Kansai Scene – Mumbai, Bollywood Style

A night in India’s city that never sleeps looking for Mumbai, Bollywood style. Kansai Scene., Japan

   “I’ll show you the real Bombay” says Priya over the noise of the bar.

   It’s not the ‘real’ Bombay I want to see. I’m after the Bollywood illusion pumped out in the 800 or so Hindi movies made each year. There’s been little sign of it during a couple of days walking Mumbai’s streets. Luckily, it turns out it’s the luxurious all-signing, all-dancing version Priya has in mind.

   India is a country of extremes, nowhere more so than Mumbai, its biggest and richest city. Mumbai is India’s city that never sleeps. The first impression, however, is of the masses that don’t have anywhere to sleep, not the all-night party people.

   We’re drinking Kingfisher beer in Leopold’s Café as evening falls. On a previous visit to this central city hangout I’d been recruited as a movie extra, one of eight travellers plucked off the street to make up the audience in a nightclub. The scene was a dance routine. The actor, backed by six beautiful dancers, was undeniably charismatic despite using a combination of Enrique Iglesias pseudo-suave facial expressions and Saturday Night Fever dance moves. We’d been required until four in the morning and were paid ¥1,500. Strangely, being a breathing prop inside the dream machine was too close to the illusion to satisfy. Well, actually, it was just a long night spent in an abandoned warehouse, hastily converted into a drafty film set, watching other people work. For ten hours. On a five minute song. A taste of the Mumbai highlife, Bollywood style, had eluded me.

   Somehow I did get a taste for masala movies - a spicy mix of action and forbidden love between muscled heroes and former Miss Universes played out against a ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’ backdrop, with plenty of song-and-dance routines thrown in to complete the three hour minimum. Many even have glamorous international settings. My favourite, Dil Chahta Hai, featured a third of its screen time in my home town of Sydney.

   A yellow and black cab takes us into the night. Priya, a writer for a men’s magazine, tells me that despite their demi-god status, Indian stars are often seen in Mumbai nightspots. After watching a couple of dozen movies, I might even recognise them.

   We drive through gothic Victorian architecture vaguely reminiscent of London, passing the Gateway of India that commemorates both a regal arrival and later the point where the last British formally quit India in 1947. Opposite sits the Taj Mahal Hotel, built by the industrialist Jamshedji Tata in 1903 as a magnificent come-back after he was refused entry to a hotel with a whites-only policy.

   We leave the cab, slip down an alley opposite the Indian Ocean and emerge into a swanky courtyard complex. Then Priya leads me into an art gallery opening that’s an instant form of reverse culture shock after acclimatizing to Bombay’s street level culture. The room’s packed with exquisitely dressed people. Within seconds I’m being introduced to a stunning green-eyed fashion model with a spotlight bright smile. The artist, Raghava Kalyanaraman, is dressed in a regal deep-red full length outfit. In his early twenties, with knowing eyes and velvety skin, he has the appearance of a boy maharaja. I point out my favorite painting, a red dancer painted, like all his work, with his hands. ‘Inspired by flamenco on a trip to Barcelona’, he says. Photographers circle, snapping people famous to everyone in the room but me.

   We accept a lift to VeloCity, Mumbai’s largest nightclub. The lights of the cities high-rises twinkle dimly through tinted windows as we speed down the long curve of Marine Drive. Deep bass pounds from the speakers as we pass Mahalaxmi. Earlier in the day I was here watching Hindu worshippers stream into a temple overlooking the ocean. Women in kaleidoscopic saris had offered bright yellow garlands to a beatific blue skinned Krishna and a deep green Ganesha.

   A sea of people congregates outside the club, all glammed-up western style, not a sari in sight. We make it into the VIP lounge. It’s the caste system of cool. The club’s spread over a four large rooms, with this one overlooking the main dance floor. We stroll through the crowd, with Priya stopping along the way to talk to male models, all six foot four and full of muscles. We squeeze through retro and funk rooms before heading onto the main dance floor that’s packed with a few thousand people. There’s a sprinkling of Europeans, but it’s mainly Bombay’s middle to upper dance class. The music is eclectic; Indian Bhangra and Dhol dance music alternates with House, Drum & Bass and Hip-Hop.

   Priya finds messages on her cell phone and leads me on to a couple of smaller bars, each one packed full of the Beautiful People dancing and drinking.

   One bar strikes me as familiar – it’s just like the one in a crucial scene in Dil Chahta Hai. I have this moment of clarity at around three am. Then a couple of actors are pointed out, a few future Miss Universes sway by and I’m offered substances more invigorating than the usual fare on the menu of the latter day India hippy. Celluloid dreams can come true, Bollywood style.

   It’s the break of dawn by the time we leave clubland. Outside it’s India. We take a cab back through the streets of first impressions. Even at first light the streets are lively with people awakening to another day, but I can think of nothing but sleep.

   Will Marks was in Mumbai to launch his novel, The Highway, which is set and published in India.

   Things to do; VeloCity has a cover charge of up to ¥1,700 depending on the night. Other hot spots are Insomnia in the Taj Mahal Hotel, and the actor-model filled area of Juhu which boasts Rain and Enigma.

   Mumbai has a large number of interesting dealer galleries. The Jehangir Art Gallery is a good place to start – it has a contemporary collection and details of galleries across the city. I visited the Ashish Balram Nagpal Gallery in Colaba.

   Get in the movies – Hotel Sea Lord in Colaba is often recruiting – 91 22 2284 5392.

