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Feel free in midair, all brave hearts

Want to be like a bird and fly into the clouds? The nearest to this experience is paragliding and Vagamon is the ideal place to do it

PHOTO: MAHESH HARILAL

UNFETTERED & FREE The adventure sport of paragliding has made its official debut in the State

If you are the kind that cannot see the point in running off a slope and be held up to a canopy-like thing with some strings, this is not for you. But, if you have ever wondered what it feels like to be a bird up in the sky buoyed by air, unfettered by man-made contraptions, you will discover, paragliding is just your kind of thing. Imagine the wind on your face, the adrenalin rush while taking off into the air and soaring into the skies. Dangerous as it sounds, it might be a tad safer than driving on potholed roads. Take that walk in the clouds, a glide in the sky...

Paragliding made its official debut in Kerala with the International Paragliding Festival, which was held in the verdant hills of Vagamon, at Kolahalamedu, 4 kms from Vagamon. The festival, organised by the Adventure Sports and Sustainable Tourism Academy (ASSTA) and the Department of Tourism, drew a lot of attention from Indian and foreign paragliding enthusiasts.

Although there are several paragliding spots in Himachal Pradesh, Vagamon is one of the few in south India. For the moment Vagamon is the only paragliding spot in Kerala. According to paragliders, the spot, which is located at an altitude of about 3,000 metres above sea level, is ideal for the sport. There is a 10 km-long ridge in Vagamon that is perfect for paragliding. As a sport what it needs is ideal wind conditions, elevation and a slope for take-off and landing. A paraglider is a free-flying foot-launched aircraft. Thermals, as the air currents in the area are known, make Vagamon an ideal spot for paragliding.

For the uninitiated, paragliding is an adventure sport in which a pilot sits in a harness suspended below a fabric wing, whose shape is formed by the pressure of air entering vents in front of the wing. Paragliding is also known as parapenting in some countries.

One of the movers behind the attempt to develop Vagamon as a paragliding centre, Gopakumar of ASSTA says, "Our attempt is to create activity based tourism which involves something beyond just Ayurvedic treatments and houseboat rides on the backwaters. Paragliding will attract tourists interested in the sport, those who want to give it a shot and also those people at home who are interested in it ."

Plans are afoot to establish a paragliding academy at Vagamon, which will train those interested in taking up paragliding as a sport or as a hobby. "Following the festival, there have been enquiries from interested people. We will arrange for certified gliding instructors to conduct classes. The batches, however, will not be large, if the number of students increases it becomes unwieldy. Each batch will have 4-5 students," says Gopakumar.

The duration of a paragliding course is around 10 days and the cost would be somewhere in the area of Rs 10,000. The equipment would be provided by the Academy. "And once enthusiasts have picked up, and if they want, when they are confident, they can buy their own equipment which will cost around Rs 1 lakh. This is the cost of the basic equipment and when there are add-ons the expenses will also increase," says Gopakumar. Anyone between 15 and 60 can paraglide, as long as they do not have serious health problems, he adds. If you have it in you, go paraglide... touch the clouds.

(For more information log on to www.paraglidingkerala.com)

SHILPA NAIR ANAND

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