Having relaxed from the 3 weeks of trekking Sam decided that it was not enough to see the mountains from the ground and that we should book ouselves a morning paragliding over Pokhara. After signing ourselves up we hopped in a jeep and bumped up the hill to a place called Sangarkot, where we jumped out and walked the last couple of hundred yards to the launch point. Due to overbooking Sam was up first while I waited for the second jeep to arrive. Just before she jumped I heard her say to the instructor that she had eaten too much breakfast, I don't think he thought anything of it at the time. With Sam spiralling up above me I waited, and waited for the next jeep to turn up. A friendly Nepali chap seemed quite insistent that I should take a large sack of Marijuana with me on my flight. After politely refusing 20 or so times the second jeep finally arrived from Pokhara and one of the local crew told him to bugger off, which did little but deflect his sales efforts onto them. I suspect he may have sampled rather a lot of his own wares...
The flight was fun, if a little gut wrenching. We caught a number of big thermals and shot up a couple of thousand metres into the air. The views were astonishing and a large Eagle came and joined us. After 45 minutes or so we dropped down a ridge towards the lake and watched the rest of the group, who were learners, land in an amusing array of places including the lake, the road and a shed. When it was our turn the instructor said "shall we finish with some acrobatics?". I barely had time to shout "err, maybe, hang on... argh!" before I noticed that the lake was now upside down. Glad to be back on solid ground I looked around for Sam and finally saw her, head in hands, looking a nasty shade of green. Apparently the flight had not gone too well for her. The take off was fine but as they caught the first thermal she nearly parted company with the afore mentioned large breakfast. In the end she had to abort the flight, spending most of it with her eyes closed. She is not planning to apply for her pilot's license.
