I hopped out of bed this morning early ready for day one of the course. The weather was crisp in the morning, the sky blue with fresh air but little wind. This lasted until the sun started warming the place up and the vultures found the thermals,

we looked at them with an eye on learning, they know how to make use of them and don’t waste energy on air that doesn’t rise.

We took a Jeep out to a place that is flat enough to do some ground handling exercises. Ground handling is important and Adam Hill, the owner of Frontiers Paragliding Nepal know’s how to make the sport as safe as possible by teaching from the ground up.

So, in the hot sun we practised taking off, running fast enough to inflate the wing but being a shallow slope not really flying, but that’s what this day was about, ground handling. After a day of this in the hot sun I was ready for a break and am now sitting in the Frontier’s shop with a mug of water and one eye on getting some dinner.

Tomorrow we are having tandem flights so that we get an idea of some of the exercises being performed by qualified pilots, after that it’s back to the hill in the afternoon and more of the ground handling. Day three is when we start to pilot for real.

One thing that was quite endearing on the take-off site was a whole bunch of kids that came to keep us company including an older brother with learning difficulties and a love of the camera. They didn”t get up to mischief and in fact one of them helped us put the gear awway, having seen many practice days like this they have learned more than we”ll ever know. One day this boy will be teaching for sure, he has a job for life