Steve getting strapped in for paragliding. I think his newly acquired moustache (souvenir from the trek) has channeled the inner GI Joe in him.
Robyn catching a thermal.
View from above. Our landing site is the grassy plain in the northwest corner of the bay.Additional photos can be viewed at: http://picasaweb.google.com/robyou/PokharaNepal100110032010?feat=directlink
Took a little hiatus from posting, so will try to play catch-up. We decided to end our Nepal trek with a stay in Pokhara, the second-largest city in Nepal, but far more laid-back than the capital city, Kathmandu. To celebrate Steve's birthday, we opted to splurge and try something that he's never done before, so we decided to continue our favorite past time of jumping off things - in this instance, a cliff - with a 30 minute paragliding session. Pokhara is one of the preeminent places in the world to paraglide as the valley provides consistent wind and thermal patterns and year-round mild temperatures - we paraglided in t-shirts and shorts that day. I was a little confused about the differences between parasailing, hangliding, base jumping, and paragliding, but essentially paragliding is using a sail (bigger than a parachute) that doesn't need to be ejected from a pack (safer!) and you jump off a sloping cliff (much, much safer than basejumping, because you still have the option of aborting your jump if something doesn't feel right). Steve enjoyed himself, while I on the other hand, probably don't ever need to do it again, as I succumbed to motion sickness about halfway through the session. After we recouped, we had a great birthday lunch of Japanese food (first Japanese in 4 mos!) with Jay, our paragliding buddy from SoCal who was in Nepal doing a weeklong Habitat for Humanity project - go Jay!
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