   When to go: Mumbai is a gateway to India which is best visited between October to March to avoid the monsoon and mid-summer.

   About the name: The British corrupted the Portuguese name of ‘Bom Baia’, meaning ‘Good Bay’, into Bombay. In 1995 it was renamed Mumbai after the local deity Mumbadevi, but Bombay is still widely used among the large English speaking population.

Bootsnall.com – The Legend of a Bollywood Extra

Just for fun – online at Bootsnall.com.

   Hey, wanna be an extra in a Bollywood movie?’

   I’ve just stepped out of a dingy Mumbai café where I’ve spent two hours surfing the net, unsuccessfully looking for a way to become an extra in a Bollywood movie.

   ‘Maybe,’ I say squinting into Colaba’s noon sun, only partially overcoming my habit of saying no to touts. We pull into a doorway out of the flow of people. He leans in towards me so I can hear him above the street noise.

   ‘Music video for movie. Tonight.’

   The guy’s older and better dressed than the kids who work for the hotels. Unaccustomed to being offered something I actually want, I resist. A show-tune suddenly blasts out from his chest. He digs into his jacket, pulls out a mobile phone, offhandedly shoves a business card into my hand and ignores me as he shouts machine gun Hindi into his phone while gesturing at the traffic. Now I want to get his attention.

   ‘Yeah, I can make it tonight’ I say when he finally rings off. ‘What do I need to do - wear anything special?’

   ‘No, we have wardrobe. Just make sure you come at seven pm, meet at the Leopold Café.’

   ‘So I passed the audition? I’ll have to run it by my agent.’

   For me it’s a game, for him it’s a job, so he ignores me again, and by way of revenge plays his own game, pulling me into the flow of people and jagging across the street between a jam of lumbering old Ambassador Taxis and wining black and yellow auto-rickshaws.

   ‘There’ he says as we turn the corner, pointing out the Leopold. ‘Tonight.’

   I’ve come to Mumbai to follow my modest dream of making it into the movies from Pune, a sprawling low-rise city of a couple of million people a couple of hours away by train. I’d been enjoying the hospitality of a local, a fellow paraglider I met while flying in North India, in the foothills of the Himalaya. An evening at a thronging smoky theatre watching Lagaan reminded me of the possibility of Europeans getting roles in the movies. Two days later I was sitting in an internet café in Mumbai thinking I’d never find a way into the movies. Then I stepped out onto the street.

   At ten past seven I find a group of people waiting outside the Leopold Café with the tout. We pile into a few taxis and battle down the street for a couple of kilometres in a manic combination of acceleration and braking before turning into an abandoned lot of derelict factories and warehouses. The crew is concentrated around the entrance of a huge shelled-out building with broken windows. We’re taken down a side-ally where an old toilet block and storage room are being used as a wardrobe and changing rooms. There are eight extras, all travellers in our twenties. The tout disappears and we begin what becomes the routine of being ignored and speculating on what’s happening while waiting for someone to tell us what to do. Guys walk around talking into walkie-talkies. Six beautiful Indian women in full makeup burst out of the wardrobe room and totter down the potted alley towards the crew.

   Two hours later we discover our part is to make up the audience of a nightclub where the hero sings, backed by the dancers. Our wardrobe options are made up exclusively of Hawaiian shirts and neon coloured trousers. That’s all there is – believe me, I looked through them all. Then we’re told the shoot is just a music video, not part of a movie, that we’re required until six in the morning, we’ll be paid 800 rupees, $15 USD, and that there are too many of us. Three people will not be needed, but we’re welcome to stay and watch the shooting. I offer the others my part, but that small act of selflessness was my acting for the night – I was grateful for any excuse not to have to wear those clothes. I stay for an hour, hovering behind the director watching the playback screen. The singer is handsome and charismatic despite being reminiscent of a combination of Enrique Iglesias and John Travolta, complete with Enrique’s pseudo-suave facial expressions and John’ Saturday Night Fever dance moves, all without a trace of irony. The dancers are mesmerising, but after an hour I leave with the two Scandinavian girls who also volunteered to miss out. We walk off the set to the visible envy of those that stay.

   I didn’t get my fifteen seconds of fame, but I did get a lead from one of the producers I’d talked to while watching the shoot from behind the camera. Her husband, also a producer, is looking for extras who can commit to at least one weeks work on a movie.

   There’s just one catch. The movie’s in Pune and shooting starts tomorrow morning.

   Before dawn, after less than twenty four hours chasing the celluloid dream in Mumbai, I’m on a train back to where I came from, back to Pune, but this time with a scrawled phone number in my back pocket and a lead from a Bollywood producer.

   The Legend of Bhagat Singh tells the story of a Sikh freedom fighter in the 1920’s who became frustrated by Gandhi’s doctrine of non-violent resistance, let off a bomb in parliament, was caught and eventually hanged at age of twenty-three. Pune’s preserved old-world charm made its parks and buildings better locations for shooting a period drama than Mumbai. Pune University is converted into a pre-Pakistan Lahore, and I’m converted into a pre-hippy colonial policeman. My hair’s cut, I’m expertly shaved then fitted with a false moustache, and given a white uniform with a thick black belt on the outside of the jacket, topped by white tropical hard hat.

   Despite being a policeman on the trail of an outlaw, and even more remarkably, despite the white hat, it becomes clear that I’m one of the bad guys. The injustice and brutality of colonial rule was also a theme in Lagaan, one of a growing band of Bollywood movies to be successfully exported to an audience beyond the substantial foreign market of non-resident Indians. Lagaan’s set-pieces, in which people bravely rebel against immensely cruel and unfair treatment from the British, were greeted with loud applause and shouting during the typically interactive screening I had seen a few days earlier.

