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An experience that transcended everything!
BRIAN CHILDS – Commercial Pilot from the U.S.A. working for a humanitarian organization in Afghanistan
I have spent my entire adult life around airports, ascending the murky ranks all the way from an unfortunate aircraft re-fuler to driving airliners around the skies of the United States. It was easy to think that I had seen most of the important corners of aviation sitting in my cockpit up there. But like many pilots, I always felt like there was something missing from any airplane I flew. They weren't fast enough or didn't go high enough. Seeking that adventure, I took a job in Afghanistan for a humanitarian group that provides aircraft to other relief workers and the United Nations. It was on a vacation from this job when I went to India and met Avi, Anita, and my instructor, TJ. Collectively, they showed me what I had been missing all along.
Its worth mentioning that I pride myself on being organized; and in that regard, my trip to India snowballed into somewhat of a disaster. Aside form getting lost at the airport (as a pilot no less… what a shame), I didn't bring the right kind or amount of currency with me, thus having to beg Avi and Anita for a place to sleep while I flew with them. They were amazing. I could easily have been washing dishes at their place at night considering how addicted I became to their gift of flight. They were truly humble and amazing people… more interested in sharing the love they had with flying than anything else. Of course, I wasn't going to press my luck and ask if I could bring one of the monkeys I found on the highway with me as a pet to stay at their ashram… something tells me they would have been slightly less hospitable.
My first proper day with them at their flying oasis between Pune and Mumbai, off of the hills surrounding a sleepy little railroad town named Kamshet, started with a ground handling introduction atop a flat grassy field on the far side of the lake. I remember the air was brisk and clean, and a slight breeze flowed over the perfect site as if TemplePilots had paid the wind gods personally for the use of that spot. A few oxen munched grass on the perimeter, watched over by their shepards who occasionally fell asleep while leaning on their walking sticks. TJ showed me how to prepare my chewing-gum pink training glider on the ground, made of fabric apparently pieced together by color-blind sky divers. I guess it was an easy way to keep an eye on your student, since no professional pilot would ever been seen over other people's heads in that thing. And surely it would never get stolen.
After TJ was satisfied that I had a fair chance of not getting completely tangled in the control lines of the glider, he showed me how to inflate the thing into a wall, and then raise it up over my head into a wonderfully shaped wing. He did it with such ease that the smug pilot in me figured it couldn't be very hard. The next hour were spent slowly learning that, as expected, TJ had been doing that sort of thing for awhile. I chased the wing around our little field, back and forth, occasionally running into farmer's vegetable gardens and then back onto the grass. The farmers whistled and spit at me as if I were a cow wandering over to have a snack on their lettuce. TJ was patient and we did a lot of laughing, especially when a couple oxen got spooked at my unskillful technique, one of them so frightened that it fell over while running away. By the end of the morning, I had gained enough control over the glider to not scare the cows anymore.
I came to the ashram in the middle of the week, and for those first few days was the only paraglider cadet. TJ and I would hop on his motorcycle each morning and ride to the nearby training field, spending a few hours perfecting my ineptitude. On the way over he would tell me stories about the area, and about all kinds of poisonous animals that lived in the dry leafy underbrush beside the roads. By the end of the week, I was certain that any and all animals I saw in India were poisonous to some degree. They paint the cow's horns orange for decoration in that region, though I assumed for awhile that it was a way for them to distinguish between the poisoned ones from those which were less infected. TJ said that I was mistaken, though after making me wander around with a giant pink parachute and a women's helmet, I was a little suspicious of him.
The weekend came and I found myself launching off of a gentle slope into a beautiful updraft caused by both thermals and a steady wind. Though only on my second flight, the guys let me wander around in the consistent updraft for hours, occasionally getting to share the wind with a buzzard. Sitting in my harness, feeling the breeze against me with a bird flying formation above and to my right… filled me with a sensation I had never felt before in all my hours being aloft. Though as a pilot I am a person who has dedicated my life to perfecting the art of aviation, what paragliding provides is something much more substantial and animalistic than simply learning which dial tells you how high you are.
Since the beginning of time humans have fascinated about the ability to take flight and soar with the birds above them. The invisible wind is something that made no sense to our ancestors. It was everywhere and nowhere all at the same time. It could never be captured or harnessed until only very recently, after a long history of failed attempts. A plane will take us into the air, yes… but it does not let a person FLY with the birds, as the birds do. It was the thing that my addiction to bigger, faster, higher could never suffice. Then Temple Pilots gave me the fix. They gave me the thing that the even ancient people were trying to master: flight.
No motors. No cockpits. No noise. It was just the wind and me.
I left Kamshet after only five days but took with me an experience that transcended everything else. A part of me was happy to know that I had discovered a hobby I could conceivably spend the rest of my life trying to master… and another part of me, a deeper part that once drove me to become a pilot in the first place, left India feeling completed. Temple Pilots is a shrine for those of us who have chosen to live in the air. It takes regular people and lifts them up into places where our ancestors thought only the gods could go.
- Brian Childs |
