Jim Mallinson has a lot of titles. Baronet, Sir, Professor, Doctor, Mahant, and of course Pilot. Jim is the world’s leading expert on Hatha yoga and Sanskrit. He has translated texts that go back thousands of years. Jim became fascinated with India on a trip there when he was 18 years old and for every year since other than during Covid he has spent 6 months of every year there living as a Sadhu, or “one who has renounced worldly life”- basically a vagabond, but then during the other 6 months has achieved an unbelievable resume in academia, mostly through Oxford University. He’s the author of nine books and scores of academic articles. Described as “perhaps the only baronet with dreadlocks” Jim is one of the most fascinating individuals in our sport. He was one of the Sky Safaris founders who guided XC trips in the Himalaya with legendary pilots Eddie Colfox, John Silvester, Debu Choudery, and Antoine Laurens for over a decade. In this episode we discuss Jim’s views on western and eastern culture, the concept of “dissolving the mind”, his recent amazing flight across the Solent, finding the balance between stillness and achievement, losing his dreadlocks, language extinction, guiding, racing, and what he would do differently if he could rewind the clock. A fascinating talk with a fascinating individual. Enjoy!
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Speaker 1 (0s): Hi there everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloud-based Mayhem. My guest this week is Jim Mallinson. Jim is a friend of mine. Many, many, many of you know him already. He's part of the sky's safari legends, Eddie Colfax and Antoine Laurens and, and John Sylvester. I did my first tour with these guys back in 2009 when I was just a pup and beer, and came back in 2011 when I was still just a pup and did my first big bivy, which set off all the bibbys to come with John Sylvester.
An amazing flight we did over the back and landed in man and slept in the ice, and then flew back the next day. Back then, of course, Jim was dreaded out. He has lost those we'll talk about then. He had dreads most of his life because of living as a Sadhu. A Sadhu is someone who's kind of renounced the worldly life. He would spend as much as six months of the year in India. His enchantment kind of got, got hold of him with India and when he was 18, and spent a great deal of time there and did spend that six months a year every year until Covid hit, but lived as a Sadhu, which is basically just wandering around, not doing a whole lot, and then would come back to Oxford and the UK and pursue his academic career, which is boisterous to say the least.
He's written nine books. He's the leading expert in Sanskrit, has translated documents that go back literally thousands of years. He's now a professor as of September 1st to be a professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. He is a sir, a doctor, a professor, a Mahant, a bayt, some of those, I don't even know what that means. I had to look up a lot of words before I sat down with Jim and, and talked to him about his amazing career. Just fascinating. We talk about all kinds of really quite wild subjects like dissolving the mind.
We talk about culture and what western culture maybe has right know, maybe wrong mental health and just his incredible, I'm gonna say it, although he doesn't like this word. You'll learn about that at the end. His incredible journey of through academics and also Flying, of course, he's, and some pretty amazing things, and the Himalayas, and we talk about some of his more recent exploits 'cause of Covid in the uk. And just a blast, this was a little intimidating sit sitting down with someone who has so much academic credentials, but we had a lot of fun and I know you will too.
Enjoy this. Talk with Sir Jim. Now,
Speaker 2 (2m 59s): Jim, I feel like we've been trying to do this for years, potentially. It's been a long time since I've seen you. I think where we need to start is the loss of your dreads. You look a lot different, my friend, what we were just talking about in the opening. You've had 'em for over 30 years, is that right?
Speaker 3 (3m 17s): Yeah, that's right. Well, yeah, it was right until four years ago indeed. Yeah. I cut them off in beard, actually. The little temple, you know, going up to takeoff, walking up. Yeah, that was October, 2019. And so of course then there was a global pandemic and there's still plenty of people I haven't seen, so I'm still bumping. Yeah. Regularly going, Hey, what the hell happened? Yeah,
Speaker 2 (3m 38s): Yeah. Have you been able to keep up your, your going to India every year through the pandemic or did that get shut down? Have you broken your record?
Speaker 3 (3m 45s): That got shut down, and then I got really jinx. I was hoping to get back to beer in October last year, and then there was some fight between the UK and India over visas, so I, I couldn't go. I had to postpone the trip, and then I was meant to go in March and then my aunt died and I had to cut the trip short and anyway, so it feels like I've been slightly jinxed on, on going to be, and I'm, and now I've got a new job as well, starting in October, so I won't be going this autumn anyway, I'm hoping to go out next spring. Fingers crossed. Third, third time.
Lucky, third attempt. Lucky in in a year or two. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (4m 19s): Well, take us back to 88. I, I've had a fascinating and very interesting and fun morning reading all about you on Wikipedia and, and everywhere else, and I knew a fragment of this stuff of course, when we spent our time together in, in 2009 and in 2011 in beer. And I, we will, we will talk of course about your Flying exploits and the North South Cup and guiding and the Sky safaris and John and Eddie and, and Antoine and Deb and everybody, but and those of you who listening, those are all names I would imagine you've, you've heard of, at least in passing.
But I, I would love for us to go back to, I don't know if it was before 88, I think you would've been 18. So around there I read that Rudyard Kipling was your inspiration. You read Kim and you, and you decided I'm going to, this is pre-college. I imagine you're, I'm going to India. What was the, what was the fascination there? How did India just take hold?
Speaker 3 (5m 21s): Yeah, I mean it's kind of with hindsight, the Roger Kipling thing, I dunno if that was really in my mind at the time, but I did have to read it at school. But then in, in England or in the uk, what we often have, people will sometimes take what they call a gap year between school, which I always get confused. I think you call that high school in the states. And then, anyway, we call it school and university. So at age seven, I was, I was young, I left school at 17 and I was like, you know, what am I gonna do in my gap year? And through a, a weird succession of, of coincidences, whatever you call it, I decided I was gonna read Sanskrit at university, which was already quite obscure.
And then a friend had come back after his gap year in India and regaled me with stories of a wonderful time he'd had wandering around. And I just put turned two together and thought, right, this is it. And I went off with a good friend from school and he's now a professor of Indian philosophy and a university in Delhi. And I'm a professor of Sanskrit at Oxford starting in September. So it kind of messed up both our lives. Here we are, you know, 35 years on or whatever, like that one trip to India, like completely set the tone for the, the rest of our lives.
Speaker 2 (6m 30s): And can you put a finger on that? What was it? Was it the, was it the language, was it the people? Was it the religion? Was it Hindi or what?
Speaker 3 (6m 40s): Yeah, it was a mixture of everything, you know, wondering, you've been there. It's so great. I think it was, I think, you know, I I, I'd done Latin and studied history at school and it's the way in India they've got this ancient civilization, which is still, still going on, still manifests. So you can, you know, read all these old texts and so forth. And it's, you can see a continuity today and in particular, I got into also hanging out with all these crazy ho wandering holy men. You know, that happened in my first trip, actually up in the Himalayas.
It was at the base camp of this trek up to this, this huge ice, this staite in a, in a cave called Ammar up in Kashmir. And I couldn't actually do that 'cause my visa was running out, but I spent a few days hanging out with all these wild children, smoking bubbles that were camped out at the foot of the mountain. And I just thought, this is, this is wild, this is great. They kind of, you know, I've, so I'm, I'm 53 now. I was born in 1970, so I, in the eighties, like the kind of cultural movements that I, that got me going still, we had a bit of hippie stuff going on and then you had that kind of punk vibe and these guys seemed to kind of combine the two things together.
And I just, I was these sort of charismatic, funny, wild, and also just that sort of don't give a shit attitude. I, you know, I somehow got off on that and that got me hooked.
Speaker 2 (7m 60s): Was there a part of you back then that was, were you rebelling against anything at home? Was there something about living in the UK that just didn't feel right? Or was it just, yeah, let's go have an adventure and Oh, this is, this is interesting.
Speaker 3 (8m 14s): Yeah, I mean, I guess, so I was a, I was a slightly, you know, difficult adolescent, I suppose I misbehaved a fair bit. I dunno why, how one would, I dunno how to justify that. But no, it was more of a, a pull rather than a push. You know, people talk about push factors. It wasn't like I was running away from anything in particular. It was just had such a good time in India and yeah. And then I ended up, I went to India every year, sometimes for six months, sometimes for a year, for, for the next 30 odd years or whatever, until Covid put the kibosh on it.
Speaker 2 (8m 43s): Yeah. Crazy. Are you, are you quite mathematically inclined? I've always heard that Ling Linguistics requires a pretty left brain mathematical. I,
Speaker 3 (8m 53s): I'm, yes. Gavin. Yeah, I did maths and physics and Latin as my son of high school. Oh, before I did sounds, yeah.
Speaker 2 (8m 60s): Okay. I'm quite a fan of Wade Davis. I imagine you're familiar with him. The, i, he talks about the, the extinction of language, you know, that I, and I read today that in the early two thousands there were over 70, over 7,000 different languages in the world. And they expected that to decrease by as much as 90% by 2050. Is, is Sanskrit And I, I I read in your, in your bio old Iranian, are these languages that are part of that potentially leaving or are they pretty safe?
Speaker 3 (9m 39s): Well, they're very different. Those two, they're like the opposite extremes of the, of the historical record. 'cause old Iranian, there's only old Persian, well, I did a vest in an old Persian, old Persian, there's only 600 lines of it in existence. And that's like two and a half thousand years old. So, my God. But Stan Stansbury is not, definitely not gonna die out, even though it's, it's very old. It's the classical language of India. And of course, you know, particularly the moment with the kind of Hindu nationalist movement, they really promote it. So that's not going anywhere. But there are plenty of languages in India, like up in the mountains where we've hung out the sort of local dialects and stuff.
I think, you know, they are rapidly dying out. I mean, they used to say, I dunno what the latest is, they used to say there were 1200 languages in India, something like that. But Wade Dave Oh,
Speaker 2 (10m 21s): In
Speaker 3 (10m 21s): India. Yeah. You mentioned Wade Davis's a huge fan. Yeah. And I got, I got lucky to meet him a couple of times in India.
Speaker 2 (10m 27s): He's amazing.
Speaker 3 (10m 28s): Yeah, fantastic.
Speaker 2 (10m 29s): The navigator stuff. And he's, yeah, he's, he's, he's really amazing. Mallinson is best Described as perhaps the only Baronet to wear dreadlocks. Back to your dreadlocks, what is a Baronet?