   In the movie I’m a bad guy, but on the set I’m just part of the carnival. Every morning our small bus has to plough through a large crowd before we get to the make-up tent. Cordons are manned by police to keep thousands of people away from a large courtyard where we spend a few days shooting. The star, Ajay Devgan, is greeted by deafening screams anytime he comes into view.

   The first few days involve various shots where the ten western extras ride around a courtyard while Devgan shots a policeman, actually a teacher from South Africa. I pass by on a horse and carriage, which rears up and falls in my first ever take, then in the back of a beautiful vintage convertible limousine driven by its seventy year old owner. We work twelve hour days mid-thirty degree temperatures in heavy costumes, but throughout it all Devgan maintains supernaturally studied cool, supported by a constant chain of Marlboro Light’s. Crowds constantly watch from a distance of about fifty metres.

   One afternoon a couple of young female students make it past the real police onto the set. They’re forcibly stopped before they get to Devgan, but seeing the commotion, he insists they be allowed them to come, week-kneed, towards him, and receive signatures. An hour later, a few hundred people break the line and stampeded towards us. Their excitement turns into the manic exhilaration of a riot with a growing undercurrent of violence. I step forward to block the entrance to our extras enclave in a bluff of police authority, but the real police have to draw their long sticks to force the crowd back.

   The crowds enthusiasm is in no way dampened, in fact it grows. In the evening, as we try to leave, our bus is mobbed. The glamour and excitement of the star, by mere proximity, had rubbed off on to us. Our way is completely blocked by the sea of people.

   The other extras are cursing them as some force picks me up and walks me down the aisle of the bus. I open the door and practically stage-dive into the crowd of a couple of hundred people, my arms raised in exaggerated triumph, cheering them, and receiving a mass cheer in response. Paper and pens are pushed towards me. I’m jostled, but manage to sign autographs and pose for photographs. Children are hoisted up and offered to me – I raise them above my head to more cheers. I slowly move the crowd away from the bus before turning, slicing through the mass and diving back into the bus doors. I flash victory and namaste signs, waving goodbye as the now sated crowd cheers and allows us to pull away. I walk back down the aisle to stunned silence, my eyes down, but with a deep smile on my face.

   The last few days are the best, from an “acting” point of view. I get some full screen shots in a pistol shoot-out. The director tells me to run, take a position shielded against a tree and fire a few rounds. The camera will follow me from behind, then sweep around to catch me firing. On the first take I run and hit the tree hard with my shoulder – it tilts, and nearly falls over. I hadn’t noticed it was a prop, a fake plastic tree. The guns fire blanks that create a deafening bang, a firework flash of red and white light, and a lot of smoke - but after six hours waiting on that day alone I’m glad to be in the action. Just as I’m getting the hang of it and starting to enjoy myself after a long, tiring and often boring week, the director yells ‘cut, good, done’, and it’s over.

   Months later, back in Sydney, I catch the tail-end of a review of The Legend of Bhagat Singh on SBS TV, and track down a copy of the DVD in an Indian food and video store in Newtown. After an hour’s viewing, I find my scenes and do a frame by frame advance through my fifteen seconds of fame. Unfortunately, this method clearly reveals that each time I fire a round in my heroic shoot-out scene, my eyes clamp shut.

   The movie was one of three releases about Bhagat Singh that year. It performed well at the box office and was widely critically acclaimed, confirming the legend of the star, the director, and one unnamed extra.

Sky Rider

Financial Express Business Traveller, India

   My paragliding journey began in India. I was riding an Enfield Bullet around the Kullu Valley in 1999 when I saw paragliders in the sky. I rode straight up to Solang Nullah and did a four day introductory course. Hooked, I returned to Sydney, Australia, joined a club and worked up to an intermediate rating with forty hours flying time. My motivation was always to learn to fly cross-county and return to the Himalaya. Australia has some world class flying sites, from 200 metre coastal cliffs to flatlands where world distance records of well over 300 kilometres were set. My favourite Australian site is in the Victorian Alps – it’s reminiscent of Billing; they’ve both staged Pre-World Cup events, but Australian mountains don’t have the epic grandeur of the Himalaya. I came back to India with a paraglider in 2001 to realise my dream, and wasn’t to be disappointed.

   I headed straight for the legendary site of Billing. The forty-five minute drive up a rough road takes you a kilometre skyward and gives the butterflies in your stomach plenty of time to kick in. The takeoff is a cleared knoll at the edge of ridge that seems to jut out into the void. The town of Bir below is so distant through the vast ocean of air that it seems to be on the bottom of the seabed. Snow capped mountains hunch below an enclosing sky.

   Ridge after ridge flows down from the Dhauladhar Ranges. I can make out where the spines descend to the towns of Jogindernagar and Palampur, but no further. It is forty kilometres to Mandi in one direction as the crow flies and forty-five kilometres to Dharamsala. The dark blue material of my wing spreads out untidily behind me, and seems woefully inadequate to achieve either of these more distant goals.

   My takeoff goes smoothly. A warm thermal rustles in the canopy, bringing with it some light vegetation and the smell from the forest, but the lift is limited. I hug the top of the ridgeline, flying low and slow over trees that climb the mountain. Langur monkeys start screaming and thrashing the branches, their black and white bodies flashing through the green leaves.

