Shane Tighe’s Road to X-Alps : Engineering Conquests In The Sky from Australia’s Flatlands to the Pinnacle of Hike and Fly

Aninder: I've got 15 years of flying experience in a lot of different terrains like Himalayas, Nepal, India, Pakistan, China. It's just years of experience. You start to figure out how to piece it together. It's nice not to have an expectation. They say in paragliding, you need a little bit of luck, but why is it the same pilots who get lucky every single time?

Yeah, I always put it down to... To sum it up, if you have to give advice to younger pilots listening out there or anybody who wants to follow in your footsteps, Why should they do it and how should they do it? Don't do it because you feel pressured to do it. Do it for yourself and

The Alps. A 1200 km gauntlet of jagged peaks, icy winds and thin air. A place where gravity isn't just a force, it's an adversary. And every two years the Red Bull pits almost 30 of the world's toughest athletes against this merciless terrain in a race dubbed as the hardest adventure race on Earth. No engines, no support crews to fly with you or carry your gear. Just legs, wings and sheer willpower. And this year there's a new name on the list. Shane Tye, an engineer turned paraglider from Down Under in Australia, is a man who has traded spreadsheets for speed bars and office chairs for the Alpine Air. Shane's story isn't one of the usual ones. And I'll tell you why. Imagine training for the

Olympics of paragliding in a country with no real mountains. Or, let's say, grinding through 100km weekly runs while holding down a day job. This is the reality of a pilot who has spent years defying Australia's flat coastal lines, from flying 300km cross-country distance from a mere 30m dune at a rainbow beach, or even solo camping at 7000m in Pakistan, or most importantly the podium finish in the gruelling ex-Pyrenees challenge. But X-Alps is a whole new beast. And for 12 days, Shane will hike hundreds or sometimes even thousands of vertical meters daily and fly up to 150 kilometers between checkpoints, all while trying to outmaneuver the veterans who have spent lifetimes

mastering the Alpine thermals. In this episode we are diving into the mind of a self-made adventurer who is equal parts engineer and adrenaline junkie and find out what is the real cost of chasing a dream when you are 16,000 kilometers away from home. Some would call this as just another chat about flying but I would say this is a masterclass of how a journey full of resilience looks like. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and everyone along with them, welcome back to Paragliding Atlas. I'm your host, Anindya Singh, and this is your weekly dose of awesomeness coming to you as planned. So without further ado, let's tune in, and I hope you like it. Shane, what an honor to have you on the

show. Welcome to Paragliding Atlas. It's good to be here. I've listened to a few of your podcasts and excited to be invited along. Thank you for your kind words, Shane. Before we dive deep into this, could you please tell me how to say your complete name correctly? Shane Tai. That's quite

Aninder: simple. I often get called Tiggy, but Tai is how it's pronounced. That's what I was afraid of, but Tai seems to be simple enough. Shane, you seem to

be in a pretty sunny place right now. Where are you joining us from and how does life look for you these days? I'm in Chamonix in France. It's quite

Aninder: good. I've come over here mainly because of the mountains and the paragliding and have basically fallen in love with the area. trying to stay here as long as possible so i've got a one-year french visa at the moment and early little apartment just outside germany yeah it's like playground here for adults it's beautiful so you're living the european paragliding dream is that correct yeah i'm trying to see how long it's sustainable for is it expensive man or is life in australia same It's pretty similar, although with Trump in, our Australian dollars just crashed. So everything's just gone up 10 or 15%. Now it's more expensive to be in Europe. All right. Shane, I was just checking out

your profile. I just Googled you up because I think you've reached that point in life where people can Google you up and find enough information about you. Is that a good feeling though? It's interesting to see what comes up, especially when there's other people with the same name. But

Aninder: it's funny Googling yourself.

Have you found something undesirable while doing so? Not for me, but there's another Shane Ty who has some bad reviews. He does hiking

Aninder: guiding. So that's not me, if anyone's Googling me. All right. So the important part is to add the keyword paragliding next to Shane Ty. Yeah, exactly. And then you get the right search results. Yeah. Interesting. I was saying that I was on the first of the links because probably XLs do

their SEO pretty well and landed on the XLs page and they said, you're a rookie with a lot of promise. That's exciting. Yeah, I beg to disagree, man. Not with a lot of promise, but that I'm 100% sure. I believe you are far from a rookie. So if you allow me to label you as an Experienced pilot with a lot of promise. Could you please explain the experienced part? How has life looked for you so far in the sport of paragliding and what have you been up to? So basically I started flying when I was 19, instantly fell in love with the sport. So I've been flying for, this is my

Aninder: 15th year. So quite a while. In Australia, I did a lot of coastal flying and then started doing trips to Europe for Acro. The main focus was Acro paragliding initially and Wagga flying on the coast. And then Accra doesn't really work in Australia because you can't get much height. So I got into XC and started chasing distance in Australia. Did that for a few years and started to grow bored of the flat land flying and started traveling and discovering mountains and mountain flying is just amazing. And having the ability to land anywhere and do what you want is pretty rewarding. So I shifted focus onto cross country flying, mainly adventure flying where I don't really chase a number i just fly to get a

nice view and enjoy the scenery and also hiking i love walking in the mountains so being able to join the two together and i can fly is pretty much amazing used to paramotor a fair bit as well in australia it was quite good in winter our winter there is actually quite warm it's around 20 degrees and quite stable so it's perfect paramotoring so i did that for i don't know near 10 years i just sold my paramotor before coming over to europe And do a little bit of speed flying here as well. I dabble in basically all disciplines, which makes me quite a well-rounded pilot.

