spooked and they land out in the middle of nowhere and the Samburu warrior walk up to him and they're holding an AK47. And that's just there to protect their livestock, right? It's not there to harm you or threaten you there anyways. They're just protecting their own livestock. It's coming from from Europe, the States. People can be thrown off guard right away, but quick friendly smile goes a long way. And hello. Yeah, imagine having to answer questions with the person who's holding an AK in his hand after

your land. Holy, that's a rush in itself. So as I said, adventure doesn't stop when the flight ends. Thankfully Sean and our helicopter pilot Josh, they're both fluent in Swahili, so that goes a long way too. Definitely a lot of people speak English in Kenya too. You'd be surprised when you find a local Sam Peru guy, full regalia, dressed up and hello, how are you?

I I totally get what you say, man. For anybody who's wondering how it feels like to be a celebrity or be mobbed by people, regardless of your skill ability or whatever you're putting out in the world, just go fly a paraglider and land anywhere and see you become like the center of attraction. But anyway, it's very interesting. The cool part about this is that we can keep on exploring our curiosities. And but the nicer part about it is that let's leave some for the guests so that they can figure out their own way to tickle their own and figure out where it takes them. But one thing I think we can promise is that usual places to

explore with a power liner, there's a bit of FOMO if you don't hit your goal for the day right? You're like, shit, why did I land early? Why didn't I bomb out? But if you ever sign up for some of these bespoke tours, I don't know the correct meaning, but I think it's one of these exotic tours. You will feel satisfied and end the day with a smile regardless of your airtime. 100% couldn't agree with you more. So anyway, if you are very keen to make the magic, then there is a person who's already doing it and if you are keen to make the magic in coming days, then here is another person who is going

to do it very soon. As I always say, stay tuned, stay excited because this magic is just getting started. Thanks so much for having me.