   Then I hook a good thermal - with each turn higher the layer of the foothills drops like a veil revealing endless ranges of permanently snow-covered peaks, each layer higher than the last. Once rugged ridges and valleys seem to fold and flow. Snow covered mountains ripple down to the plains like waves on a beach. It doesn’t just inspire minor poetics, but genuine ineffable awe. Sitting in only a harness, you feel like your body is dangling in space; the valley floor is now thousands of metres below. You’re very much in the scene, feeling every caress of the wind, but also detached, floating above it all. After thousands of years, now, this is possible.

   The only noise is the wind whispering in the wing and my breath amplified in my helmet. The next thermal is marked by half a dozen Himalayan Griffin Vultures, birds with a two metre wingspan and a heavy body that makes them look like a flying Labrador. I join them, continuing on as part of the pack for the next twenty kilometres as we work a perfect cloud street that runs all the way to Dharamsala. We fly over rocky peaks and past huge lonely meadows until we see a town occupying the curve on a steep ridge. The Dalai Lama’s temple and residence is perched where the ridge drops off to the mist, and I recognise it as McLeod Ganj, Upper Dharamsala - the goal’s achieved, but the real goal is the journey.

FLYING SITES, SCHOOLS AND SEASONS

Take a Tandem

   To instantly step into that other dimension that is free-flight, take a tandem flight. Professional operators will only take you up in suitable conditions so your experience should be thrilling, but not frightening. Make sure you follow the tandem pilot’s instructions carefully, especially about running hard on takeoff and not sitting back until long after you’ve left the ground – the ankle you save may be your own. Wear warm clothes, long pants and boots.

Become a pilot

   Paragliding is unregulated in India. Before you start a course or a take a tandem flight do some research to ensure you’re signing on with an experienced instructor or tandem pilot. The courses include around five to seven days of theory, instruction and use of the schools beginner level gliders and equipment. You’ll also need to be moderately fit to carry your kit back up the hill from your first short glides. Students who pass the initial exams and get a ‘student-pilot’ rating can continue to hire wings and equipment before buying a harness, helmet and intermediate wing of their own, ranging from Rs 40,000 for second-hand gear to Rs 70,000 plus for the latest kit.

Himachel Pradesh

Kangra Valley

   Billing / Bir in the Kangra Valley is widely regarded as India’s best flying site. The takeoff at tiny Billing is at 2,400m metres, almost a kilometre above the town of Bir, so even a top to bottom flight is memorable. With the Dhauladhar ranges providing abundant lift and regular cloud-bases above 3,500 metres, flights to Dharamsala or Mandi are commonplace.

Schools / Tandems

   Gurpreet Dhindsa, one of India’s top competition pilots, is also a certified paragliding instructor and runs five-six day courses from Bir for Rs 10,000. www.paraglidingindia.net. paraguru@vsnl.com 01874-221064.

   Bruce Mills offers tandem flights that are the best introduction to mountain flying around, and great value at Rs 1,500. paranirvana@rediffmail.com

Kullu Valley

   Solang Nullah, twelve kilometres up the road from Manali, gets the majority of visitors to Kullu Valley, but there are plenty of takeoffs from Bilsapur, to Bijli Mahadev above the town of Kullu, to launches halfway up the Rohtang Pass. Tandem operators in Solang ply a small slope that gives more of a hop than a flight – to get the feeling of being airborne ask to takeoff from Phattru, overlooking Solang, but be prepared for a hike to get there.

   Flying around Kinnaur, Zanskar, Spiti, Shimla and Uttranchal is in its infancy with no commercial operators.

Schools / Tandems

   Be especially careful at Solang - there are a large number of operators, not all with the requisite level of experience or minimum standard equipment.

   A recommended operator is Himalayan Institute of Adventure Sports, Village Barua, Manali, Himachal Pradesh 175103. 01901-3050. A seven day course costs Rs 7,000.

Season

   September-December and March-April – mid-winter snow cools off the thermals and monsoon creates seriously over-developed skies, so autumn and spring are the best times to fly.

Western Ghats

Kamshet

   Off the Mumbai-Pune Highway, 110km from Mumbai, this area offers a number of interesting sites. Though the launch at Tower Hill is only 300 metres above the landing area, the flats heat up and provide good thermals that can take you up to cloud-base at 2,000 metres. Tandems along the cliff face at Shelar come complete with resident eagles.

Schools / Tandems

   Nirvana Adventures 2-A, Takshashila Apts Tagore Rd, Santacruz West, Mumbai 400054. Tel 91-22-6493110. srao@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in www.nirvanaadventures.com.

For lakeside accommodation and trips to flying sites with local pilot Melissa, contact Melissa's Place, Golden Glades, Kamshet. Tel 95-21-4266122. www.pgashram.com melissa@pgashram.com

Panchgani

   This scenic hill station site 250km south of Mumbai has a 300 metre north-south ridge. Panchgani is home to Om Air Paragliding which was started by Swiss pilots in 1995. Within a few of years local students had progressed to instructor level and now run the school which has trained a few hundred people to date.

Schools / Tandems

   Om' Air Paragliding 1, Shankar Niwas Pai Nagar SVP Road, Borivali (W) Bombay 400092. 91-22-8918184. www.omairparagliding.com. omair@omairparagliding.com A six day course costs around Rs. 15,000.

Season

October to May – from March onwards the thermals can be very strong, but a couple of hours flying can be had in the late afternoon.