Were you more like trying to get airtime whenever, wherever possible kind of a thing? Is that why so much diversification? Yeah, pretty much.

Aninder: It's just all about airtime. I love being in the sky. It's my happy place. So it's funny, especially in Australia, we'd go out towing, but we'd wake up before sunrise, take off at the paramotors, fly around. Land, have breakfast, then start towing or acro. We tow up and do a couple of acro runs. It starts to get thermic. And then you pull out the XC wings and go cross country for the day. And then you land, get the paramotors out again and fly to sunset. So you can fill an entire day, especially with towing. Sunshine Coast was also quite good. It's where I learned to fly

in Queensland, where you could go motoring in the morning, XC in the middle of the day, and then go coastal soaring in the afternoon. So you get lots of hours in a range of different disciplines which is pretty cool or nearby home as well within a half hour drive a question comes to my

mind go on just anything to get my feet off the ground yeah anything with wings and strings i try to fly wings and strings is what life is all about my man i'm yeah i'm able to relate to this so much a question that comes to my mind right now that i want to ask you that i should be asking you is how much energy do you have because I would say any aerial activity is a lot of brain work. And when you put in day in, day out, it sucks a lot out of you. But what I really want to ask is how much money do you have, bro? How do you do all of this all day long? My job was what we call fly in, fly out in

Aninder: Australia. So basically I'd go to work and work 80 hour weeks for three weeks straight. So 12 hour shifts, seven days a week, three weeks straight. And then I get three weeks off. My three weeks off, I could do essentially whatever I want. Three weeks is just enough time to go overseas, especially from Australia. It's a long way. I traveled a fair bit in my time off. And when I got to work, just think about work and get the three weeks over and done with and then back to playing again. My friends call me the energizer bunny. There's an energizer that goes on and on. In

my time off, I used to really try to maximize my spare time and just go nonstop all day. Makes sense. That explains the Energizer bunny.

Energy is probably what's going to keep you going in X- House as well. Are you sounding a fair warning to your competitors right now? I'd like to

Aninder: think that everyone competing needs a lot of energy. We'll see. No, I'm rooting for you. Yeah, fingers crossed. Talking about energy levels,

Shane, you said you got into it when you were a teenager. I think 19 is a fairly young age. You have all the time and energy in the world and the motivation as well. And I think 15 years down the lane, if I'm not wrong, that is the timeline that you have flown for. How has your energy levels and motivations changed or evolved? I was very motivated until basically COVID 2020, particularly 2017 2018

Aninder: and then in 2019 i broke my back which slowed me down in 2017 i took a year off bought a van in europe and drove around europe in the alps i chased acro mainly then so i did some acro comps and spent a lot of time in algenia my brother a very good pilot mainly focused on acro we flew synchronized acrobatics in comps and placed quite well we got third in the world in 17 And then 2018, I spent three months in Nepal and then started chasing basically any, a new flying destination every time I had time off work. So it was essentially every second month I was overseas somewhere,

China, India, Pakistan, Japan, New Zealand, a lot. Basically every break I had from work, I'd go overseas and fly. Discovering new places is what it's all about. Seeing things from the sky, I love doing. So I really enjoyed doing that. And then 2019, I was playing around with the paramotor, doing stabilo touches. I used to do it in the surf, wherever I felt like it. One day, I went from short grass to slightly longer grass. So my lines got enough drag to drag me in, even broke the stabilo lines and stuff as it pulled me in. So that broke my back and slowed me up a bit. I was

still quite motivated coming into 2020. I applied for the XPEAR back then, and I was accepted to do that. I was very motivated, training quite hard, and COVID happened, and there was a lot of stuff up in the air. When the XPEAR was canceled, I lost motivation and started dabbling in other sports. I bought a motorbike. I traveled around Australia on a motorbike. I was stuck in Australia, so I just explored Australia and couldn't really go overseas. And then... Fast forward to 23, I supported in the X-Alps. There was a second time I also supported in 2017. And that really brought the spark back for paragliding. Being in Europe again was amazing. And being part of that race, there's a lot of

energy, especially in the prep week. It's a really cool adventure that got me motivated again to really start chasing paragliding. And so then I came back, spent, I know, one month in Europe around the X-Alps time. And then I came back again in September and I also test paragliders. So I did a test course at Air Turquoise or certification testing and then got motivated again. Did the X-Peer in 2024, which I did quite well in, which is also really rewarding. You put the time and effort in and that was my first hike and fly race. To know that I am somewhat competitive is nice. It takes years of dedication to this sport to get to that level and it's nice to be rewarded with a result. The X-Alps. It's pretty exciting.

It's not the first time I've applied. I've applied previously and you need some type of history with regards to hike and fly to get into the race. I'm excited to be accepted this time around. Love it, man. It seems you've lived the dream that a lot of pilots envision. It's easy to dream

in life in general, but I think in this sport, it takes a lot to realize that dream. And you seem to have been very specific since the beginning with your direction that make money, spend it in paragliding. Exactly. Yeah. I was just going through your Instagram profile and love the quote that you have on your bio, which says life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. don't resist them and let things flow naturally