Speaker 3 (10m 43s): Oh God, here we go. A Baronet is, is a inherited English title. So I, I need, I, so I get to call myself, sir, if I want to. I have a lot of titles. Gavin, it's crazy. We might get onto, I'm also my hunt, I'm professor, I dunno which, what, what order they should go in, doctor. Yeah. Crazy. But that one is, that one's achieved by doing nothing at all. Which actually these days nowadays they, the politicians here just give titles to their, their mates and their cronies and the people who give them money. So I think it's actually nowadays the most honorable way to get one.
I used to think it was a bit ridiculous. I mean, the whole thing's pretty ridiculous. But, but yeah, so I get to call myself Sir James Mallinson if I want to. And I don't, it doesn't happen very often. And in fact all that, all that seems to result from it is a lot of chaos when I try and check in at the airport. 'cause my passport's a mess.
Speaker 2 (11m 32s): So something I found quite interesting is, I was reading about all this, you know, on the one hand you've got Jim Mallinson Sadhu or Yogi, you know, you go to India, you spend months at a time with a small bag and a blanket and living, it seems to me a very simple life. You're, you're living with the, the holy men and you're kind of a vagabond, I guess. I don't know if that's the right, right term. Yeah. Fair
Speaker 3 (11m 58s): Enough. On
Speaker 2 (11m 59s): On, on the, on the other side, you, you've authored nine books. You're, you're the world renounced expert on, on Haha Yoga and its Origins, which was also fascinating. You're reading texts that are still around from, I think one of 'em was 1100 or earlier, maybe those don't, how do you mesh these two? The, the, are are the yogis doing this as well? Are they doing something in there at night where we don't know about, I mean, it's a very, you're you're almost living in two completely different worlds.
Yeah. At least from my perspective.
Speaker 3 (12m 37s): No, you're right. It it is absolutely right. It's two completely different worlds. But I think I need the two to, I couldn't do one on its own, if you see what I mean. The, the Sadhu life. A it was never feasible for me to completely commit to being a, you know, a Hindu Yogi. Not, not least. 'cause I've had the luck, been lucky enough to have the love of a good woman for more than 30 years. And part of that, well renouncing all, all those kind of pleasures. And so I always sustained it with academic inquiry, you know, trying to understand where these guys have come from, what, what's going on, what are they doing?
And then vice versa, the academic stuff would be too dry. I mean, pe there was, there were famous scholars in my field who never even went to India. You know, they're just reading the texts and like, that could never be me. You know, I had to have the, the living, the, the, the, the living world that fascinates me in order to sustain me through, you know, reading old manuscripts for hours and hours on end and so forth. So yeah, the two things kind of balance each other nicely
Speaker 2 (13m 36s): Is the transition for you. Quite simple. It, you know, for, for me, for just the, I haven't, I haven't lived in your world at all, but you know, right now I'm on vacation, which I've never really done in my life. I've, I was kind of lived as if, you know, your, your life should be something you just want to do. You don't need to go on vacation. But I've been building this house, I've been working like dog for quite a long time and just needed to get away, get away from the house, get away from the build, spend time with the family.
But it's hard for me to be here. It's hard for me to relax. I would imagine, you know, if you are home in the uk, you're with your kids, you're with your wife, you're, you're wrapped up in the things you do at home, writing books and being an academic and getting funding and grants and all these things. And then you go back and you're a Sadhu. Is that, are you just there? Do you pop into it? And where I'm going with this is with Flying, it's, I I it's often hard. I think what we love about Flying is to be present, right?
But, and it forces us to be present. That's hard to do. At least for me. I think for a lot of people to be present is, is tough.
Speaker 3 (14m 47s): No, I agree. The transition, I mean, it got got easier over the years, but it's pretty difficult. In fact, I will normally find it more difficult coming back from India and then going back to normal life in the uk. But it got easier over the years. And I, I, I'm the same with Flying as well. I dunno about you, but like, if I've, you know, if I had a, if I've had a layoff for a few months, I feel like a beginner. In fact, I can't quite even believe, oh yeah, I'm doing it. I'm like, what? I fly that crazy thing.
Speaker 2 (15m 10s): It's very uncomfortable. Which
Speaker 3 (15m 11s): Yeah, I, but I think that's a good thing, isn't it? I think that's, I always find it amazing these guys and you interviewed, I can't remember his name, but some brilliant alpine triangle guy who goes, goes out six
Speaker 2 (15m 22s): Alex Robe,
Speaker 3 (15m 23s): Alex Roby, and then there are others, what's his name? Dan? He didn't, he, you know, he, when he was the, the dad. Yep. He's Luca Is he Luca is the dad. Yep. Yeah. And he would just, you know, just come out of his ho his hotel job and then go and win World Cup. Just win. For me, it takes me a few days kind of transition just to get into it again, which I think for me is necessary kind of mentally and for safety and so forth. You know, I think it's probably a, a good safety mechanism to, to be daunted by that. But yeah, I guess it's the same.
Yeah, it takes a while to transition between the two worlds. But congratulations on managing to take some time off.
Speaker 2 (16m 1s): Yeah, no, but like I said, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's not easy for me. I, I, I'm one of these people, I like to get things done. I like to that, you know, I like to accomplish things and I feel like, and I keep telling you, I'm accomplishing a lot, spending time with my family. That's all I came down here to do. I should just do that. But it's, oh, it's tricky. Did you, did you
Speaker 3 (16m 21s): Got a wing with you or a kite, kite board or?
Speaker 2 (16m 23s): I brought, I brought my tandem, which I, I got around the time I met you. I've never been a tandem Pilot. I've never done it commercially. But I wanted to fly my daughter down here and we went for a flight the other day. And that was, that was a blast. Very uncomfortable. 'cause I'm not a tandem Pilot, you know, we were way, way, way underweight. I wouldn't say it was very natural 'cause I was trying to act very natural with my daughters. But, you know, you've got, when you're Flying your family, it's, I found it very uncomfortable for me just, just being overly cautious, I guess.
Which is
Speaker 3 (16m 56s): How old's your daughter?
Speaker 2 (16m 57s): She's five, right? She's just turning. You get
Speaker 3 (16m 59s): One of those little small harnesses you strap on the solo, that makes it a bit easier. That's why I used to
Speaker 2 (17m 4s): Do, I'm gonna do that now. I, I shouldn't have a tanem. It's, I should just get a slightly bigger wing. So yeah, that's, that's the way forward for sure. We had no penetration. If there was any win, we'd be in trouble. How much of your own, you know, your, your studies of, of haha yoga and history and meditation and transcendental me meditation, how much of these, I I also read that you don't go, you don't go to a studio and practice yoga, you never have.
But how much of your life is, is participating in meditation, yoga? How big of a factors are these outside of the academic world for just you personally?
Speaker 3 (17m 48s): I probably shouldn't make this too public Gavin, but here I am on your mind. You maybe, maybe there's not so much crossover. Like you say com compar, compartmentalize, lies. I dunno how many of my kind of yoga colleagues and students and so forth will be listening. But I don't, not much, I don't meditate a great deal. I mean, for me it was more always the lifestyle. I mean I've, I've done a lot of yoga. I've, over the years and I've mastered most of the weird techniques that I've read about and, and published about in these old manuscripts and so forth. But nowadays, you know, I do maybe 20 minutes a day if that at the moment.
I've been a bit slack recently, actually. I put my arm out, I think got tennis elbows. So I'm not doing the postures so much and I just sit, sit for a bit. But I'm not super dedicated. For me it's always been more about the whole sort of lifestyle and that, that the life of the yogis. And I, the reason I got into, in particular, into studying yoga was it was the one aspect of that world. I mean, living in, in India that was well represented in Sanskrit texts. 'cause you were asking like, you know, do the Saudis and the yogis, do they, are they also scholars, I think was the implication of your question actually quite the opposite.
They, you know, they think that the sort of stuff I do is a complete waste of time. That reading books is a waste of time. And that all you've gotta do is live your, live your life and, and do your yoga and and and so forth. So I guess I subscribe more to that. But to be honest, Gavin, I've, I'm kind of, it's actually feels slightly remote the whole world, that whole world to me at the moment because of my guru dying in 2019, which is why I chopped my hair. And then covid, I haven't really lived in that world. I mean, I'm in touch with people, but I haven't lived in that world now for nearly five years, I guess four and a half
Speaker 2 (19m 23s): Feet. What is Kiwi used to wear? A shirt that said, I I am not your guru. What, what, what does that mean having a guru? What, what did that relationship look, look like? What was it?
Speaker 3 (19m 34s): Yeah, I guess it, it sounds, sounds weird to some people. They, they think it means, you know, just completely giving yourself over and like being brainwashed and, and so forth. But it's, it can be that you can, you know, you can commit like that if you want, but it's more being, you are being sort of brought into a, a, a tradition, a lineage of, of yogis or whatever. So by being initiated, and I was init, I didn't even realize we, I was being initiated with my wife and, well, she wasn't my wife at the time. It was in 1992 at one of these big cumba mailer festivals, which Kiwi used to come to.
Actually Kiwi came to two or three. He was, yeah, got some funny stories about that. Like, I mean, it's the biggest gathering of people in the world. And he, he turned up one day and couldn't find us. And so found some camps. Some people looked after him, he spent the night, the next morning he got up and said, no, typical Kiwi took a huge dose of acid and then found us within about two hours.
Speaker 2 (20m 26s): He was just led to you.
Speaker 3 (20m 28s): Yeah, yeah, yeah. But one of those festivals when we first hang out with our gurus, very sort of charismatic guy. I dunno if you've seen the movie I made with Dominic West called West Meets Eats. Albert
Speaker 2 (20m 41s): Put a plug. No, I just, I just, I'll need a link to that. 'cause I read about it today and I wanted to ask you about Dominique, but the Yeah,
Speaker 3 (20m 46s): Yeah, yeah. It was, they, it was 'cause it was broadcast on various channels, but I think, and they, so they were quite, I think you can now watch it on YouTube anyway, so I can give you a YouTube
Speaker 2 (20m 54s): Link.
Speaker 3 (20m 56s): But so he, you, you, you'll meet my guru if you watch that. He was a very charismatic, good fun guy and he sort of took us off in the middle of the night and initiated us on the banks of river. And we really didn't know what's going on at the time. But that then means you're part of this whole extended family and part of this, this huge lineage of hundreds of thousands of yogis and stuff all over India. So it's great means, you know, I can turn up anywhere in India and just show my credentials or say a few words and I'll be looked after. So that, and in fact that's one of the, you know, the, I think with it ties in with Flying actually.