Goa

   Goa, for paragliders, is much like Goa for other visitors; a place to relax. Unlike inland sites which are mainly reliant on sometimes bumpy thermals, coastal flying relies on surfing the onshore breeze. After mountain flying it’s paragliding-lite - the laminar air feels like floating in silk. For those not too keen on heights it’s a great place to take a tandem – you’re unlikely to go over a few hundred feet. You can’t do much more than traverse up and down the coastline in gentle figure eights, but once you’ve had enough chilling out in the air there’s plenty more chilling out to be done on the beach. Arambol, in the far north of Goa, is the main site though it’s also possible to fly in Anjuna and Vagator.

Schools / Tandems

Mr. Jitendra Deshprabhu, Cunha Rivara Road, Panaji, Goa 403001. Tel.: (0832) 221840 E-mail: deshprab@giasbm01.vsnl.net.in

Western Paragliding Association, 5 Siddhisadan, S.V.P Road, Borivli (W), Bombay 400103. Tel: 91-22-28934803. www.westernparaglidingassociation.com. Courses cost Rs. 15,000.

Season

November to March - onshore winds increase from January inwards, and once they get over 30kmph they’re too strong for a paraglider, so time your visit to coincide with a gentle breeze.

Elsewhere

   Paragliding is still in its infancy in India and there’s a wealth of great paragliding locations yet to be explored. Other flying sites, some with tandems or training available, exist in the Nilgiri, Nandi and Chamundi Hills, Nainital and Pithoragarh. Tow operators are even getting people airborne around Delhi and Rajasthan. Paragliding in India is just starting to take off.

Bullet Hai Na! – Motorcycling In The Monsoon

Published in Darpan – Magazine of Indian Airlines

   Thousands of kilometres and an international border lie between me and my partner on an Enfield motorcycle mission around the subcontinent, and the monsoon is sweeping closer by the day. Pokhara. I’m still in Pokhara. We were supposed to be only three weeks in Nepal. By now, it’s been nearly double that.

   Our motives for coming to Nepal were noble enough - a ride across the Terai and up to the Kathmandu valley to sit a ten-day meditation retreat at Kopan Monastery. But after the retreat I met a girl and the teachings on attachment were forgotten, and my friend met another bunch of Enfield riders who were leaving immediately for India, the long way, via Chitwan National Park -  he accompanied them, I stayed with her.

   That was two weeks ago. Now, sitting with my girlfriend on the shores of Lake Pokhara, the perpetual snow on the Annapurna’s is glistening in the background, but down here the mercury is hitting thirty degrees and it’s humid as a Bombay night. A mountain of clouds dwarfs the ranges. Pokhara is a ghost town — the trekkers have decamped, unwilling to trudge through the heat, aware that any day now the trails will turn to mud.

   After lunch we check our emails — my friend makes it clear that I’ve got to meet him as soon as possible; if I’m delayed by the time I get to Amritsar, from where we’ll leave for Pakistan, he won’t be there. As we step out of the Internet café the first rain drops begin to fall. The clouds don’t break so much as fire a warning shot and a wakeup call; the monsoon, which has been hanging over my head like a threat, is now a promise. Trapped between the demands of two close friends, the rain breaks the deadlock — I’ve got to race to Amritsar before the monsoon drowns the motorcycle.

   Dawn and sunset are the best times to ride. The light creates a magic that takes you into the reason you ride in the first place, creating the mystic feel of sitting still while speeding through a timeless rose-coloured dream. The empty roads of dawn compensate for the cool, accentuated by wind-speed that cuts through your clothes. The grogginess of early morning balances against the exhilarated exhaustion of the evening. This time I’m up early, among tearful goodbyes and promises to reunite soon, in order to cover as much ground before mid-afternoon. The plan is to take cover from the deluge, and start again in the evening.

   The road, relatively straight on the map, twist and turns through lush green jungle, so progress is much slower than planned. It follows a river cutting through steep valleys with barely enough flat land for the tin-roofed tea-shacks that line the road. There are only a few small fields and villages. The valley is pure green, modulated only by shades of light and dark as the sun cut through large white clouds, pronounced against the bright blue sky. I make it as far as Butawal before noon, then turn west, taking the road running parallel with Nepal’s southern border with India.

   The traffic is light, just occasional cars and trucks, but enough to make you cautious coming around the tight corners. Fifteen minutes go by without seeing a single other vehicle or person. The road widens, the potholes lessen and the cambers of the road improve making riding a pure pleasure. Then, just as I’m totally relaxing and enjoying this ride through a pristine paradise, the rain begins.

   The next village or tea stall, I’ll pull over.

   Ten minutes later, not a soul in sight and the drizzle is setting in. Water starts to run down my face. I pull over to clear my glasses. My clothes are getting moist. No problem, when I get to the next tea house I’ll remove my top layer. Fat rain drops begin, creating large dots on the road, soon joining up, creating a film covering everything. The smell of warm asphalt floats up from below and the breeze carries the scent of wet leaves and bark from the trees. I sit back, the bike balanced beneath me, and stretch my arms to the sky, tilt my head back and laugh, but it’s drowned out by the thomp thomp thomp of the engine.

   Then the clouds open up. I can barely hear the noise of the motorcycle over the accelerating white noise of the rain. Large drops explode on my forehead. Thick globs hit my hair, penetrating to my skull, running down the back of my neck and following my spine into the warm air-pockets in my shirt. I put the bike in gear and take off again, instinctually riding fast to avoid the drops, to get to shelter quickly, but it just results in hitting the rain harder and faster. I slow down, aware of the grease on the road, and then stop again to take my glasses off altogether. My shirt starts to stick to the shape of my body. Within minutes I’m soaked to the bone. I might as well have jumped fully clothed into the river. I can’t ride much faster than thirty kilometres an hour in what’s increasingly feeling like a waterfall.