Aninder: forward in whatever way they like is this some sort of a flow state mentality or what's the mindset behind this yeah pretty much flow state so i like to just not try to overthink things go off the flow exactly what that quote says let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like sometimes it takes a little energy to get things flowing but once you're in that flow state things are quite nice and relaxed that's how i like to live life if Bad things happen and you can normally move on from that. I also met a guy in Nepal who's lived off the philosophy of EWOP,

which is everything works out perfectly. Things may seem bad at the time, but with time, things generally work out perfectly. So if you put the flow state and the EWOP together, it works quite well. You look back on things that seemed bad in the past and generally they've worked out quite well. One thing I do realize is that somehow we as humans do make peace with our reality and our past anyways as the time progresses. But

is this coming from a spiritual context or meditative or mindfulness? Are you one of those kinds? And has it helped you in any way in your career so far? I'm not so spiritual. I just don't like to overthink things because you get stuck on something and that can become a burden. Just

Aninder: moving forward constantly, letting things flow as they should naturally. Yeah. And then also applying that other principle of everything works out perfectly. Like time often repairs most things. Yeah. If you look back on some past events, normally... everything's okay now. Makes sense. Just out of curiosity, whenever challenges are thrown at us, all of us react differently. And I think an injury in flying

is quite a big setback because it grounds you with a little bit of uncertainty and discomfort depending upon the gravity of the whole situation. But how did you navigate the setbacks? And I'm not specifically talking about the paramotor thing, but just generally in your flying career, when things haven't gone your way, how have you had a mindset and gotten out of that situation? With flying, so it used to be an

Aninder: obsession. It is my passion, but a passion can easily become an obsession. I started dabbling in a bunch of other sports. So like I took up climbing, mountain biking. I do a lot of stuff, kite surfing, surfing. I started to diversify a lot. I would fly when it was... I didn't just fly for the sake of flying. I would go fly when I wanted to fly. All the conditions were nice. So it was a nice social event with friends. Mixing sports together has been a good way to keep paragliding, I don't know, more sustainable. If the weather's not perfect, I'd go for a hike or mountain bike ride. Yeah, and that's kept the paragliding more of a passion. I see a lot of people, especially when you first get into it, it

almost becomes an obsession where you chase it everywhere. I was definitely like that. back in the day, but now I'm more relaxed with it. I'll fly when I want to, I'll land when I want to, and the flights are much more rewarding. If you bomb out, you can be disappointed with your flight, but if you choose to land, often the flight is more rewarding. And I really like when people are encouraged to land at a set goal. It's different here in Europe because you can do out and return quite easily. But in Australia, a lot of it's downwind flying and people play pub tag, which is you go land at the pub so you can get a beer. And it's funny because some people don't like it. They're like, why didn't you fly further? You

Aninder: could have flown further and got a big number. But instead, these pilots have decided to land at the pub and have a nice social afternoon with their beer, which I think at the end of the day is much more rewarding than getting another 20 Ks on your flight. It obviously depends if you're going for a PB, but I like the idea of landing on your own accord, not bombing out. Okay. That's quite thoughtful. I was just wondering, was

there a certain thinking, you said diversifying helps, not turning it into obsession, but let's for pilots out there who do not have the opportunity, time, money, whatever, to put in their effort into something else and paragliding is all that they get. Is there a certain way that you would recommend on how to not chase the big number and be happy with the pub tag mentality instead? Time is difficult,

Aninder: especially with power lines, a lot of power waiting and stuff. I'm a morning person, so that helps because I'm happy to get up early and, say, hike up to the hill or whatever. It's almost a cultural thing. I think it comes down to the club you're in. So like my local club on the Sunshine Coast, it's very inclusive. They're quite social, so everyone will go to the pub afterwards or have dinner together or meet up on weekends for other stuff. But if you have a club that encourages chasing numbers or big flights... If you're a beginner, you can often feel left out from that environment. So I think finding that right community is very helpful. One of the clubs I was flying at had a bunch of WhatsApp groups.

One was motorbike riding, one was mountain biking, one was surfing, kite surfing. So it wasn't a flyable day. The pilots would just put in whatever activity they wanted to do. Hey, I'm going to go mountain biking today. Anyone want to join? And you'd have the same group of friends that you'd be flying with then going mountain biking together. and you make really good friends doing that and it's just a nice way to diversify it makes parallel feel a little bit more enjoyable or rewarding when you can share that passion with a group of like-minded people that makes a lot of sense while we are talking about finding your tribe i think that is what you meant basically surrounding yourself

with kind of people I was reading this amazing post written right up that you had on your podium finish and in your Instagram for the experience

where you said you reached out to some experienced pilots. They asked you questions about mental training and gave you advice on how to tweak it. That got me super interested, man. Would you like to talk to our audiences about what were the tweaks and what were the takeaways? How can they apply the same in their flying career? It's actually really difficult. So I asked the pilots who was an ex-ALPS pilot. He's very

Aninder: good. He's always in the top five in Australia in XC as well. The mental coaching is interesting because obviously it's a mindset. I didn't get any specific pointers for it. And I've done a lot of research trying to find ways to think more positively. But basically, their take on it, and these are competitive XC pilots who just chase competitions, was basically fly to win. I don't fly... Like that, I fly for the enjoyment of it. So if I'm enjoying myself, things flow much nicer. It doesn't feel forced. If you're pushing hard and trying to race, sometimes you'll get out of that nice flow state and it'll feel like work, not enjoyment. The whole reason we do this is to enjoy ourselves. So I just try to be, once

again, surrounded by the right people who give you that nice, positive energy and just help you stay motivated. focused in that activity, if it's paragliding or whatever. And yeah, just stay positive. It's hard. Like I haven't worked specifically on anything as far as flying goes. It just takes time. Mentally, I worked a lot on just staying up, even if it was rough or getting boring. I try to find a positive thing. I'll try to see something pretty in that situation. Yeah. The mental game is a hard one. I've never really nailed it, but I've just tried to stay positive and enjoy the flying. I don't want it to become a task. I want to always enjoy the flying and that's where the diversity also helps because if

you're not feeling like flying, go do something else. You don't have to go paragliding. I love your honesty, man. Thanks for giving out the

unfiltered advice. But Shane, you said the Xperia Pyrenees 2024 was four years in the making. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about those four years? How did the lead up to the event, which eventually saw you take the podium look? And what was the behind the scenes life for you?

