Nepal flights

Victoria - Vancouver
Vancouver - Seoul
Seoul - Singapore
Singapore - Kathmandu
Kathmandu - Pokhara
Sarangkot launch - Lake End

After many hours of travel including a short overnight in super clean and sophisticated Singapore, Paul, Charlie, Rick, Ioan and I arrived in Kathmandu jetlagged yet excited for what lay ahead.

Here we met up with an old paragliding friend from the south Indian city of Bangalore, namely Narendra. Years ago, I visited Ioan at his office there and, together with Narendra, we had some great flying adventures at Nandi Hill. I had arranged to have him join us on the tour which was his first time in Nepal.

We visited Ioan's inlaws (his wife Sabita is home on Gabriola Island with their new daughter) and had some traditional Nepali food and drink but had to cut the evening short as our internal clocks were 12 hours out.

The culture shock was full on with the boys enjoying the taxi ride to and from the hotel as much as anything. Rick called it one of the best amusement rides he'd ever been on!

The next morning we had a short flight alongside the Himalaya range to Pokhara where we'd be based for the next couple of weeks.

A few hours later and Paul, Rick, And Charlie had combined for over 3hrs of intro airtime, each of them climbing close to 1800' above Sarangkot launch with climb rates near 7m/s. The main house thermal was super busy with tandems and unpredictable Russians (quite possibly every Russian pilot is in Pokhara right now) but the boys did well, quickly climbing to the top as they shook off their winter rust.

Meanwhile, Narendra and I worked with Ioan at the end of the lake, getting him connected to his new baby - the Airwave Sport 4.
He showed little signs of having been away from the sport as he kited his glider under the warm Nepali sun.

The tour officially kicks off tomorrow and the conditions are looking ideal.