   I’m giving up on ever finding shelter when I come around a corner and find a tea shack built for five people attempting to shelter a crowd of fifteen. Parking the bike under the dripping shade of an expansive tree, I take refuge under a leaky tarpaulin sagging between two timber poles. I slide onto a wooden bench seat, its faded green-chipped paint exposing the rough timber beneath, and exchange glances with the curious villagers. Water drips from my hair, my boots are soaked through and my thick soaks squelch.

   The downpour builds, coming in thick sheets like a veil descending on the valley, completely hiding the mountains that tower over it and heavily disguising one side of the road from the other. It’s not that clouds are unleashing their load from above; they’ve come down personally to create and roll in the mud. Torrents run off the gutter less tin roof, noisily streaming into impromptu canals that cut their way down the side of the road. Ponds form at regular intervals in the potholes, huge drops falling like bombs in violent watery blasts of creation and destruction.

   Chai is offered and accepted. I pick off the dark milky skin and sip noisily from the small glass cup, bringing air into my mouth to cool and spread the sweet hot liquid, letting the cardamom and ginger wash around my mouth. We all sit in silence, staring out at the rain as if it’s a Bollywood blockbuster.

A gentleman in a dowra suruwal and Nepali cap turns to me and says something I can’t hear. Rain beats so hard we have to raise our voices to hear each other.

   ‘Where are you going?’ he repeats.

   I bring out a map, showing him the route me and my friend travelled together, stopping at Corbett National Park before entering Nepal near Baitadi. The road across the western Terai had a series of river crossings, but even at that time, at the height of the dry season, we had ridden through riverbeds five hundred metres long and had to ford our way through sections of water a couple of feet deep. Bridges were in construction but were far from complete. Now those once shallow rivers will be impassable by bike. We stayed at Bardia National Park where we swam in the Karnali River one hundred meters from a pod of Gangetic dolphins. Now it seems the only way out of Nepal in monsoon is to swim.

   The gentleman advises me to take shelter for the night and spend the evening in his village. But I’ve resigned myself to my fate. I realise I’ll have to take my punishment for testing the patience of my friend and break our self imposed rule – no putting the motorcycles on trains. The rose coloured dream of the ride is over; now I’m just trying to survive.

   We pour over the map together and I see the shortest route is to cut down to Nepalganj, then to Lucknow where I can join the rail network and literally cover the distance in my sleep. But for now I have no choice but to push on. I ride though slowly through the ongoing downpour, making half the distance I would in clear weather, and by sunset Nepalganj is within striking distance.

   It rains hard all night. Everything outside the window appears saturated, even the glass itself with its constant trickle of teary beads. The sun’s been up a couple of hours but the light makes it feel like night time in the city, the thick grey sky overhead proving light like a dull street lamp. A few cows turn to watch as I walk up the raised earth path to the bike, the only sign of human life is wispy smoke coming from the chimneys.

   A steady drizzle shrouds the dark green valley in mist. My clothes are still damp, even those in my plastic covered bag are wet, but I’m beyond caring — I ride through it all and by evening I’ve made it to Lucknow and booked passage straight through to Amritsar.

   I wake in Amritsar, and there he is, my friend waiting patiently for me at the station. We ride to the Wagah border and cross into Pakistan. We’re headed for the Karakorum Highway, which cuts through three great ranges of the world; the Hindu Kush, the Karakorum and the Himalaya – but most importantly, they collectively create an impenetrable barrier for the monsoon.

Paragliding in the Western Ghats

Will Marks spends a weekend paragliding over the Kamshet.

Financial Express Business Traveller, India

   The Western Ghats spread out a kilometre beneath my dangling feet. Mountains and ridges are now only ripples across a landscape dissected by the Mumbai-Pune highway.

   Then it hits me.

   A cannonball thermal blasts into the paragliders wing, jerks me up vertically and rips my right brake out of my hand. I look up. Half the wing is flapping useless above me. My heart pounds in my throat as I’m swung around in the violent air. Lunging upwards to grab the brake-handle, I pump hard open the collapsed side. The cells on the leading edge of the paraglider slowly pop open one-by-one. The wing reforms in a slow wave. I find the centre of the thermal - the powerful air current yanks me up like some huge manhandling arm. The sensation of climbing at six metres a second is not that you’re rising above the mountains, but that they’re dropping away.

   It’s Saturday afternoon on a weekend paragliding spent 110km from Mumbai, near Lonavala. For most of the season this area provides steady thermals, but as summer cooks up the countryside the flying gets lively. When the air gets rough it’s so intense it propels you into the here-and-now of the moment; you’re so focused on what you’re doing there’s little time for fear. Once it passes, it only enhances the sense of wonder and exhilaration.

   The air calms down. The others, unperturbed by my theatrics, climb steadily towards me. Melissa, my host and a former Mumbaikar, travelled the world with Cathy Pacific before switching to a purer form of flight. Now she runs a guesthouse on the shores on the lake outside of Kamshet that’s popular as a weekend retreat, as well as attracting a steady stream of paragliding junkies. Dilip’s internet cafes and deli in Koregaon Park, Pune caters to the needs of visitors to Osho’s ashram, but on his day off, if the weather’s good, he’s guaranteed an experiential trip towards the heavens.