One of the things I love about Flying, I love traveling and seeing new things going new places, you know, so there's nothing I like more than a good cross country flight where you're going in a new route. You know, it doesn't happen very often these days. That's what I particularly like in Flying as well, is, is doing new things that I haven't done before. And same in India. So that facilitates. So being part of that network facilitates being able, you know, just to turn up any kind of temple town or pilgrimage place or something. And you're part of the gang and you can be looked after. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21m 57s): Well we, we mentioned Kiwi. How much of your journey or being with Sadhu or this living as a vagabond exploring this lifestyle, does that involve, do the Sadhu or does it involve a lot of drug use? Does it involve a lot of hallucinogenics or is it mostly just weeded? I mean, I know they smoke a lot of weeded, but there is that, has that been a, a critical part of your critical thinking?
Speaker 3 (22m 28s): Maybe it's damaged by critical thinking. I dunno, I definitely smoke plenty of weed with them. Yeah, no, they, yeah, it's, it's a good point. 'cause people think of India as like the, you know, it's very sort of psychedelic place and so forth. But no, there's not a lot, it's not, not like, you know, Wade Davis's books. Is it one river, isn't it? Where he, he flies in the footsteps of, what's his name, Evan Schultz. And they, you know, in, in South America there are thousands and thousands of different combinations of plants and different psychedelics and so forth in India, they don't really take psychedelics actually, traditionally.
I mean, there is this, people might argue slightly against it. And there's this notion of soma, which is three or 4,000 years old, but everyone's forgotten what it is. No one's doing that. And in fact, as you, as you alluded to, it's mainly the Saudis are, are just sitting around smoking dope. And the interesting thing about that is that the smoking part of it is a, a new arrival in India as well. It came really, you know, like everywhere else came from the new world in around 1600. So, so when someone like Kiwi turns up though with a pocket full of acid, a lot of the Saudis are quite keen to be honest.
They, they're interested, they're in, you know, they'll take it, they'll take it, but it's not kind of a part of the, of the culture. Huh.
Speaker 2 (23m 37s): Interesting. Yeah. Tell me about dissolving your mind. I have that in quotes. I read, read an article that you talked about dissolving your mind.
Speaker 3 (23m 46s): Well, that, I guess that's one of the various different ways of describing, you know, the final state of yoga, if you accomplish it properly, you know, like samadhi you'll hear, hear the term samadhi, and that's a and liar. The Sanskrit word for di di dissolving, the mind is a liar. And so you find that in text quite a lot. And normally it just seems to be the idea of a, a state of kind of no fluctuations of the mind. So you kind of achieve a, a state of, of no thought really, but it's said to be blissful at the same time.
Speaker 2 (24m 17s): So is this different than the, I've always been told with meditation, you're, you're looking at a ticker tape in a sense of your thoughts and you're just letting them go. And that's, you know, you're not trying to have nothing. You're just, okay, fine, let it go. Okay, fine. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (24m 33s): That would be a sort of Buddhist mindfulness approach where, you know, Buddhism understands there not to be any self, any permanent aspect of reality. And so it's just a sequence of moments. Yeah. And you just accept each one and let it go. Whereas most Hindu traditions aren't like that. And so they do think that there's a, there's a, you know, a an ultimate reality to our existence, to individual existence. And the most common concept of the kind of the final state of yoga is recognizing that your individual self is the same as the ultimate self of the universe.
And if you can realize that I identity, then that's, you know, that's enlightenment or, or however it's term. There are various different terms for it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25m 18s): Mental health, thi this seems to be a growing topic these days and it's also a big one in Flying. There, there seems to be quite a bit of mental health. There's certainly anxiousness and depression is prevalent in our, in our community. Is this headlines or is this something that, do you feel like mental health is declining around the world for various reasons?
Speaker 3 (25m 50s): Well, I dunno. I wouldn't, I can't, you know, I'm no, no real expert on that, that sort of thing. But I can't imagine that our kids growing up, looking at their smartphones all day long is gonna be much good for mental health and looking at other people. But I think also you've related it to Flying and I haven't really, you've probably thought about this more than I do, but I think it's a, there are some particular character types that are attracted to Flying and some of them probably are a bit depressive as well, you know, a bit. I don't know, there's like a few, I'm not gonna name any names. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a few, few brilliant pilots that come to mind who are also quite sort of doer and, you know, not particularly Sparky.
Mm. There's plenty of others of all sorts. But yeah, I, I imagine there's quite a lot of UK pilots at the moment with pretty poor men. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (26m 32s): I understand you're having some, some pretty rotten weather.
Speaker 3 (26m 36s): It's, as I said, right now, we've got the first named storm of the, of the year outside Storm Anthony. We've got 50 mile an hour wind. Yeah. It's been appalling. I've been lucky actually. I've managed to have a few good flights. I've just somehow got, you know, timed it well and got, got out and had some good ones. But it's, I think it's, I'd still, I haven't looked at the numbers, but it must be the worst year for many, many years.
Speaker 2 (26m 57s): Yeah, that's, I've, I've been hearing that from, I'm,
Speaker 3 (27m 0s): I'm on some, on some groups with the Keen, you know, we got one called Size Matters for, there's about a dozen of us who are keen cross country pilots around here, and everyone's very glum. You've basically written off the season already.
Speaker 2 (27m 16s): This is the problem with putting too much weight into Flying, isn't it? We've gotta have an escape
Speaker 3 (27m 21s): Other things going on if you live here, that's for sure. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (27m 24s): No, it can't be, it can't be tough. I've, I've, I've gone down that path quite a lot. I can't remember if we opened up with this, but you're an ologist. I had to look that up and I, I, I wrote, I read somewhere that you even have a hard time describing what that means, but it's the academic study of the history and cultures, languages and literature of the Indian subcontinent. So I I I I, I bring that up only because I feel like, you know, you've spent most of your life really studying culture language in a really very different way of living other than Western culture and, and how we're, how most of us live in, in western society without having to have spent the kind of time you have in academics and studying it and living with the sad and living with, you know, with a blanket and a small bag all these years.
What are some things you can impart to me and the audience about what you've learned that would be helpful in our day-to-day life? And what, what are the, what, what do you teaching your kids? What, where do you want your t your kids to go with your, what you've learned?
Speaker 3 (28m 41s): You're putting me on the spot Gavin. I, I feel like, I feel like I've got, I should get Kiwi's t-shirt. I'm not a agree. I, I tell you my, my, my friends and my wife, well my wife not say much, but my friends for years have you said, Jim, you've gotta set yourself up as a guru. I'm in the perfect position. I really could. As, as you know, you read my bio, yes, I want, but it's really not my, my thing and I'm, you know, I don't want to, I'm not, I've never, never been one for telling other people how to live their lives. I think we all have to muddle through our, our own the what reality throws at us.
So I don't know, what have I learned? I, what I have learned is if you stick at anything for long enough, you get good at it. Don't you? You, that's, that's one thing I, I, I, well, I try and get my kids off the screens and I try and get 'em to do stuff that they're interested in and, and stick at it and just, just keep going with it. What other life lessons? I know it's terrible. You've, I've, by accident, I, I found myself in this position of responsibility and people think I must have it all worked out. But I haven't Gavin I haven't. And I've had some very good exciting and interesting life along the way, but I still puzzled most of the time.
I'm still like, what the hell's going on? Oh,
Speaker 2 (29m 46s): I think that, you know, I haven't, I, it's actually great to hear,
Speaker 3 (29m 50s): Once you've got the answer, you know, you're enlightened, aren't you? That's right. Then I set myself up as a guru, you know, but I, yeah, I, I, yeah, I mean, you, you could probably, you could tell me I'm sure from better life lessons than I
Speaker 2 (30m 4s): Could tell you. No, I don't. I I mean, it's, it's interesting at your time with the Sadhu, do they have something figured out that we don't?
Speaker 3 (30m 12s): Well, that's another interesting thing. You know, they are, they live such different lives from us. You know, my guru would never give me like, in specific life advice about how to live my life. They would just kind of, it's more living. Exactly. Do their thing live by example. Even though the example is not something you can follow unless you're fully committed. So they occupy this position in Indian society anyway. They've renounced everything. They don't have a job, they don't have a family. They live off donations. And that sounds like they're beggars, but in fact they're, they're valued as, as long as they are, you know, as long as they do have some sort of charisma or something to offer in terms of, I mean, just their, the, the role, if they play their role in society correctly, then people give them money.
People look after them, you know, people, people like having, we don't have something, we don't have anything like that in our society really anymore. And so, yeah, they just kind of live, live their lives. And that by being with them is seen as a blessing. They're not actually telling you what to do or telling you how to they, I mean, in some cases they will, but that's, it's almost frowned upon. Again, I've told, I was told by my guru, you know, sometimes Bubs would set themselves up at ber mailers sitting on a bed and preaching, and then the others would come along and throw them off the bat and beat them up and say, you should, you mustn't do that, you know, you're not allowed to, they call, have a phrase for it in, in Hindi Ya in, you know, basically telling everyone how it is.
And they don't like you to do that. Mm. You know, you should just get on, get on with your thing and, and impress people like that rather than telling them what to do. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (31m 41s): What is this, what drove your interest in initially in learning Hindi? Is it just so you could communicate better? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (31m 47s): AB absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I was obsessed early on. I kind of just, yeah, I taught myself. I mean, I was learning sounds good at the same time and the two things are related, but I, I'm, yeah, I was more kind of obsessed with, with picking up Hindi. Yeah. Eddie's been, I've been with Eddie last week. He's been doing Hindi duo lingo really? Finally, I'll be catching up. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (32m 7s): Ah, nice. That's fantastic. Yeah, gotta get him on the show as well. That, that'd be, that'd be a hoo. Okay. One more on the spot kind of question. And Western, we talked about Western culture. What would you say, if you could pinpoint what, what have we got wrong versus Eastern culture versus, and that's a massively generic general question, but again, thinking about your kids, obviously the phone is a, is a tough one and brutal.
But, but what, you know, going forward in the next 50 years, what could you say that, you know, Western culture could really do an about face when it comes to X?
Speaker 3 (32m 57s): Gosh, I, when I wouldn't make that dicho, you know, that distinction between Western and eastern culture, so, so strong people have this idea that the west is materialist and the east is spiritual and so forth, but there's plenty of materialists in India, you know, they're some of the best merchants in the world as we, I think half the CEOs of the tech companies in the States are all Indian, aren't they? Sure. It's not like
Speaker 2 (33m 16s): They're very driven. I
Speaker 3 (33m 17s): Wouldn't make, yeah, I wouldn't make that distinction. In fact, that's, so the, the title of the movie, I was telling him, it's a pun because I was with Dominic West. And so we go to, you know, the, the, so it's called West Meets East, alright, is the, is the title. But that's a, that's a play on a line from a, a Kipling poem, A poem by Roger Kipling, which is like, east is east and West is west, and never the twain shall meet. Are he saying that there is this kind of different, you know, these two totally different cultures. But I wouldn't draw such a, a, a, you know, a big, big line between the two.