Aninder: Previously, 2020 was a bit of a downer. I was very focused on the XP back then. I'm a much better pilot now, so it's interesting. It would have been interesting to see how I went back then. But yeah, I was quite excited, very motivated for the 2020 race. And then all the uncertainty around it made it hard to stay motivated. Not being able to travel and all the lockdowns and all that fun stuff that COVID brought along with it slowed my paragliding obsession quite a lot. So I took up other hobbies. I still flew, but just nowhere near as much. And yeah, it wasn't until supporting the X-Alps in 23 that I really got that motivation back. I think there was that and also just traveling again, being in another

country with mountains for starters because we really lack mountains in Australia. So yeah, the 2023 X-Alps was a really big driving force. I also had a relationship which ended. That got me back into the mental game of I like to stay distracted. So, you know, if something's I don't know, upset me, then I'll go exercise lots or just keep myself entertained. Yeah. So the XPA in 24 was a good thing to work towards. And I actually moved about 2000 kilometers in Australia, partly for work, but also because it actually has mountains and they're small in comparison to Europe, but It's a great training ground for hike and fly races. So I could do a hike and fly every morning. It's a really good

community where you meet up with four or five pilots, you hike up the hill, it's about 400 meters of sand, and then just glide down and go have a coffee. So it was a very nice community, great trail running, mountain biking, everything. Getting involved in a community that likes hike and fly really helped. And then also my housemate there is a super motivated guy very good pilot i think he was like six-time australian champion or something he gave me some pointers about gear and the mental approach and yeah he helped a fair bit with my decisions and then i basically come to europe with the mindset that i didn't really want to leave so i sold all my belongings in australia come over bought a van and

then spent a bit of time in the pyrenees not that much maybe about two weeks before the race and then the race itself We had quite good weather besides the first day. It was quite flyable, which is, I suppose, my strong point. I wasn't overly fit then. I had a bit of pain in my Achilles, so I stopped training as hard as I was. It was just a bit silly. I went quite hard in my training. I suppose it was overuse injury. I had to slow down before the race for about three months. I was doing maybe a quarter of what I was doing. Prior to that, it all seemed to work out. Once again, I

just went with the flow. And once I got up into the first and second position, I just expected everyone else to catch up. But it never seemed to happen, which was nice. I really enjoyed the race up until the last day where it actually felt like a race. Before that, I was just enjoying flying in the Pyrenees and doing what I could to keep moving forward. And then the last day, there was pressure on. It's like, I'm still up the front. And we were actually tying first that night. We stayed in the same hut. I felt to overtake Simon, he's very fit, which I figured out hiking

with him. So I thought I'd take a different approach and sit back and wait for conditions to improve and try overflying while he was trying to run in. We sat together the night before and I knew his plan for the next day was just hike and fly and push really hard and get there as soon as possible. But I just hung back and waited for conditions to improve with the hope I'd fly over him, but it didn't work. But I did feel a lot of pressure on the last day and I suppose I need to... learn how to deal with pressure in a situation like that. That's another mental approach. If

you're really racing, then there's a mental side of it, which I haven't had a whole lot of racing experience, something I need to learn a lot about. Indeed, I think life is quite a learning experience. So the more you can put your mindset towards learning, the better. Just out of

curiosity, Shane, was this the first time you were playing with big names or have you had exposure to the top pilots in the world before in World Cups or other places like that? I don't do many XC comps, so I could probably count them on one hand. I dabble in Australia every now and

Aninder: again, but the last proper cross country comp I did was on tandem, so obviously not very competitive. I don't really take the XC comps that seriously. Also, I'm quite light, so my current takeoff weight is under 70 kilos, so I'm flying an extra small wing, which is quite difficult to be competitive in a cross country comp when you're light. So I prefer the adventure style ones, like a local club had at a waypoint tagging one where basically each waypoint is worth a point. So you're encouraged to find your own way. You can go any line you want as long as you make it back to goal at the end of the day. I did quite well in that one. And then recently the Wanaka Hike and Fly with a similar event where it's just waypoints

spread out through the mountains and each one has a value from one to four and depending on how difficult they are to get to. And once again, I did quite well in that. I prefer to Take my own lines and I feel like I fly better by myself, but maybe that's because I don't fly gaggles very often. And yeah, I haven't really learned that side of it, but I haven't flown with big names to answer the question. We had a nice, for the 23X Alps, because I was supporting, we had a training day of Kriegel at Frutigen. So we met in Frutigen, his hometown, and walked up to Neeson,

the turn point. And flew from there, I was quite happy to be, there was a bunch of us, I don't know, maybe half a dozen X-Alps pilots and their supporters. And I was quite happy to be the only one in that gaggle to climb out with Kriegel. And, and then later on in the day, I was flying with him, some big names like Tom Dorelladot, Horatio, and I could actually keep up with them. So it was nice to know that I could fly at a competitive I'm not sure if they were flying fast, but I could stay with them, which was quite nice. But that was the only time I've flown with big

names that really counted. But even then, it's not a race. We're just having fun. Yeah. So I think the reason why I ask that question is going

into a race like XPEAR, you have quite a lot of expectations from yourself because you've worked towards it. You've been wanting it in your life. Finally reaching the start line when you have all sorts of pilots, rookies, veterans, experienced, non-experienced ones. Can you walk us through how did your action look like? What was your thought process when things actually went into place? You said that you think you fly well by yourself. It's not that big of a gaggle, but still 30, 35 pilots, maybe. I don't know the exact number, but how did things look like when they actually started happening in Xperia for you? I only ever flew with Simon. We're in a couple of climbs together. We're flying