   Soon we’re circling together, our faces hidden behind helmets and sunglasses, but not our shouts of enjoyment. Up here, the air is cool and the heat and sweat from carrying the paragliders on our backs to get to the takeoff is forgotten. We’re now at the ultimate point for a paraglider – at a good height in good conditions ready to make a cross-county flight. Thermals regularly come off Tower Hill, the site for the 2000 Indian national competitions. We could stay up for hours over takeoff, but the real challenge of paragliding is to leave ‘house thermals’ and fly towards a goal, finding and using lift along the way. Melissa is the first to stop circling in the thermal and head out over the valley towards the ranges that form a backdrop to her place. I track our progress on a GPS. The mountain containing the Karla caves, with their intricate Buddhist temples carved into the rock, becomes visible to our left.

   Melissa finds another thermal and start climbing again. A shadow passes over the sun. I’d been so intent on climbing that I hadn’t noticed a cloud forming above me. A light white mist starts to obscure the view as we make it to cloud base. I look at my vario – over two thousand metres. We use the height to glide down, making another five kilometres before landing together by the road, only walking distance from Melissa’s guesthouse. We celebrate by drinking beer while sprawled out on the lawn and reliving the flight as the sunset paints the lake and the clouds a deep pink.

   The next day the wind has changed and we head to the base of imposing tabletop mountain called Shelar. The basalt cliff face towers 300 meters above us, running away for a kilometre or two in either direction. When we arrive Sanjay Rao, the local paragliding guru who started a flight school called Nirvana Adventures, is putting a group of students through their paces. The takeoff is at the base of the cliffs which gains about fifty metres over the rocky fields. A gentle slope leads down to a large landing zone.

   Paragliders start their flights as an unruly mass of coloured nylon material and thin lines attached to a harness. We watch as the students grapple with the concept of pulling the material up so that it catches the breeze and inflates the wing to form an aerofoil. One pulls the glider above his head and steadies it with a deft combination of footwork and use of the handheld brakes before striding firmly forward. After a few steps the wing takes over, biting into and embracing the air, sweeping him off his feet. We cheer and clap as he slowly glides one hundred metres to the landing area, never getting more than a few metres above the ground. On your first flight, that’s plenty.

   The wind dies down, so while we’re ‘para-waiting’, an all too common occupation in this weather dependant sport, we do some socialising. Sanjay’s students include a website developer from Pune and a stockbroker from Mumbai, both doing a one week course, and an advertising exec up for a tandem flight.

   Other pilots include a Scottish lawyer who transferred to Mumbai for a couple of years, a Tibetan doctor living in Pune, a journalist and a Mumbai policeman. Pilots from Germany, France, England and Australia have also made there way to the takeoff area, often as part of a tour of India’s increasingly popular flying sites that include mountain flying in Himachel Pradesh and coastal soaring in North Goa. For serious pilots, there is an international circuit of competitions flown all over the world. Himachel Pradesh hosted Pre-World Cup events at Billing in 2002 & 2003. Dilip was one of nine pilots India representing India at the 1^st Asian Paragliding Championship in Korea in May 2004.

   Thermals start moving through the trees - now it’s our turn. I feel the familiar tightness and tension in my stomach, a kind of nauseous nervous excitement that I still get no matter how many times I do it. It’s mainly a physical reaction – I’ve learned to I like it because when I get it, I know I’ll soon be in the air. My takeoff goes smoothly and I get a quick shot of euphoria when I step into the air, all anxiety gone, just the joy of weightless free-flight that feels like steeping into other dimension that’s like a more pure state of consciousness.

   We have to put in tight turns in front of the cliffs, wary that if we fly too far forward we’ll leave the narrow lift band and sink like a stone. Paragliders have absolutely no means of lift other than that created by thermals or from wind flowing up as it passes over ridges or cliffs. The wind is light so we’re looking for any twitch in the glider that tells us we’ve hit a thermal. After a few minutes of ‘scratching’ for lift, I find a thermal above a small bowl in the ridgeline. A few tight turns gets me up to a good source of lift that takes me up the face of the cliff.

   At the top of the cliff the highland stretches away into a hazy eternity. I turn sharply and dive down to explore close to the lip of the cliffs, traversing a few hundred metres each way before spotting the thick branches of a vultures nest.

   A minute later I get the strange feeling I’m being watched. I jerk my head up to find a dark shadow above me. I turn to move the wing, and find myself staring into a vulture’s observant eye. I pull and release my brakes swiftly, making the trailing edge of the gliders wing flap. The vulture jolts in surprise, dropping back, but still close enough for me to see its head moving, its eyes still watching me, its wings outstretched with four big feathers pointing out at the end like fingers rippling in the wind. Then it simply banks and flies away. Seconds later it’s found the middle of a thermal and climbs steadily. I fly towards it, and soon we’re circling together, riding the thermal to almost a kilometre above takeoff.

   After an hour of playing in three dimensions we fly out in front of the cliffs with plenty of height left to pull a spiral-dive. By braking hard on one side then the other, I start swinging like a pendulum, then use the momentum to hold a sharp turn and go into a dive. The leading edge of the wing points down as I spin in circles around it, g-forces pulling at the flesh on my face, pushing my body back hard into my seat, trapping me in the spin. I counter-break to come out of the spin one hundred metres above the ground. Then it’s a slow glide back down to earth, after another day closer to heaven.

Fast Facts

   A double room overlooking the lake at “Melissa’s Place” is Rs 1,000, while the six bed dorm is Rs 600 per person per night, both including delicious home cooked meals - www.pgashram.com.