And what can, I mean, at the moment, to be honest, I don't know. Like I, my, so my elder daughter's 18, you know, and at this age, I mean, she's gonna come to, we're all going to India in the winter, but, so she will do a bit of, bit of time there. But her friends and that people aren't so interested in going to India anymore. In fact, India's got a bit of a bad rep, I think, amongst the youth because of this Hindu nationalist government at the moment. You know, they're cracking down on Muslims. They're pretty oppressive, authoritarian. And so I'm, I'm, maybe we need to teach India something at the moment. You know, I, I don't, yeah, I, yeah, I guess, sorry, you keep asking me these questions and I'm kind of completely throwing them, throwing them back at you.
But I don't think I, I wouldn't, you know, I don't think it's like we've got a lot to learn from India or vice versa. I think, ah,
Speaker 2 (34m 30s): In some ways that's encouraging. I mean, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not, clearly you're not coming back to the UK going, gosh, I wish they could just do this or that, or, you know, it's not maddening to you.
Speaker 3 (34m 44s): Well, I think there's a, there's a, you know, richness of, of, of life. The people in India see, I think particularly people that they're obviously much poorer and then, which means that they're, I mean, not all of them, but people are much more giving of their time and their person, you know, just going down the chai shop and hanging out can be a lot more entertaining than going down Starbucks or whatever around here. You know, people, there's that, that's sort of personal interactions that I find more invigorating.
Yeah. There is. Maybe there's, maybe there's that the kind of openness towards other people, which we certainly in England we don't, we don't have so much. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (35m 24s): The, the, the journeys you've done to in India over all these years, are you always with your wife? Are you alone? Or how, how did, how is that work and how did that work with the kids?
Speaker 3 (35m 33s): Yeah, well, until the kids came along, yeah, it was, she was, she was with me all the time. We had a wonderful life where we would, we, we lived in this house actually quite near where I live now. We moved in, in 95, which was the year I started Flying. And it was a farm rented farmhouse with a bunch of friends. And then in October we would say, see you walk out the door and come back in April. We'd spend six months in, in India, and then first daughter came along and my first UK win, we had to make a decision what we're gonna send 'em to.
We're gonna live in India, send 'em to school there or uk. And we went for the uk, I can't remember why. And so my first winter back in the UK after 20 years was a real shock. Mm. Tell, like sitting through the mud and the rain. But that was, yeah, that was the same time I started Flying, same time I started doing my PhD in 95. So we did that, yeah. For about, I guess it was until 2009 my daughter went to school and that was that she was around about then, or 2008 that we started Himalayan Sky Safaris, because I've been going to Beard for 10 years or something at that, that point.
But, you know, I think, you know how it is now with you've, now you've got kids that can't, you can't just clear off them for six weeks. So part of the justification for Sky Safaris was earning some money, you know, I've gotta go, I've gotta go. And, you know, I didn't have a formal academic job at that
Speaker 2 (36m 55s): Time. It was a reason more than just fun.
Speaker 3 (36m 58s): Yeah. Yeah. I mean it was, I mean, I loved the idea and it was brilliant. And when, you know, when John agreed, so Eddie and I kind of thought it'd be cool, and we thought, oh, let's ask John how amazing it'd be to get, and when he said Yes, so dream come true, and off we went. So that was fantastic. But that, but part of the motivation was to do something more, you know, justifiable, you know, that you can expect, it's all right, Donna, I'm not just going off having fun. I'm actually gonna come back with a few, couple of thousand quid or something.
Speaker 2 (37m 23s): Were were you part of the initial forays into Pakistan as well?
Speaker 3 (37m 29s): No, I've never, well, I've been to Pakistan. I've never been Flying in Pakistan.
Speaker 2 (37m 32s): Oh, okay. I, I, I, that came up this morning and when I was, when I was looking into you, I, I didn't know that Eddie was a part of that. I knew John was of course, of his films and everything, but I didn't know Eddie was, was,
Speaker 3 (37m 43s): Well Eddie had the original movie, I think, I don't know when they did it. It was a long time ago called Hypoxia. Yeah. But he went up, I mean, typically I think he had, he had the world Altitude record at the time. He went up to about 7,700 meters or something. But typical Eddie didn't have the right instruments, so couldn't, couldn't prove it. Right. I think he had something that told me, but it was no, probably, probably couldn't get a track off it or something like that. But yeah, they had some, they had some crazy, crazy trips. And that's, so that's how, so I've, I've known Eddie for years, but I didn't really know John and Eddie and John were friends through that.
And then, so it was through them. The three of us came together to do m Andon Sky. Well,
Speaker 2 (38m 20s): And when did that start?
Speaker 3 (38m 23s): I think that must have been, I think it was, I was looking into it the other day, I think it was 2007. Yeah. 'cause 2006 I made the film with Kiko. I dunno if you saw that. Temples in the Clouds Flying around beer. Yeah, yeah. Which has a bit of the Sadhu world in it. And that then the following season, I think was the first Al alone Sky s far Well,
Speaker 2 (38m 41s): So we were relatively brilliant in that. When did you come? 2009. And then again, and Yeah. Yeah. Remember I think in 2011, that's when we did the thing you guys were, were starting the, the Tandem Vol PIV idea. Yeah. And we, which I don't know if that got off the ground very, I don't know how far that went, but the, remember we brought Thayer Walker, the writer from outside, and he was the passenger, and Jody was the photographer. And we did that article. And I, I had my first kind of real incident there. I don't, I think you were right there with me, but I remember lost, yeah, three lost my wing at 360 and Terrifying.
Terrifying. And I just walked away. It was crazy. But that was a weird one. We
Speaker 3 (39m 15s): Were breaking it. We couldn't believe it when he reappeared. I'm like, oh my God. Yeah, that was, you had the proper decade,
Speaker 2 (39m 20s): Didn't you? Yeah, that was pretty spooky. But I still talk about that one. But yeah, that, well, anyway, so the, the 95 was the, what was the catalyst? What, how'd you get into Flying? What how'd that all get done
Speaker 3 (39m 34s): Was a friend of mine, a good friend, really good old friend from school rang up and said, Hey, let's, you know, let's learn to paraglide. You can do it on the Isle of White, where we've always had a family. My dad was living at the time. And I said, brilliant, great. What's that? I have no idea. And I'm not, 'cause I'm not like adventure sports guy at all. Not like you, you, he's done every, all this, all this kind of stuff. Definitely not an adrenaline junkie. You know, if I, for me, if I'm Flying, if my heart rate goes up, it means something's gone wrong and I'm not, I'm not enjoying it. I'm like, we've gotta keep, keep this relaxed. Anyway, he and I was thinking about it actually the last couple of days because I was in the Olive Way.
And if had, I realized at the time that the Flying school was the opposite end of the island, which isn't very far, but it's an hour's drive. So every time we went to fly, it was like a, I probably would've said, oh no, hang on, that's not gonna work out. But no, I kind of said, yeah, great, sign me up. And then off we went and I got totally hooked straight away. Claudia, my wife, and Rupert, the other guy, you know, they got into it, but they kind of, it didn't, didn't run with it at all. Whereas I, as soon as I think it was, as soon as I realized you could stay up, I mean, the first time I left the ground, I was like, wow, this is amazing. And then as soon as I realized you could stay up in Ridge Store and, and I was like, wow, this really is, and then when I found out you could go cross country, and I think it's that, you know, you were asking earlier if I've got a mathematical brain, I have to some extent.
And I think it's that the combination of sort of theory and then the, you know, being able, the, the kind of flow movement of Flying, the two things together just worked perfectly for me. Mm. And I, I didn't look back. I got totally hooked straight away. Huh.
Speaker 2 (41m 3s): And the, back to the kind of, the simplicity of being a Yogi versus, I don't, I mean, I guess Flying is quite simple really when it comes down to it. But are these transitions that your brain can, that your brain loves? Is it tricky? Is it, no,
Speaker 3 (41m 20s): I get, I get quite stressed on takeoff. I mean, it's, it's simple. Once you're in the air, isn't it? There's a lot of bloody preparation, a lot of faffing about getting stuff ready. I'm not very good at that. I mean, I, I like paragliding in that I'm not a mechanical person at all. And the fact, fact, you know, you don't have to tweak it where you just get it out the bag and off you go. But then remembering how, you know, I don't like, like I had a cortel cannibal two for a year or so, but there's so many different things to click up and it's so big. I was like, I can't cope with this anymore. I just know I want it simple on takeoff. Yeah. I don't, I don't like, I, I don't like being rushed.
But yeah, once you're in the air and it's all, it's, then it's, then it's simple, isn't it? It's just, you haven't got much to do.
Speaker 2 (41m 57s): I love it. You won the British 2006. So you were, you were agro about this for a while. You were, you were competing, you were going for it.
Speaker 3 (42m 6s): Yeah, yeah. No, I got, I, I got I, well, so what happened? Yeah, 2000, I did my first British Nationals. I learned in 95. And those, that was a quite a quick progression. And these days people get good in a year or two, don't they? Because the
Speaker 2 (42m 19s): Kids
Speaker 3 (42m 20s): So much more info out there. But I then went, we had a British Nationals in Wales and my first task, they set like a 50 K down window, but it's pretty strong wind. And I got quite near goal. And then I realized I wasn't gonna get there 'cause it was two cross wind to make it. And I thought, well, this is a great day. I've only been Flying an hour or two. I'm gonna keep going. And I flew 135 K, 132 K, which at that point, this is 2000 was a big flight. I mean, the British record wasn't a record, especially in the uk.
The British record I think was 170 k Steve Ham. But like, no one flew further than that for about five years. And here was me first, first comp you guys, everyone was like, whoa, you know, it's like kind of guy just by, yeah. Just by staying in the air for five and a half hours and, you know, made my name like that. So that then got me into doing some other comps. I did a and then in Beard in 2003, there was a pre pwc and I won the, yeah, I must have done that on a comp. We must, I, yeah, I think I did it on a, on a vac R S C.
