Flying to Mandi

Today I thought I'd video part of the drive up to launch - to give an indication of the steepness of the terrain:

I launched shortly after 12 and decided to head towards Mandi – a town about 45km south of Bir - I landed within about five kilometres of the "official" landing area - in a small paddy field, where a bullock plowman was chatting on his mobile phone!

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Once again I was meet by a substantial "welcoming committee"!

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The drive back was along about 75km of twisting mountainous roads, and took longer than the flight!

USA election results

Wednesday morning was significant because we watched the USA election results live on CNN a small Indian shop. A huge cheer went up from the crowd of foreign tourists at the end of Barach Obama’s victory speech.

Then went up the hill and watched people fly for a while then launched and just “boated around” enjoying the view and air. Highlight was thermaling with Himalayan Griffen Vultures

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Finished off by cruising out over the landing area at a high level then doing a “spiral dive” – this was my longest sustained spiral that I’ve done. Maximum descent rate was 14m/s – was rather exhilarating. Landed in the main landing area for the first time and watched lots of other wings come in::

Boating around the Red Temple

Four of us - Phil, Peter, Bernie and I went off boating around the Red Temple - a very pleasant two and a half hours in the air.

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Part of the Bir taxi fleet

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Buddhist monastry at Palpung Sherabling

On Monday a group of us traveled to the Palpung Sherabling Buddhist monastry near Bir.

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Inner courtyard.

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Lion guarding entrance.

Tibetian monks chanting:
Public safety, however, doesn't seem to be a high priority...

Farewell dinner

On Sunday night our group went off to an Indian restaurant to have a farewell dinner for those pilots heading back to Australia - eight of us crowded into two small Maruti Suzuki 800s, and travelled across rough roads for about 30 minutes to the best restaurant in the region.

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Peter, Matts (obscured), Ron, Julian, Phil (Sagar), Kris & Phil Hystek
The food was wonderful, as was the decor

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but the safety standards left something to be desired....

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Note lack of balcony on stairs up to restaurant!

Boating around

The inversion was still fairly strong on Sunday - however, I managed to launch without any issues on my first attempt, then spent a very pleasant 90 minutes "boating around" the launch area. The challenge I set myself was to get as high as possible given the conditions - I got up to 9500 feet (although launch is at 7500 feet!)

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Bir has an "Unemployed Taxi Operators Union" - what they really intend to convey is that they are self-employed or independent contractors!

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Inversion

On Saturday our group was supposed to fly to Camp 360 to "Vol Bivouac" - however, the day was very strongly inverted (a layer of warmer air above cooler valley air), so the thermals weren't working very well.... Only three people managed to fly to the camp, with four others flying down to bomb-out, then catching a taxi, then donkeys, to the camp site. Julian and I had had several unsuccessful launch attempts (because of the very light wind conditions), so at the end of the day caught a taxi back down the hill and remained at the Colonel's Resort...

Several other Kiwis are here at Bir: Steve, Ko and Dave

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Inversion

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