Aninder: together a bit. So I'm flying together. But besides that, I was basically on my own. And I like that because I'll look at the terrain and take a line based on what I believe would be suitable. And I seem to work in that race. I had quite low expectations for the race, which comes down to the mental side of it again. Like I should have had expectations and I didn't even look at the second half of the route. I didn't study it. So. After the cross in the middle around Castejon, I hadn't checked out the route at all. This is part of the reason why I didn't really enjoy the last

day as well. The last half of the race, I had never been there before. I barely studied a map. Years prior, back in 2017, I did a bivvy across the Pyrenees. So some of it, not much of it, but some of it was somewhat familiar. But I wasn't really prepared to finish the race. I just expected to go as long as I could, maybe make it halfway. My main goals were have a lot of fun. and obviously not hurt myself getting in the top 10 wasn't really a goal it just so happened to be achievable yeah and obviously being because i had no expectations getting a podium finish

was a massive surprise and really rewarding but i mainly did the event for myself to challenge myself in a racing environment and enjoy it and that's also why i'm doing the x helps i see it as the ultimate race in paragliding and a great way to push yourself both physically mentally and obviously your flying skills so yeah i'm doing it for myself and with the hope that i really enjoy it i've enjoyed supporting both times being the athlete obviously is a lot different but i love pushing myself physically and mentally so yeah super looking forward to it you almost make it sound too easy man I just did not expect a podium finish yet you got one but didn't read the route you still smashed it how does this happen

can't be all luck you must have put in the work somewhere I've got 15 years of flying experience in a lot of different terrains like Himalayas, Nepal, India, Pakistan, China it's just years of experience you start to figure out how to piece it together it's nice not to have an expectation if I wanted first and I got second or third then You might be disappointed from that, but if you go in with modest expectations, you can't really be disappointed. Just enjoy it. Enjoy the moments. Try not to feel the pressure. And as I said, I didn't enjoy the pressure on the last day. You just go in with an attitude to enjoy the race and not feel pressured to perform. I really need to work on that because when there is

Aninder: pressure, I don't enjoy it as much. Okay, let me reframe my question. I think what I meant to ask is, were you prepared well enough? Because when

you said that you did not read the route, and of course, you have done your homework in 15 years, but still... leading up to such a big race of your

Aninder: career which is not the pinnacle of the sport but still one of the top ones so did you think that you had enough preparations or would you change your strategy if the result wasn't what you achieved last time i don't think i had enough preparation but only with regards to checking out the route i was quite relaxed before the race we got on airbnb and chilled out and there was no stress there at all just enjoyed the friends company my supporters are really good friends so we in We just enjoyed each other's company. It was only at the end of the race I looked back on it and thought,

wow, I really should have checked out more of the route. But before the race, I felt prepared enough. Yeah, it put me in a good mental space. We also had the rainy day on the start, which... Really didn't want to run in the rain, but also being day one, I didn't want to push myself. And there was a lot of athletes that just ran on the road all day and ended up with injuries or they're really sore. I didn't push myself physically because I figured you've got to do this for a week. There's no point flogging yourself on day one. So I went in with the slow and steady

mentality and same with my flying. I was flying quite slow. I was just working on staying up all day. I wasn't racing off on bar or anything like that. I barely used speed bar only when I needed to sink. I just wanted to stay up, not land and maximize the days in the air, obviously. So yeah, I don't know. It worked quite well, just going slow and enjoying it as opposed to pushing hard. It depends on the race because it's easy to say when you're at the front, you're not trying to catch up. If I'm behind, I'm sure I'd have a different idea. Like looking at other pilots being

like, oh, if only I'd done this and yeah. It's a different mental game if you're at the front of the race and people are following you. It's like

effortless winning at the race is what it sounds like. I'm pretty sure there's a lot that has gone in. I'm not taking away any credit from you. But is this karma coming back to you to simplify it? I hope I got a lot of good karma there. Maybe. I don't know. On day two, I think it was, when

Aninder: basically everyone bombed out and I flew over them, that got me into second position. And then I maintained that. throughout the race I put it down to luck everyone was flying the mountains and I was flying the sun it was quite overcast so I just flew a straight line through flatlands just aiming for the sunny spots and that worked and got me through that little hard section there and I mentioned it to another pilot at the end I was just luck I got through and then he thought it was luck over and over again I was like okay if you put it that way so it's maybe it is karma coming

back to me but I suppose there is some decision making in there that really helped help the outcome so Not being stuck with, I fly flatlands in Australia, not being focused on flying every mountain or every peak. You can go a different way if you need to. And what I really liked about making my own decisions was like Simon and I would fly together a lot and then we'd just part for half an hour, we'd take a completely different line. And then next minute we're back in the same thermal again. So it was cool to see that you could make a completely different decision and then

end up in the same location an hour later, which was, yeah. pretty cool to see because you often don't see that in competitions so once you split

for good indeed and i think that the luck part it reminds me of a saying that is very famous in competition but and one of my mentors told me that is that paragliding they say in paragliding you need a little bit of luck but why is it the same pilots who get lucky every single time yeah yeah i always put it down to the time in the air so a lot of pilots like how do i improve and You can't really fast track it too much. Obviously, flying