And then, so that qualified me for the p pwc. So I thought I'd do a season of PWC with, and I was going around Nick Greece, funny enough, hanging out with Nick Greece and Jamie Messenger. I mean, his classic was such fun. Those
Speaker 2 (43m 35s): Two guys. Classic. Oh man.
Speaker 3 (43m 36s): Yeah. Hysterical as you can imagine. Yeah. But the, the first, the first leg was in Besano or what's the place behind it felt re tre. And
Speaker 2 (43m 49s): Was that where Bill Bellfort threw his reserve and ended up in the fence?
Speaker 3 (43m 53s): I don't remember that. Did you? It was 2004. I don't
Speaker 2 (43m 56s): Recall that. Okay. All right. Was there a big, big gust front? One day it got canceled and everybody was in the air. Was that that year? No. Okay. Different year. No. Okay.
Speaker 3 (44m 4s): No, that rings a bell. But no, it wasn't that. 'cause we didn't fly until we had six. It was weeklong comp pwc, six days. No, it was terrible, but didn't fly last day. Last day. Okay. And they set a regular task, I think it was Besano, it was kind of out in return. And so this was my first PWC task. I'm stoked. And I got the, I think I just got the Abex R S e, which is a proper comp wing, you know, in those days. Uncertified, all of that. And I got low quite early on with a group of pilots. And then I got out of this hole and a few, quite a few people landed.
And there was just a lead gaggle in front of me. And I thought, right, I'm, I'm a nuts, you know, here I'm pwc, I fucking have this. And I, this, this Guyer had trim tabs and speed bar. And so I let the trims full off speed bar full on, and I'm cruising on this, you know, blasting along this ridge thing and reeling them in. And then suddenly big frontal and the whole thing just went berserk. I was on top of the wing, I was all over the place, virtually looping it. And I, and then I looked down, and I'm not sorting this out, didn't have much room, threw the reserve, and then started thinking about trying to pull in the main look down, going, oh no, I haven't got much time.
And, and hit the deck made. And I was incredibly lucky 'cause it was a steep, steep mount inside with trees and rocks and then just a small patch of grass. And I hit this patch of grass and like it was winded. And I was like, oh my God, I'm right. And, and I, I then I kind of packed, I I just got a mobile phone and I rang Claudia, Claudia was out there, and I told her what happened. She's bloody hell, she came to get me. And I, I, I did manage to injure myself walking down to the road.
I think I tricked over onto the road and bashed my knee and everything. Anyway, I got back to the, to the HQ that evening. And I, I, I think, I think it was Aki juice was the, I dunno if I'm pronouncing that right, but I think he was the test Pilot for gradient, you know, he was the, the factory Pilot. And so I got talking to him and I said, and he said, so what happened? And I, when I told him I'd let off the trim tabs and gone full speed by, just looked at me like I was a complete moron. I was What? You did both, there's no manual coming with these.
I didn't realize, I didn't know that that was a stupid thing to do. Really fly
Speaker 2 (46m 18s): Your own risk. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (46m 21s): But I then realize, I mean, I, that I got, but through that, I guess I got a minor fear injury as you, as you would call it. And I mean, not too bad, but I kind of realized then that for me, if I was gonna do compete really seriously, it was all or nothing that what I was saying before, you know, these guys who just fly a few days a year and do brilliantly in comps, all these big cross, I find that very impressive to be able to switch on and off just like that. For me, I kind of, I felt that I needed to stay on top of it. And so I kind of eased off. I thought, well, I'm not gonna be doing these, these, these big, you know, world, world Cups and so forth.
I mean, I did another couple of rounds but didn't do well at all, but enjoyed myself. Was this a lot of fun hanging out with Nick and Jamie and the rest of, I think Krieg, I think Kriegel was just starting out. He's getting going. So I can say, I can say I did PWCs with Kriegel, but then I, yeah, he, he got a little bit better than I did.
Speaker 2 (47m 12s): He's getting a little bit better than but did, yeah.
Speaker 3 (47m 15s): Then I, so then I, but I kept doing the British, the only comps, like proper, proper comps I kept doing were the UK legs of the British Nationals. Okay. Which when it's good, it's just fantastic. We have one year, 2007 maybe, I can't remember where, you know, we had four amazing days, like a hundred K tasks every day and some of 'em landing back at the ca. Anyway, it was just, as you can imagine, fantastic. But too many years the weather would just completely destroy it. Okay. So it wouldn't happen. And then after, I think it was about 2009, 2010, the comps panel decided they wouldn't have UK legs anymore.
They used to have one or two foreign ones and then one in the uk and they got rid of that. And I, I didn't like the foreign one. I got fed up also. I'd hate the sit, you know, you'd go to the Northern A and sit in the rain for a week and that would just do my head a waste of time. But I, I would always commit, you know, I'd always go to the UK ones and then they stopped it. And so that was when with Hugh and Hugh Miller and Jockey Sanderson, we got together and we, we devised the North, south Cup. We thought, look, there've gotta be a way to have a decent competition in the uk.
And so that's, so the, the way we make it work is that we don't call it, we don't call the venue until two days before. So we fix a weekend and then literal. So everyone has to be prepared one day's a travel day, and then we'll meet online on Zoom or whatever on the, on the Wednesday normally, or Tuesday or Wednesday. Check the weather forecast. Hugh's the main weather guru these days. He loves going through all the charts and everything. And then we'll call it, you know, we might go off to Scotland, we might go to Wales or something. The first was the first or second year we had it right here.
'cause I live at the foot of some pretty good small hills. But you can go a long way when the, when the conditions are right. And so that's, yeah, that's kind of my competing these days. That
Speaker 2 (49m 4s): All very, that sounds brilliant. I mean, everybody I've talked to about the, well, you know, jockey's super excited about everything he ever talks about, so I'm not, I'm not sure he's the best gauge, but when I've asked Jockey about the North-south Cup, he just, he really lights up and, and Russ, everybody, I mean, they just, it just sounds fantastic and I, I'd love to come out and join it, join you guys for that.
Speaker 3 (49m 25s): Yeah, well, your open invitation, Kevin, for sure.
Speaker 2 (49m 27s): And that's always in May, right?
Speaker 3 (49m 30s): Well, yeah. Well, no, this year fun enough. We, it wasn't in May 'cause Jockey was too busy with various comp stuff, so we set it for July. But unusually we've done it once or twice before we, we had to postpone the forecast. That was really bad. Yeah. You've had what year? So we've now got the last weekend in August, so fingers crossed it'll be all right. I'm gonna get something. So we haven't done it this year.
Speaker 2 (49m 49s): Ah, okay. Oh, 'cause so it's totally flexible. You just pick a weekend. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (49m 53s): Totally flexible. Oh very. Yeah. I mean, quite a few people who were able to do the July one can't come, but it's 30 aside. I mean, it's, it's sat it's quite informal, the whole thing. Like last time, was it the last one then we, we, yeah, there's no g p s scoring. We just, we go back to you way before your time, I imagine Gavin, but we have a big map and we put pins on the board. Yeah. Are
Speaker 2 (50m 14s): You guys taking pictures of the turn point?
Speaker 3 (50m 17s): Yeah. No, no, we don't even, we don't do the pictures thing, but we, we get everyone, so what we've got, it was pretty close last year. And we get, there's like red pins for the north and yellow pins for the, for the south, whatever. Everyone has to put their pin in the board. And then, you know, jockey and I stand back and look at it and go, Hmm, who's one who, you know, who's, who's done best. In fact, last year it was so close, we ended up having to get a bit of line and going around all the pins and stretching it out and working out whose line was strongest and longest
Speaker 2 (50m 47s): Screw X contest. You're doing it with yarn.
Speaker 3 (50m 50s): Exactly. It's, it's kind of, yeah. You know, we're trying to, trying to take the tech out. So say that people like Eddie can compete because, you know, they're not very running their instruments. But we smashed records, we've loads of times we've broken British records and stuff like that because if you get enough, you know, 'cause all the, all the best pilots like to take part, you know, it's quite competitive to get a place, although I often get accused of, you know, bribery and corruption and so forth. But who gets chosen in the sa and the old, old boys club. But yeah, you, you know how it is if you throw enough good pilots Yeah.
Even onto a half on a half decent day off the hill and
Speaker 3 (51m 29s): And then the, then the real crazy magic happens in the evening when, you know, jockey's doing, because we was, we, it's also now become the prize, prize giving for the previous year's XC League. And so Jockey does all of that. And then we have an auction as well, a charity auction. It's a lot of, it's a one time basically that the, you know, the kind of top UK pilots
Speaker 2 (51m 48s): Together, work together, get together. Yeah. It's brilliant. That's brilliant. Well, we're, we're gonna go, we're gonna go back to beer, but talking about magic, I, I had to look this up embarrassingly considering all the sailing I've done, but tell me about this solen flight. You, you flew some enormous distance over the ocean, right? I have that right.
Speaker 3 (52m 6s): Ah, yeah, yeah. I wonder actually, I, I put, put this out there. I sometimes wonder if it's the longest ever. I'm sure it's,
Speaker 2 (52m 11s): I've never heard of anything longer than that, but I, I would talk about it, but I would like to get your thoughts on there. There have been a lot of people reaching out to me in the last couple years seeing cloud streets at sea, you know, and I've spent a lot of time at sea and I'm pretty convinced that wouldn't work. But it, it would, it is it, it is an interesting phenomenon. You're not getting thermals off the water, obviously, but you're getting, I think if you're close enough to land it, it is a pretty interesting, you know, you know, Flying between the Hawaiian islands for example, you know, you see Cloud Strait, it's, yeah, there are you, you're exactly, you're right there.
It's just, but it's just, I can't imagine pretty committing. I dunno,
Speaker 3 (52m 52s): I dunno if you ever, you were probably again before your time, but Richard Westgate, did he ever cross your radar?
Speaker 2 (52m 57s): Yes. Yeah. I haven't
Speaker 3 (52m 58s): A brilliant, brilliant UK Pilot, very sadly, sadly died maybe. 'cause he was an airline Pilot, and I think it was through poisoning from the, you know, the, the air systems in the, in the, in the cockpit. But whoa, he had, he had, he was one of these real dreamers as well of kind of crazy flight. And he, in this, not long before he died, he was seriously talking about trying to fly across the channel. Not the, so, so it's 20 miles or something using sea thermal cloud streets. I dunno. I mean, he, he was, he was, if anyone was gonna do it and if he thought it was feasible, there must've been some way of doing it.
