Like the idea of letting your dreams take wing? Paragliding instructor Astrid Rao, along with hubby Sanjay, takes you on a guided flight of the skies.

Wanna experience Nirvana ? Then align your aural and terrestrial planes and raise your ground level. No, not with meditation but with some real, not supernatural, levitation. When you glide with the birds, you are one with the sky. Hey, excuse me for getting so lyrical, but all these clichés come magically alive when you are paragliding.

The feeling of pure freedom, and the sense of wonder and excitement that comes with free flight is unbeatable. The thing about discovering man’s age-old quest is that you need to share it with others, and that’s why I became an instructor.

Taking Flight
I can’t truly say I chose this profession, a Korean paragliding instructor who was in Mumbai for a while, and was looking for a decent site to fly where the wind was right. Since I had a house in Kamshet, near Lonavala, I invited him over to check out the hills nearby.

We trudged up and down the hillsides, test flying, according to the wind currents for four days. At the end of it, I caught the flying bug, and was committed to it for life. Under his wing, I picked up the basics of flying. Then came numerous trips to paragliding sites in Kamshet, Goa and abroad, and work in terms of creating infrastructure, sorting the logistics, marketing, etc.

Veering Off The Beaten Track
I had a regular career in advertising and chucking up this stable job for a maverick pursuit like flying did indeed raise the alarm bells in my family. Plus having no module to base my business plans upon, I had to improvise as I went along to set up Nirvana Adventures, which provides training in paragliding.

The challenge was tremendous — to make a hitherto unexplored sport like paragliding accessible to a new generation of adventure-loving Indians. But I was lucky to have a dedicated team of adventure enthusiasts and the constant support of my husband, Sanjay. We ride the rough winds pretty well, I think!

Same Difference?
Warning: Before you jump off the cliff, know your paragliding from your parachuting, or you’ll end up at the wrong destination! A paraglider is designed for soaring flight while parachutes are designed to descend.

Once you take off, the experience is thrilling. The world’s at your feet and the avian lords of the sky are eye to eye with you. The descent too, is gentle, like a dying breeze. Totally addictive!

Waiting For The Wind