Aninder: with better pilots, they'll mentor you along. Hopefully, a competition, you can learn it by watching people's different lines, but it just comes down to time in the air. We've got 15 years of over 4,000 hours in the air, and that counts for a lot. I think experience really helps in this sport. Shane, as a supporter versus competitor, What's the change in your mindset? How does life look differently? Because X

helps twice, I think, as a supporter and finally as a competitor. What are the big takeaways and differences? Yeah, it's going to be a lot

Aninder: different having people feed me and walk with me, keep me company. I really like the idea of having supporters that are great, great mental, I don't know, to keep me mentally active, talk with me and just give ideas to me for routes and stuff like that. I do too. know exactly what's happening so i like to make my own decisions with regards to my flying and have options for hiking trails and stuff like that and yeah athlete side i think it'll almost be easier because my goal is just to follow a line essentially that you can get tired and the flying can be demanding but at

the end of the day we're hiking through the most beautiful places in the mountains So I'm actually really looking forward to that. Like just walking around here in Chamonix thinking, oh yes, I get to do this for two weeks and have someone follow me and feed me and help me out the whole way. I'm really looking forward to that. The supporter role is interesting. It depends on the day. If there's good flying, you just drive all day. The pilot should be making their own decisions in the air. Like obviously you need to give them like obs and bits and pieces like that. But if there's good flying, it's basically a driving job. If there's no flying, then it's quite slow. If there's a mix of both, it can be a lot of

running around, trying to find the pilot who's landed somewhere in the mountains to give them water or food or whatever. So I think being the athlete is probably an easier job than chasing as a supporter. But then with a couple of supporters, you can hopefully share those roles. And I'd like to think that the team will come together and and really enjoyed the experience. And for me, supporting in 2017 was a big change in my flying style. I mainly focused on acro back then. And after that, I got into adventure flying. It changed my mindset of flying and what is possible. I'd like to think that people supporting me will come out with a similar change of mind and a view of the sport in a different way, like an

adventurous way, as opposed to chasing numbers or whatever it is that they see in the sport. Did you have some kind of ground rules while

selecting your team? Or was it just a bunch of trustworthy people that you vibed with and knew how to be a support system? Well, the ex-peer,

Aninder: good friends, Rich, I supported him in the 23x apps and he'd also done the ex-peer. So... He has the experience. He's good fun to be around. Like he's got a good energy. And then Dom, he's a good mate from Australia. So I brought along people that I enjoy being around. For the X-Alps, it's a mixed bag of people. Honestly, I haven't met two of them yet. So I need to do that soon. It's actually very difficult to get a crew together. So I'm hoping for four and two vans so you can leapfrog. And being essentially three weeks by the time you do the prep and then finishing off, asking

someone to take three weeks of their life to chase you around the mountains is actually very difficult. I've had a lot of people offer and then there's time restraints or can't get time off work. And yeah, so it's been very difficult to find people that I deem competent. Like I'd like people with... I can fly experience, preferably thermal flying, obviously. And if they know the Alps, it's really good because bringing people over from Australia, it's a massive change. All of a sudden you got to learn mountain flying. The language is different. All your weather, apps, forecasting, everything we need to learn. So it's a massive learning curve coming from somewhere outside of Europe.

That's part of the reason why I've based myself here in France, to get my head around the mountains. forecasting there's a lot of little local meteorology which you need to fly the area to know about or ask people i've been using burn air if you've heard of that it's an amazing tool for learning new valleys it'll have all the valley systems the lifting the sinking air and they've put the x helps airspace x helps route everything into the app so while flying around i can study everything and that's an amazing tool for someone who hasn't flown the areas and that's helping me a lot. Yeah, there's just a lot to learn in these mountains, especially 1200 Ks worth. It really depends on the weather.

If the weather's no good, you might fly on a different side of a mountain than what you've checked out. A lot of it might be just figuring it out as you go. At least there's enough athletes, you can see what other people have done. Finding supporters has been surprisingly hard. I've had a few people say you perform well previously, they don't want to do it because they feel like they're not adequate for it. And then I've had other friends that have basically no paradigm experience. I'll come support you. It depends. The people I ask seem hesitant and the people I don't ask are keen. You want to put out a public service announcement for if anybody listening to this show wants to still apply for your

supporting role? Put a link in the show notes. You can send me a message. I've got a few people trying to work with. The main thing is the timing.

Aninder: It's the three-week thing, so they're trying to get time off work. And then booking a van, I was really hoping to book it in the supporters' names, but because it's not 100% confirmed, leaving that a bit late, so everything goes up in price. If people are interested, you can send me a message. We might have a team together. It's just not 100% confirmed yet. I think this resonates back to your philosophy of let life be the way

it is and everything else will figure it out. Yeah, but unfortunately, people are hard to deal with. It's not hard to deal with, but things don't

Guest: flow so naturally when you add a bunch of people together. It's like herding cats. You get a group of people together and it does take some

Aninder: organization. So I really need to put my head down and get things moving forward in that regard. It's part of the planning. I know what you mean.

But I think overall, if I look at our talks, this seems to be a lot more prepared than the experience. Is this correct or should I be correct?