But I'm not sure if anyone's anyone's ever, ever managed. But people, yeah, people do use sea thermals here occasionally. But it's normally in winter, isn't it? Spring, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So you have to have a
Speaker 2 (53m 39s): Really unstable, very good lapse. Really. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (53m 42s): Something like that. But what I did, so I learned to fly on the isle of white, and I grew up on the isle of white, and we still got a family place down there, so it'd always been my dream to fly down there. And you used to be able to do it. So it's a small island off the south of the UK with the strip of sea in between called the Soland, you know, where you've got Southampton and ports of big shipping channel. And the far west of it, there's actually quite a narrow channel. It's only maybe two kilometers, something like that. And people used to fly that quite regularly in hang gliders and then early paragliders. But then they, there's a new airport, Bournemouth, and they close down the airspace.
It's impossible to do that now. So the only way to do it is to the east, where it's then about six, six and a half kilometers wide, something like that. And also getting there is tricky. So what I had to do, and I tried a few times, but I would get to Portsmouth, you have to take, it had to be a reasonable, a nice northerly, but not too strong because you'd have to loop around. I could put, I could put the link to the flight in the, in the notes. That'd be great. You have to loop around Southampton airspace and then come back into Portsmouth, which is where you then decide, right, am I gonna go for this or not?
And I, I think I'd done it two or three times, got there and thought, no, I didn't have the bottle. It didn't look right. And I, so this time, it was a couple of years ago, I guess maybe three years ago, maybe more time has gone weird, isn't it, with Covid, maybe four years ago anyway. And I've done it once again since. But, ah, so all, all the way, all the way around along, looking at the island, you can see the cumulus over it thinking, okay, it still works. The, the worry is the sea breeze. And this, the time that I did it. First I got to Portsmouth and I'm, I can see that the clouds are dissipating, but I'm at about three and a half thousand feet and I had a reasonable tailwind and I thought, so, you know, it's now or never.
I've gotta go for it, I'll go for it. And I, but having said that, I wasn't very well prepared, didn't have a radio, didn't have a life jacket. Yeah. But it was all a bit, bit, bit crazy. But I thought, this is, this is looking good. And for about half of the half of the crossing, I was just like, yeah, no problem. Fine. And about halfway across, I hit the sea breeze. So my glide went from probably 15 to one or something, a bit of a tailwind, reasonably buoyant air to, I don't know, probably four or five to one.
Speaker 2 (55m 49s): Oh god,
Speaker 3 (55m 51s): Shit. Split up in my harness, you know? You know how it's when you, the thing you don't want, you don't,
Speaker 2 (55m 58s): The thing you shouldn't do is what you're now doing and you can't help but not do it. Yes.
Speaker 3 (56m 4s): And that, that, that bit, that period was only a couple of minutes where I wasn't set, but I was looking down, looking at boats. I might be able to land on that kind of thing. As I said it, it's a big shipping lane. But then, then I realized I was gonna make it, but I only got, I only had 500 feet when I got the other side.
Speaker 3 (56m 21s): Yeah. So, and yeah, and I think it was six and a half kilometers. I wonder, you know, if anyone's done a thermic flight that's involved, you know, that long a crossing.
Speaker 2 (56m 30s): I've never heard of one. Yeah, that's, I it
Speaker 3 (56m 33s): Would be possible. It would be possible. But yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56m 36s): That's pretty exciting. The
Speaker 3 (56m 37s): Second time I did it, I, I, I was a bit more sensible. I managed to, well, I dunno if I was more sensible, luckier, but I connected the other side as well and was able to carry on thermally and Yeah.
Speaker 2 (56m 47s): Would, would you, if, if you had everything perfectly planned, would you have a cutaway? Would you have a chase boat? I mean, we, what we don't want to do is have people listen to this start Flying across the ocean. You know, wa water tends to be a little dangerous, but I would there be ways to mitigate some of the risk? You know, the, the, I I've thought about this a little bit. 'cause it, the, the worst thing is just if there's any waves at all whatsoever, you're in deep shit if you're in your gear. But I guess you could Sure. And
Speaker 3 (57m 16s): I guess Chase, chase spoke with the radio. Yeah. I mean it'd be like IV over a lake or something.
Speaker 2 (57m 22s): It's not too rough. That'd be fine, wouldn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It must've been beautiful.
Speaker 3 (57m 27s): It was, I was definitely screaming with Joy when I realized I was gonna make it. That was amazing. Yeah. Oh wow. I, funnily enough, I wrote it up Cross Country and it's going in this new book they've got coming up.
Speaker 2 (57m 37s): Oh, cool. I just saw, I just saw Hug newsletter yesterday about that. That looks, that looks really neat.
Speaker 3 (57m 43s): Does that mean you've got a story in there as well then I
Speaker 2 (57m 45s): Guess? No, no, no, no. Uhuh, I don't, no,
Speaker 3 (57m 47s): Because he said I got sent a thing, the authors, I've got two stories in there. I'm feeling
Speaker 2 (57m 50s): Very wicked privileged. Yeah. Cool. No, I think all that's more, more that's before my time, you know, it's the, it's the legendary stuff and I can't wait to read it. It's gonna be fantastic.
Speaker 3 (58m 1s): Yeah. It should be a good, good win to read.
Speaker 2 (58m 3s): Speaking of just really memorable flights, I asked Deb about this as well. You've done a lot of Flying in the biggest mountains in the world and, and beer is pretty special. Anything that's still, just love to do that one again. I mean, the magic of Flying is they're never the same, but any really memorable flights from the Himalaya that
Speaker 3 (58m 25s): Yeah, well I mean these as I haven't been there for a few years and, you know, things have progressed so much. There's, so the really memorable flights that I've got, people are now doing, you know, doing the same thing. Like Flying to, you did it with John. Yeah, I did. I mean, that's an amazing flight, isn't it? Yeah. I mean, but people are now doing that and back regularly. Yeah, yeah. The first time I did that, that was just, that was incredible. I mean of, and often it's not the, the biggest or the longest flights that are the most memorable. Is it, I mean, one of my first flights there was with, with Bob Drury and Rob Whittle and just Flying into the back with them.
And I was really green at, I'd been Flying two or three years at that point. And they kind of convinced me to follow them over the, back into the, and they were all prepared for, for camping out. And I, and I bottled it. I said I didn't have any kit or so I flew back, flew back to beer. But I'll never forget that
Speaker 2 (59m 11s): I, I didn't realize beer had so much history. I was about to ask you a stupid question, you know, who, who kind of pioneered it. But I remember I had Larry Tudor on the show and they used to have hang gliding comps there. He had this amazing story of they all took acid. It was, i I, I can't remember if they'd gotten to goal and took acid or if it was a non flyable day and they took acid and they were all driving down the mountain and the, the, the, the driver had some, he had a little guy next to him who, because the brakes didn't work and the little guy would have to crawl down in a hole to activate the brakes and the brakes went out or something.
And they're going down this mountain and everybody's on acid and having this amazing trip. And Larry's tripping too, but at the same time, still had some of his senses about him going, no, listen, this is super sketchy. We without have any breaks in this fricking bus. You know, it was, it's a hysterical story. But I don't know if that was, I don't know what decade that was. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 1s): That was the eighties I think. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 2 (1h 0m 2s): Was in the eighties. Lemme Flying beer a long time.
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 6s): Yeah. And then the first paragliders, I mean, I, I, 'cause I, as I, I started Flying 95, but that was when I started doing my PhD as well. So I was always kind of tied up in the autumn. So I didn't get there until 99 or 2000. So I felt like a bit of a late arrival. But even in those days it was still like, you know, maximum 10 pilots on takeoff. Wow. Everyone knew each other really. It was a ti tiny little, tiny little gang. You know, nowadays, I think last October, Eddie's saying's probably four or 500 over there. Course of the season. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 0m 35s): Boy, that'd be a chaotic launch. I mean, it was, it was a chaotic launch when I was there in 2009. And just, I, that's one of the more stressful launches I've ever been on. Yeah. Just because the, there's no wind, there's a lot of people and there's a lot of screwing up. It's just, I don't wanna watch this, I don't watch this, I just wanna get off the hill.
Speaker 3 (1h 0m 55s): Yeah. But I think they've, they've massively landscaped it. Oh, okay. Since they last time I was, they had already done a bit, but I think they've done more so it should be, should be a bit easier. But in terms of memorable flights, there was one amazing flight with John, which was also written up in cross country, which he wrote up I think. So I dunno if it's gone in the, in the, in the new book. But I was, you know, as part of the whole Yogi spiritual trip, there's a mountain there in the back to the northwest called Man Mahesh Kil.
And it's so kil, you know, you've probably heard of Mount Kailash in Tibet, but actually there are a few Indian mountains that have a good claim to be the original man Kish. And this other one might be it as well. Hmm. That's a whole other long story. Anyway, I determined to get there and or to get close up to it. And so it was with, with Eddie and John and another guy called Dean Crosby, actually brilliant British Pilot. And we camped out on the high, quite high up on the, you know, we'd flown out vivid and then the plan was the next day to take, to take off early.
'cause often it's difficult to get high on the, on the main range later on in the day as the cloud comes in, as you, as you know. And so the plan was to take off early and then go over the back to Monument Mahesh to this, this, this holy mountain. And yeah, we managed to do it. I, it was looking a bit sketchy, but I was just like, again, it was a bit like the island, island of white flight. It's now or never. I'm never gonna be in such a good position. So I just lobbed over and only John followed me, Eddie and Dean were like, those guys are crazy. And we did get a bit flushed. And anyway, then had then had a really, really amazing flight up to five and a half thousand meters and got up pretty close to this holy mountain.
And then, then there's a lake at 4,000 meters, which is a big pilgrimage place. In fact, John John said he'd never seen it and he, I got photos of it and he was, I can't believe I'd not, I didn't notice it again. Anyway, we then flew on round and landed, I had the sketches landing over my whole life. I think it was kissed the ground in this tiny little gorge above the town of Bramo, which is in a gorge itself. And the wind was just switching everywhere. But that was, then it was somewhere I, this town of Bramo, which is a long, you know, by road from beard, it's about 10 or 12 hours or something like that.
We got there in, you know, a couple of hours, Flying, hour and a half. But I needed to go there for a research project I had on at the time. So we then spent a couple of days, 'cause there's these amazing seventh century temples there. And we spent a couple of days and I was looking around all of that. And then we got a, a cab back, which I was able to charge to my university research account, field work of course. And then, but you reminded me of that because we were driving the guy, the driver was lethal. He was like 50, he was probably 55, I think he was ex-military. We'd been a taxi driver, he said for 10 or 20 years.
