What Should I Know Before A Paragliding Trip Abroad?

Pal Takats first came to Colombia in 2011, on a wild card to what he says was the country's first Paragliding World Cup, and spent the same trip riding 3,500 kilometres through it on a motorbike. He kept coming back for competitions, and in 2017 flew about 100 kilometres down the Cauca Valley from Roldanillo to Piedechinche, which he calls probably the most beautiful flight in the valley. He preferred the quieter countryside there. A first purchase fell through over unclear paperwork, and within a week he had signed for another place, with his wife putting in money too, that has its own takeoff and top landing. The low, technical launch is not for everyone, he says, but his longest flight from it was about 250 kilometres, and on the right wind he can fly to a neighbour's garden in 10 to 15 seconds rather than drive.

Godfrey Wenness was already searching for a site in the early 1990s, with two aims, a school and a world record, when hang glider pilots' word of mouth led him to Mount Borah. After a trial season around 1992 and 1993 he took it on, bulldozed roads and cut launches, and after about five years of training flew the world record in November 1998, landing in Queensland 335 kilometres away. The mountain now has four launches, one for each wind direction, 16 kilometres of roads, and hosted the 2007 World Championships; he has taught more than 2,000 students there. Eddie Colfox, who started flying in 1992 and flew in India in the 1990s, came to Bir in 2006 after finding the Nanda Devi area unmanageable, and has run trips there since 2007. Jigish Gohil moved to Bir about a decade ago and wrote a book, Aloft and Unbound, about the rest of a pilot's life, for the friends and family who do not fly.

Pal Takats explains the Cauca Valley's two personalities. Roldanillo faces east, so pilots can launch from about 9 in the morning, and the best of them chase 200 kilometre triangles between the western and central Cordilleras. But the Pacific breeze comes over the western range, somewhere between 11 and 1, as a strong, gusty backwind on launch, much like foehn in the Alps, and pushes further out into the valley as the day goes on, so Roldanillo gives you one shot in the morning. Piedechinche, on the other side of the valley near Cali, faces west: thermals start around 10 or 11, the same breeze arrives there as a headwind, and pilots fly on into the evening. At Panchgani, Vistasp Kharas describes east winds in the morning and a sea wind that pushes in from the west in the afternoon; heated rock faces can keep pulling thermals against it, so smoke in neighbouring valleys can blow in opposite directions. He climbs high first to find the day's shear layers, typically around 1,800 to 2,100 metres and again around 2,600 to 2,700.

At Bir, Eddie Colfox's rule of thumb is that everything steps up by about a third when you cross from the front ridge into the back ranges: altitude, thermal strength, roughness and cold, with the thermals perhaps doubling. Valley winds matter far more there, and a storm in the next valley can send a gust front down into yours; towards Manali, the wind that spills over the Rohtang pass can make the low air rough and reverse the logic of a landing. In Kenya, Nikolay Yotov's competition launch at Kijabe, a conical volcanic hill in the Rift Valley near Lake Naivasha, has a window that closes when the afternoon northeasterlies arrive as a backwind, which is why he capped the field at 60. The same easterlies wash out Kijabe and Mount Longonot late in the day, so flights should end elsewhere, and he still bombs out at times under good-looking clouds in the lee of the Aberdares.

In India, Eddie Colfox and Vistasp Kharas both put power lines first. Lines run everywhere around settlements, and small ones appear at the last moment, so decide early, keep looking until your feet are on the ground, and land a little away from villages; Kharas looks for the poles and their shadows, because the wires themselves are hard to see. Colfox adds terraces: landing upslope onto one is dangerous, and landing downslope the lift may never let you down, so treat a terrace like a slope landing. Kharas asks pilots to avoid standing crops, especially sugarcane, and to choose fields that have been cut. In Colombia, Pal Takats has seen low pilots forced under the power lines along the Roldanillo range and into a valley with only slope landings, and warns against pushing back to land close to town, where the afternoon wind is gusty; land out near the main road instead. Around Mount Borah the lines are few and run between properties, but Godfrey Wenness warns of fences hidden in grass a metre or two deep in a wet season, and of properties so large that a pilot who lands between roads can face a long walk: carry water.

Getting home is usually easy and cheap. Around Mount Borah, pilots hitchhike along the main roads that most cross-country lines follow, and WhatsApp groups share spare seats on retrieves. In Bir, a WhatsApp and Telegram network organises taxi shares, four pilots to a small car. Around Panchgani, shared jeeps run to the nearest town for a few rupees; Kharas pays for a second seat for his glider and asks visitors not to overpay and spoil the system. In Kenya's Rift Valley, Nikolay Yotov says someone on a motorbike usually turns up wherever you land, and his competition encourages pilots to ride with them so local people earn from it. The security advice is consistent. Pal Takats, who speaks Spanish and has never had a problem, has heard of pilots losing phones, never of anyone being hurt, and suggests learning basic Spanish, smiling and putting electronics away; Yotov suggests carrying little money. Wenness and Kharas describe their regions as safe for women flying alone: Wenness says many women fly at Mount Borah, and Kharas that few solo women have come but he sees no special risk.