Yeah. So I treated the XP more like a stepping stone to get to the X-Alps. The X-Alps was the ultimate goal. So for example, the van I purchased, I

Aninder: bought it with the idea that I might use this in the X- Alps. And same with the location I'm living here is perfect for paragliding. It's a great way to train for hike and fly races. And I've given myself time to check out the route. Basically two months I've been trying to fly part of the route, depending on the weather. There's a lot of snow at the moment, which makes it hard to go like somewhere or... try to make a big crossing when i have to walk out if i land in snow which i'm not very familiar with being australian so i am definitely more prepared it's just a longer

route so i have to spend a lot more time checking it out airspace is obviously a big thing so trying to study that tell us a little bit about what is it called the glamour side of excels man because obviously this is set a told us the pinnacle of paragliding at least in the hike and fly discipline And there's a lot of media coverage and attention that you get. How has your Instagram DMs blown up since then? And how has your

follower count and everything? Nothing's really changed much yet. In Australia, no one knows what paragliding is, so it means nothing over

Aninder: there. I did have some news interviews and stuff and had a PR lady for our paragliding association in Australia, facing newspaper articles and news interviews. And it's funny, the questions I asked, like no one really knows what it is. So I got a bit of attention that way, like a a couple of magazine articles and stuff, but I don't want to be treated differently. I'm just another person, and so are all the other athletes. We're all people. I'd like to think that I can talk to someone without them thinking, hey, you're an Excel pilot. And at the end of the day, it takes time to get here, but I'm sure there's plenty of other people out there who could do it who just haven't applied. So it's just

the people who have applied who have done it. It's just a race, and I'm doing it for myself, not for the glamour. I was actually very surprised in the 23X outs I was there for the prep week and how much attention the athletes get. They're doing photo shoots constantly and it's quite a big deal. But doing the race for myself, if I do well, then I do well. But at the end of the day, it's a personal challenge. Love the humbleness and

the class that comes with it in your answer. You're a podcaster's dream, to say the least. To sum it up, if you have to give advice to athletes,

Aninder: younger pilots listening out there or anybody who wants to follow your footsteps why should they do it and how should they do it don't do it because you feel pressure to do it do it for yourself and how would you do it just get the experience so obviously flying in mountains is really important hike and fly and bb flying is actually quite an important one so i've done a not a super huge amount of bb but enough bb flying that you're making your own decisions your top landing choosing when to take off where to take off all those things are really important it's not just the flying there's a lot of other decision making that needs to be made so go bb flying do as much hiking fly as you can and expose yourself to as many

mountains as possible yeah as i said i've spent a lot of time in the himalayas and the pyrenees and now somewhat in the alps do it for yourself don't do it for the glamour just get as much experience as you can and So airtime is pretty much the answer to most questions. I'm a big advocate of ground handling. Being a coastal pilot, we're quite used to flying in wind. We wouldn't go to the site unless there's, say, 20k an hour of wind. Being comfortable with a bit of wind around is always handy. And being able to launch out of any place is really nice. Yeah, practice your ground handling, especially in wind. The coast is perfect for it because it's laminar. You can play around, figure out

what works and then take that to the mountains where it gets a bit more rowdy and refine those skills to be more specific to mountain environment. Yeah. Thank you for that advice, Shane. Before we wrap up, I almost forgot this topic that I had listed out because I was reading

your adventure profile and it said that you went on a solo wall biv in the Karakorams, man. That sounds exciting and amazing. Please tell us something about it. Solo wall biv in the wildest landscape must be quite nerve-wracking to say the least. Yeah, so I wasn't doing much bivvy

Aninder: flying there, only like a night or two out. And... Pakistan's pretty amazing. I've had my most epic flight there, but it is a lot of work. I actually prefer to fly in the Alps or New Zealand because the altitude difference. You go there, you need oxygen. It's bloody cold up high, so you need a lot of layers and everything is harder. But the mountains are amazing. I saw your Instagram story today where you said you were at

4,200 meters and chilling. I literally just walked up the mountain behind us, looked 600 vertical, took off, and it was actually quite

Aninder: strong climbs for spring. I got a seven and a half meter a second climb and got onto Mont Blanc and soared up that to 4.2, which was pretty cool. So I guess just like just an afternoon hike and fly for training. Yeah. But... yeah pakistan was really cool i went there with just the idea of flying around and discovering the landscape i was there for another pilot arrived early we weren't flying together he was chasing triangles she held the asian record for a while yarn tuppy but i flew alone besides one day we shared the sky for maybe an hour and it was cool it's they're big mountains with not many options to land on top of the mountains so it's not like india where You can find like a nice mountain

that's got no trees on it. You can land and camp quite easily. Like there was one flight, which is still to date my most rewarding flight where I flew for almost eight hours, but quite remote areas with climbs to 7,000 meters. And basically at the end of the day, you've got 8,000 meter peaks in front of you. It's amazing the shadows those things cast. So as soon as the sun starts to get lower. The shadow just accelerates across the ground and blankets every mountain behind it. So you need to be careful of your shadows or just fly the west face. I was trying to cut a lap of the

large mountains. I can't remember the name of them. Yeah, it's basically behind the launch in Karimabad. Anyway, I tried to fly a circle around that, but it started off really slow, struggling to get along and then got booming, like really booming and flying around over 6,000 meters and then finished the day trying to jump a coal, which I kept getting flushed out on. And then I spent two hours out running the shadows to get to the only bivvy spot I could see and landed after sunset. So like I watched the sunset from five and a half thousand meters. Blighted out and landed at 4.6, I think it was, on top of this mountain. It was the only flat mountain I could see, which is why it took me so long to