And he just drove so fast. And I kept saying, I kept losing it with him in Hindi. And we'd give him a load of grief and say that this is just ridiculous. Stop it, you keep us, I'm gonna have to take over, blah, blah, blah. You're gonna kill us. And, and then I then I noticed that he was driving with, with one hand kind of tucked in his lap and he was changing gear with his right hand as well as, as well as steering. I thought, what
Speaker 2 (1h 4m 7s): You doing now?
Speaker 3 (1h 4m 8s): And he said, he said, I thought, well, I thought if I drove with only one hand, I might drive a bit more slowly.
Speaker 2 (1h 4m 21s): Some of the, that I, I, I'm sure you've experienced way more than I have, but some of the taxi rides I've taken in India are quite harrowing, especially in the cities. It's just how does this possibly work? I mean, in, in Lima, Peru was the same. I remember the first time I really started traveling down to South America. You can drive on these, you know, where there's, there's three lanes and yet they've made 10 lanes out of it. You know, you're going good God, there's so close to one another and so much speed. It's very impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 4m 51s): Well people's, yeah, because I've, I I actually found the end of my last trip in 2019 was not my luck, but the, that trip when I cut my hair, I had to give back my Jeep. I dunno if you remember my Jeep when I had that black Yeah, black car. Yeah. I put over a hundred thousand kilometers on that. But people used to, I know for 20 years it was very sad to give it back. But my people would, would always say, you know, aren't you scared driving yourself? And I'd say, well, it's safer than letting someone else.
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 15s): Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Do you guys still have the house?
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 19s): No, I had to give that back as well in 2015 or 2016. The guy who owned it, the landlord, he retired and so he took, took
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 26s): It on. That was precious. Yeah,
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 28s): That was fantastic. That was amazing. That's the best time of my life.
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 31s): But the colonel's still there.
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 33s): Colonel's still there. Yeah. Yeah. And his son Bikram taking over. Yeah. I'm hoping, as I say, get out there next spring I think. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 5m 40s): Yeah. Do do you typically fly, do, well you're out there for typically six months, but the are, do you mostly chase the spring now or the fall and I mean, I know for the guiding you always did the fall, but the, you know, for you personally.
Speaker 3 (1h 5m 55s): Well, I think I'm gonna go back in spring. I mean, I think, and I, maybe I'm more, as I, as I say, Gavin, it's kind of, you know, it's been three or four years since I was there, so it's very weird time for me. But probably would prefer to go in spring. These days it's quieter, isn't it? You know, it's less, but you need to go for a long time. You don't things you go in, you go, it's not reliable. A very short window of a month or whatever it is. But you can pretty guarantee that out of 30 days you'll get 28 days Flying or something like that. Whereas spring you'll, there's good chance you'll sit around for a week at some point without any decent Flying, good day will come.
But yeah, I'm hoping to get back there, hopefully with Eddie actually next, next spring.
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 35s): Are you guys gonna keep guiding when that, when it opens back up?
Speaker 3 (1h 6m 38s): I'm not, I'm too, you know, too busy, too busy with other stuff. But Eddie's, Eddie's been, but Eddie, I think he, I dunno if he's still gonna be doing Sky safaris, but he's now working with four, I can't remember what kind of company's who worked with Jockey. Yep. Yeah. So he's still doing a bit in Deb debut and Antoine, they're all, they're all doing their stuff. Yeah, yeah. No, I have to bow out
Speaker 2 (1h 6m 58s): All those years of, of guiding. I, I, I've never guided, I've always been nervous about that. Just, I, i just trying to help other people. I don't know, it just makes me nervous. Especially in big Mountains like you guys have done. What, what are the, what one thing from guiding has been most important in your own Flying, your own survival, your own risk management?
Speaker 3 (1h 7m 32s): It's a, it's a very good question. Wait, what did I learn from guiding? I can't, I can't think of a good answer. I mean, I, I really enjoyed setting things up. That's, I got, I get bored, I got bored of it after a while, to be honest. It became setting it, setting I love, I dunno about you, but I like setting things up. I like new things, starting things up. And it was so exciting. It was so brilliant to do that. Yeah, especially with John and, and Eddie, you know, we pretty good trio.
We all had very complimentary, different skills I think. And you know, John amazing to fly with John. I mean, I learned a lot from Flying with John actually. Yeah, I wouldn't, and I dunno if that wasn't necessarily because of the guiding, but the way you must have experienced this, the way he could, what he, he would call it milking it, you know, fly super close to the trees, just soaring along ridges without turning. I mean we used to play around that kind of stuff. You know, you could, you'd have to go back and pick up clients and then you, we'd play, play around actually being quite competitive with each other sometimes. And who could, you know, who could, who could do the least turns in, in the whole, in the whole process of guiding.
But we had a lot of fun. What I really enjoyed as well was setting up the 360 camp. You know, that was the sort of thing, I dunno if anyone's done anything similar anywhere else in the world, but India is just the perfect place to do it. And we had the, the Colonels guys, so people listening just to explain what that was, was there was a a a a place, very easy to top land about 50, it's only about 15 k east of the billing takeoff. And in fact, it figures in the film. It's the first night, first place that Kiko and I stay in the film. We made temples in the clouds and then, you know, no one was hanging out there.
They, we gave it the name 360. But what we could, what we would do with our clients when we were guiding is you get the colonel to go up with his guys and set up a camp and then we'd fly in and you know, they, we'd land on the top and there'd be cups of tea waiting and a lovely, lovely campsite and they'd make beautiful dinner in the evening. We'd a bit of a party, big bonfire. And then the next morning you take off and fly off. And sometimes you go off in a different direction. Often everyone, you know, we, what the amazing thing about Beard is people who are pretty inexperienced hadn't done much Flying. They'd still be, you know, you'd still be able to, especially if you're doing one-on-one, it's amazing what you can do one-on-one with, with people who've not got much experience.
And so often people would be quite, that they would be stoked enough just from that, that they'd wanna fly back to beard. But other times we would then, you know, lob over the back and maybe try to fly to Minali or whatever. But I think that, you know, that was really exciting being able to set that up, which is a, I think probably, probably unique. I don't know if anyone, any other guiding company in the world has managed to do that. Maybe in the Alps, I suppose you could do stuff with huts and so forth. But also the thing about beard is the weather's so reliable in Yeah,
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 14s): Yeah. That's the thing about the Alps is it's, it's not reliable. Like this means, especially in the fall, I mean it was just so accessible and special to land there and then have the donkeys come up and everything's set up. It was, you know, it's a really cool way to get a bivy experience having not have done any divvying, you know, or top landing for a lot of people. I think, you know,
Speaker 3 (1h 10m 35s): Luxury bivy.
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 36s): Luxury bivy, yeah. No,
Speaker 3 (1h 10m 38s): But you, that was where you fell out. The sky wasn't, that wasn't even top.
Speaker 2 (1h 10m 42s): No, it was, you know, we had all top landed there and then it was, you know, relatively strong ish. I don't know if I would think that these days, but it's, it was to me back then and, and John and I took off again and I was basically just, you you were just talking about learning and guiding. I mean, I hard to say now, that was a long time ago, but I feel like I learned more from John following him around than anybody I've ever flown with. Partially because I could never understand him. You know, he would say things on the radio and it was always just pure excitement and no words, just blah.
He was so excited and so you just had to kind of follow him. And like you say, I, I was a very p Pilot and, but it was, I just loved being able to, to follow him around the sky. And I don't, I think it was that trip that I did the trip with him to Minali in the, in the back and that was just mind blowing. And, but that day, yeah, we, we took off and I was just turning away from the hill and you remember there was that gully to the left side coming up and something just hit me.
I I, I have no idea if this is the case, but I, we later learned that that wing, you know, that wing had been in the ocean a lot. I I had done a lot of towing with that wing on the boat and that was, what was the gin rebel? I think it was the sea. And I think it was radically outta trim. And so I, I like to think that that was part of it, but I don't know. But yeah, I, I took a big hit and was kind of helicoptering as I remember.
And, and then I hit the ground and, and you know, I, I had this thought at one point I should throw my reserve, but it was quite windy and then I panicked 'cause I thought I'd get blown over the back and, and, and I kind of got it a little bit stable as I remember, but still very much in deep stall and, and hit one of those little flat, you know, terrace areas where this grass and it was like landing like a kitten. It was just totally, so obviously enough of the wing was, I think at that point I was kind of be, you guys couldn't see me and so everybody just thought I must just
Speaker 3 (1h 12m 50s): No crack the ground. Sight terrified.
Speaker 2 (1h 12m 52s): Yeah. And it was just, I mean, right before I hit I thought, oh wow, this is really gonna hurt. And, and then it didn't hurt at all. So there was obviously enough wing, I was probably so scared that I had the wing perfectly and deep stall. I had my, my hands way too low and, and it was just holding there nicely. And so yeah, just chalk that one up to pure luck.
Speaker 3 (1h 13m 14s): Yeah, we were very, very pleased. Well, I think someone ran over there and, you know, said on the radio or something, you were okay. But yeah, it look, looked sketchy, I remember. Yeah, it,
Speaker 2 (1h 13m 22s): Yeah,
Speaker 3 (1h 13m 23s): It was. And that big, I mean we, it was, yeah, I, I think I got like, going back to the whole, the, the, the him and Sky Ari thing, it was great and people had such wonderful experiences, you know, the, the looks on people's faces. But it, once we'd got to a point of, you know, Eddie's always up for doing more crazy adventures, but I was, I kind of thought that, I mean crazy adventures with the, with the clients, you know, pushing it further and further. And I always, I was always trying to reign him in a bit. And also I think we got to the limit of what we could do. And then as I say, I like setting things up and when it became more kind of management and it felt like risk management.
We had a few accidents. We had one lovely guy, poor guy than Norwegian guy. I
Speaker 2 (1h 14m 1s): Was there.
Speaker 3 (1h 14m 2s): Yeah, right. That was that year. It was that year,
Speaker 2 (1h 14m 4s): Of course.
Speaker 3 (1h 14m 6s): So after that then it just becomes more, you become worried about a bit like you, what you were saying, you probably didn't, you know, you're just worrying about the clients. And this is paraglide if, you know anyone can hit, get hit. It wasn't anyone's fault that Stein CRA crashed, but it just became, yeah. More stressed than, than fun.
Speaker 2 (1h 14m 26s): What, what percentage would you say has, back to 95, let's just take your life from 95 to today. What percentage of your life is academics and study and writing and your life outside of Flying versus Flying?