Around the Apple Isle; A Tasmanian Road Trip

Will Marks travels through Tasmania, Australia’s southern most island state.

Asian Photography, India & Singapore

   Flying over the Tasman peninsula reveals a landscape of farm and forest rolling into a deep blue ocean. Rock formations jut out of the water like the tops of submerged sea monsters. The pilot of our four-seater seaplane points towards a group of yellow stone buildings clustered around an inlet. ‘Port Arthur’, he shouts over the engine noise. The previous evening I visited the eerie historic site, once a prison for Australia’s most notorious convicts. From the air you can see how difficult it would have been to escape this rugged beauty. Australia’s southern most island state, now a pristine natural environment, was once a feared penal colony named Van Deimen’s Land.

   Tasmania, as it was renamed in 1856, is two hundred and forty kilometres adrift from Australia’s south east tip. Though it looks like a small dot below the east coast of the huge mass that is continental Australia, it’s the same size as Sri Lanka. Red outback desert may be Australia’s popular image, but here the landscape is more reminiscent of the England countryside and the Scottish Highlands.

   Like most visitors, I flew into Hobart, the capital city in the far south of the island. In the midst of the southern hemispheres winter, from June to August, the city is dramatically overshadowed by a snow-covered Mount Wellington. Colourful wooden houses climb up its foothills, but the deepwater harbour is the focal point of the city. The wharf area’s old sandstone buildings now house art galleries, cafes and restaurants where we filled up on seafood and lattes before hitting the road.

   The easiest way to get around is to hire a car for around $A50 a day (2,000 Rs). A round trip covering 1,500 kilometres of winding roads takes around a week with stops. All along the journey there are heritage buildings that have been converted into guesthouses where we warmed ourselves by open fireplaces in the winter nights and indulged in locally produced oysters and red wine.

   The historic inland highway has picturesque towns that break up the journey to the national parks. Central Tasmania is dotted with highland lakes overseen by the iconic Cradle Mountain. We drove above its snowline to take in the views and stayed in a chalet that served as a base to set off into the wilderness. Hundreds of square kilometres of surrounding land, from alpine meadows to thick forest and bushland, create a hiker’s paradise offering short loop walks to week long treks with huts scattered for overnight stays.

From the city to the county, Tasmania’s atmosphere is relaxed and unhurried – over a third of the land is preserved as national park, and the people are earthy and friendly. While bushwalking we’d pass people on a track and instead of the usual nod and hello, we’d end up stopping for a chat. Ask directions and instead of simply being pointed in the right way, we’d swap stories and get hints on places to visit, including where to see the islands other inhabitants – its animals.

   At dusk and dawn the wildlife is most active. The rough grunting bark you hear echoing in the gum trees as the last light adds a pink tinge to the clouds belongs to a cute but vocal koala. Native opossums with thick dark fur scamper along roadsides. Kangaroos or wallabies may be found grazing or lounging at the edge of a clearing. Wombats can be seen pushing their way through bush on the way back to their burrow. To see the states most famous animal, the Tasmanian Devil, we visited a nature park. At dusk they’re animated and otherworldly, with the appearance of a bear that has been squeezed into the body of a thickset dog with coarse black fur. They prowled their enclosure demonstrating a fierce set of jaws and a temperament to match.

   Back on the road, the garden city of Launceston and the northern towns of Devonport and Bernie make pleasant places to stay after a day winding around coast roads scattered with sweeping views of green farmland set against bright blue skies and ocean. Farmland grazed by sheep and cattle is interspersed with orchards, vineyards and crops of barley and hops which all go into making nationally popular drinks of apple juice, wine and two popular beers; Cascade and Boags. The north-east corner of the island houses Ben Lomond; in winter it’s popular with cross-country skiers, in summer it’s another favourite of hikers, with great views from the 1,573 metre summit down to the nearby ocean.

   Heading back down the scenic east coast takes you through a series of fishing villages where bright coloured boats reflect in calm harbours. The jewel of the east coast is the Freycinet National Park, which contains the stunning Wine Glass Bay. While kayaking and hiking is popular in the coastal park, most visitors come to make their way up a gentle hour long climb away from the road to crest the peak and look down upon the bay that curves in a vast elegant arch, laced with a pristine white sand beach.

   The east coast ends in the Tasman Peninsula, a dramatic piece of land jutting out into the southern ocean, connected to the rest of the island by a thin strip of land less than one hundred metres wide. The peninsula was once used to imprison the most dangerous convicts; the narrow bottleneck was guarded by soldiers and fierce dogs. At the far end of the peninsula, eighty kilometres from Hobart, sits Port Arthur, Tasmania’s most visited site. It’s a collection of thirty buildings and ruins that were established in 1830 and active for the following fifty years, becoming the most notorious penal settlement in Australia. In the bright light of day the surrounding farms, forests, beaches and inlets give little hint of its dark past. The area’s now exclusively a tourist site with a well organised visitor’s centre and guides that bring the history to life. Conditions for the convicts were harsh. Twilight tours of the old asylum, jail and derelict buildings give a spooky sense of the suffering that took place. Ghost stories are told by lantern light of men who died here and have haunted the dank stone rooms and passageways ever since.

   Our last act before driving back to Hobart airport is the taking the half-hour sightseeing flight over the Peninsula. The ocean takes on deeper blue from the air, and cove after cove comes into view, lapped by gentle waves that catch the sun and sparkle like jewels. Tasmania retains traces of the history that made life for some a hell on earth, but now the island has become something closer to a preserved paradise.