get there. And that was very rewarding just because the flight had a mix of everything. Yeah, massive mountains, strong climbs. And then at the end of the day, I had to slow right down and fly what I could, what sun was left, watching the sunset from, yeah, 5,600 meters. It's really cool. And yeah, a couple of other little bivvies where I just go out for a night and come back. Once I got low, I'd just land somewhere, camp the night and fly back the next day. It was quite nice. One thing I've learned about flying in those big mountains is I went in with a pretty relaxed attitude

back then. So going with the attitude that everything's okay and nothing will go wrong. But after spending a bit of time in India, especially last year where there was a lot of accidents, I realized how difficult it would be if you were to go down the rescue route. is pretty much impossible over there. If you're going down, you're almost on your own. And I never approached it like that back in the day. I'd fly quite deep lines with, you got a lot of height, but no real visible landing options. Yeah, you could land on a glacier, but it might take you three days to walk out on a glacier. And now with a different mental approach to safety, probably wouldn't fly those lines unless I had some company or

at least someone keeping a close eye on me and access to some type of rescue system. Interesting. I think you pretty much answered Two

questions in this one, because usually I close the show by asking my guests what's their most memorable flight in life. And with your experience from various countries across continents, is this the one or can you still choose a different one? Yeah, that's still the one. I

Aninder: have a video and a write-up. I actually wrote a magazine article about it and published in an Australian magazine about the flight. Yeah, that's the most rewarding. Maybe I'll try epoxy. That's why it was so good. Yeah, to finish it with a bivvy. And then also the next day I took off and there was some tourist attractions I wanted to see. So I just flew to the tourist attractions, landed at those, checked those out, which they seemed close, but it was still a four-hour flight. What are you talking about? Just a big bridge, like a really old bridge that crosses a thing. And then I had an attitude of just say yes to everything back then. So it was quite interesting. Like when I landed, the guy I met on the bus said,

Aninder: in on the bus there and he come and found me on landing and took me out for lunch. And then some other local students, they're like, jump in the car, we'll take you to the Chinese border. And I don't know, you just mix it up. It's not all about the flying. It's about the culture and seeing what you can while you're there. I went to see a bridge, but I got to hang out with some locals and experience a little bit more of their culture. They're super generous there. It's amazing. Before I went, I had friends and family warning me like, oh, Pakistan's not safe. You might

get shot there. And I found it one of the most inviting places, especially being solo. If you're out in public, people would bring you in and feed you. They wouldn't take anything for it. You'd buy your meals and not take anything. And it's really nice culture. Obviously, it depends where you are. Yeah, I was really impressed with Pakistan. I can relate to this, man. I had an outlanding of some sorts, not super remote

in Bir a few weeks ago. And yeah, the same thing. You land, the whole village comes around. Who is this guy from the sky to take you to their home and show you all the hospitality. But same in Kenya. I was there earlier, like in February. I could tell you a story about this pilot who goes by the name of Captain Clueless on X-Contest. You might have seen his track logs on one of these daily PG scores. So this guy lands at a place which is seven hours retrieve from a takeoff spot. That's a standard retreat in Australia. Yeah, but you guys have bigger roads and it's

still a first world country. He figures out, touches the ground and he's a local celebrity, guy from the sky, I think. Yeah. And the whole lot of taxis come around and people, it's like, he's mine, he's mine. And finally he hitches a ride with one of them on a motorbike because motorbike taxis are pretty common in Africa. He said that by the end of the seven hour ride, the driver was offering his sister for marriage.

Guest: Seven hours on a motorbike taxi. That's crazy. It would have been interesting. He said, it's not about the flying. It's about the whole

immersion in the culture and everything around it. Yeah, I often say that the flight's only half the adventure. The other half is getting

Aninder: home. And I love hitchhiking in other countries too. You land somewhere and you throw your thumb out and you meet the nicest people. It's so good. Like even the other day we did a three-day bivvy in Switzerland. Landed in a paddock and next minute we're invited into the house. Beer for sunset. He made us dinner. Like we went for three days and I didn't even pull the tent out. Yeah. Always managed to get a hut or invited into a house. It was amazing. Yeah. half the adventure has been on the ground amazing i think this is what the beauty of paragliding is all about and

love your mentality around it which has let life come as it is and it will turn out to be beautiful yeah is there anything that you might want to share that we might have missed out on unintentionally or should we save it for after the race when you come back with renewed experience oh yeah you can do if you want me back see how i go and yeah I'm really looking forward to it. Getting to follow a black line for two weeks straight is

Aninder: going to be pretty exciting. And doing the two things that I absolutely love, hiking in the mountains is stunning and flying in the mountains is also stunning. It's the best way to see the world. A little bit of a slower pace. Yeah. So I'm just looking forward to seeing everything and you get to go through all these amazing little villages that you'd never normally go into. I'm excited. Indeed, Shane. And I think from all of us

at Paragliding Atlas here, I can definitely wish you all the very luck. And along with that, I would love to make a public service announcement to all our listeners out here. If they have loved the content that has come their way so far, don't forget to head over to Shane's Instagram, which will be in the show notes below. And there's a link for GoFundMe where you fuel his adventures and all the positivity that he brings in the world go do your own bit and making his dream a reality and you'll see more magic being poured out in the world of paragliding yeah awesome thank you and thanks for having me on the show it's been a great chat good luck man and can't wait to have you back yeah awesome thank you