Speaker 3 (1h 14m 47s): God in recent years, much less Flying Gavin than, than before. I mean, yeah, I haven't done much traveling for Flying. I mean, I live in a, in a brilliant place for Flying, as I say in in Borough Downs. It's kind of used to literally I can walk to a takeoff, takes me back 20 minutes, 25 minutes, got a short upper upper hill and the British hand gliding paragliding records used to be, used to be from there. Now, now it's gone a bit further, but there's scope for about 260 K or something.
So I will go out if it's, if it's good, you know, I, I go out as much as possible. But this, this season's been pretty terrible. And I guess I haven't been to beer now for three or four years, hoping to get back out there for a good stint next spring. As I keep saying, I'm worried I'm gonna get jinxed on that. But yeah, there's the north south cup. So I'm a keen cross country Pilot through the season. But again, you know, I've got family and things, so quite often you have to grit your teeth grin and bear it and look, try not to look up at the sky. 'cause you know, and nowadays of course you can bloody track everyone and all that's torture.
If you've gotta be sitting on some boring zoom meeting, isn't it? Click out x e r t, whatever, it's, and watch people having amazing flights. But I've managed, I, I've been, like I said, this year I've got, I've had three, three really good flights and that's kind of enough, isn't it? I it keeps you ke I I find nowadays, like I almost feel the bit, if you get a really good one or two in at the beginning of the season, it's like, oh shit, now I'm just gonna be completely hooked till summer. You, it's harder to ignore. Once you've had a bit of a, a fix like that, then you just keep wanting to, to, to have it.
But at the same time, as long as you keep getting one or two, three fixes of amazing flights a year, maybe four or five, I guess then, then that's, that's enough to sustain it.
Speaker 2 (1h 16m 31s): You've, you've heard this one on the show, but I love it. And so do the, so do the listeners, if you could go back to your 50 hour self, which I'm assuming is 95, what would you, what would you tell that, let's see, you were born in seventies, you know, what would you tell that 25 year old self, if, if you could, if you could.
Speaker 3 (1h 16m 50s): Well it sounds like an arrogant thing. I dunno if anyone has said this in response to this question before, but I, I, the fact that I'm here touch with, I haven't broken anything and I've had a lot of fun. I've met some of my best friends, you know, still through Flying like Hugh, Eddie, Hugh's, God godfather to one of my daughters. You know, I've met amazing people, amazing friends. And I haven't hurt myself. I've had a lot of fun, still having a lot of fun. So I wouldn't change a thing to be honest. Perfect. I don't regret, you know, when you see all these comp reports these days, I like f I will follow them.
I kind of, you know, check in. It's been a P WC in Turkey. Nobody looks like scared the patent, I tell you there's no, I i I wouldn't wanna do it. That doesn't, that's not my idea of fun. And in fact I'm not a, I've been realizing more and more I like to fly on my own, you know, I dunno. It's an interesting thing, like you talk about getting into a flow state as well. So the whole gaggle Flying is not my cup. Even when I go out with groups of friends here, I, I'm very com I'm very competitive, which I think is partly a reason why I don't wanna do competitions. 'cause you can't sort of guarantee you're gonna win for a start.
Mm. And it just kind of interferes with my head. And I find I have my much, so I've, I've gone away from the question, but I have my best flights when I'm on my own and I can get into that sort of flow state and it feels like everything's just, you know, everything's right. And if there's other people around, I'm comparing myself with them and other lots, plenty of people here that, in fact the people who are super keen, you know, who will go to the takeoff the net the day before and in the hope of a good, they're Flying big groups and they all like, you know, being on radio and sticking together the whole way.
But that's not my, not my thing. But yeah, to go back to your question, I wouldn't change a thing. I
Speaker 2 (1h 18m 29s): Don't, yeah, I like that.
Speaker 3 (1h 18m 32s): And I think, I think if I'd gone too professional on it as well, I would've got sick of it. I'm, you know, I don't, I don't, I don't think I could be like a tandem guy doing tandems nonstop through the summer. I think I'd be, I'd give up Flying pretty
Speaker 2 (1h 18m 43s): Quickly. I think finding that balance seems to be the key as the years go by. You know, we can't all you, you, you just, we're human. We can't have that itch and scratch that need and passion that we have when we first discover it. That's not gonna stick around. You know, we, we have to fly for yeah. Different reasons and have to find the passion in other ways. But, okay, I haven't done this. I'm kinda excited about this with you. I haven't done this in at least over a hundred shows. If you'd listen to any of the early ones, you might remember this, but I used to do this, the PRUs questionnaire, it just seemed appropriate with you.
But it's interesting that I used to do it because I found, you know, these questions somewhere. And they had, they weren't the questions that are the actual Proust questionnaire. I don't know where they came from. So this one has some of the real ones that were actually from browsed, but not others. I've, I've kind of thrown in a little, a little mix, but, so we'll take these and then I'll, I'll give you back your time 'cause I've, I've held onto it for a long time here. But your favorite qualities in a man?
Speaker 3 (1h 19m 47s): Ooh, gosh. Favorite qualities in a man. Well, there's lots. My favorite qualities. I mean, you know, reliability. I think everyone's friend, you could be being able to depend, I mean, that's almost the definition of a friend. Is it someone you can, you know, if the shit hits the fan, you can give them a call and they'll help you out. Someone who's there for you. Enthusiasm, you know, being up for stuff. Like, it's so great hanging out with Eddie. Like, I've been hanging out with Eddie. This Eddie's just always up for doing the next thing.
I mean, it always drives me mad, you know, like after a few days with him, I was exhausted in the one evening, I just wanna watch a bit of tv. And he's like, come on, let's go. I just want out. Tell please. Back hammer. Back hammer. Come on
Speaker 2 (1h 20m 29s): Another bit. I've got so much energy.
Speaker 3 (1h 20m 31s): He's great. Yeah, it's fantastic. You know, it just makes life worth living there. It makes life, you know, it's doing stuff. Yeah. I guess. Is that it? Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 20m 39s): Perfect. Favorite qualities in a woman? Imagine you think about your wife. What do you think about this? It sounds like you have an amazing relationship.
Speaker 3 (1h 20m 47s): Yeah. Well that's, you know, you could, I could get in trouble answering that.
Speaker 3 (1h 20m 58s): Well, it's a, you, you've kind of pinned me. I should say the same thing. You shouldn't. I remember that. Be sexist. I mean, being,
Speaker 2 (1h 21m 4s): There's, I mean, there's
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 5s): An academic, I mean, I suppose in a, in a, a woman in general is d you know, now I've got a wife. If you, I'm thinking about my wife, she's also a mother. You know, she's extremely dependable and reliable and always there for everyone in the family. Absolutely. Maybe not so much up for crazy fun all the time, like Eddie. And that's probably quite a good thing.
Speaker 2 (1h 21m 22s): Yes. Great, great. Back to balance.
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 27s): Yeah. Yeah. I guess, you know, it's kind of loyalty sounds a bit patronizing, but dependability, you know, something just, I think that's, I think that's what you want in in your, in your everyone everyone who's there? Everyone. Everyone who's part of your circle. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 21m 41s): Another one from the actual questionnaire, your idea of happiness and then the flip side, your idea of misery and happiness. I is a weird word, but joy, however you like to think about happiness. Well,
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 54s): I wish you'd, I wish you'd prepped me with these guys.
Speaker 2 (1h 21m 56s): There's better on the spot
Speaker 3 (1h 21m 59s): Because you always ask another question, which I have pre I hope you're gonna ask that final
Speaker 2 (1h 22m 3s): Question. Remember we can, we, we can edit. You can think about this. No, no,
Speaker 3 (1h 22m 6s): No, no. I've got an answer for that. Hang on. What was it? What's, what a happy Well they, they kind of flip side in the, like I mentioned earlier, I love new stuff. I get, you know, I think it's, you know, it's why I'm in researcher. I'm constantly trying to find out new stuff and I like changing my mind. I like being like, you know, having to realize I was wrong. There's nothing more exciting than that. You know, there's nothing, it's awful to be sort of fixed and certain of your opinions there's nothing better. But even, you know, in my academic world or in in life generally, like new stuff, having to re make re reappraise the situation.
So I like, I like change and stimulation. So that's my idea of like, my idea of, you know, someone's been at my happiest driving my Jeep in India to a new place. Mm. Whether it's a new Flying site or a new temple in the middle of nowhere or something like that, for me, that's perfect happiness. And so the flip side is, man, I hated lockdown. There's people who say they like lockdown and that I really, you know, I like, I need, I need to get out there, be stimulated, be doing new stuff. And I, yeah. 'cause I, I can't, I don't believe these people who say, oh, I love lockdown.
It's great. But maybe the, maybe it's, it's true. So yeah, for me happiness is, is is development progression, you know, just new stimulation, which is maybe not, maybe is, could be conducive to poor mental health. And that you constantly, I mean I've always been like that at my school when I was really small, when I was like four or five, they sussed out that the one punishment that would really annoy me was make me sit on the stairs and with no books or anything and just have to look at the wall.
Speaker 2 (1h 23m 38s): Aren't you thankful that guys like us when we, when we grew up, 'cause I was born in 72 that they didn't have a d d you know, you couldn't be diag. No one was a d d back then, but I spent half of my youth in the principal's office. I mean, I would, if I was born in the nineties, they would've put me on Zoloft or whatever that stuff is that I just, I'm so thankful they didn't have that back then, you know? 'cause I, I wasn't being fed sugar. It wasn't my diet. My mom was great, you know, she used to, she was a great cook and I had great food, so it wasn't that, but I was just a kid behaving like a kid.
And I think now it's just, oh, that kid's too hyped up. You're gonna have to put 'em on something. I'm glad they didn't have that back then.
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 21s): Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 24m 23s): Least favorite word.
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 28s): Least favorite word at the moment. I, you know, you, I I don't like that that the, the, the very common metaphor journey when someone says you're on a journey. Ah,
Speaker 2 (1h 24m 37s): And I use that already a couple times. Shoot.
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 40s): No, I know you, I, well I would've noticed you said, I don't think you've used it in this interview. You know how, how you know where you've got to in your paragliding journey. I don't know why something on that.
Speaker 2 (1h 24m 51s): Interesting. That's
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 52s): Trivial minor one. But it's kind of a, I
Speaker 2 (1h 24m 54s): Like it.
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 55s): Cliches I don't like,
Speaker 2 (1h 24m 56s): And here's where we'll end. Favorite word.
Speaker 3 (1h 24m 60s): Oh gosh. Favorite word. Wow. Did you really, I, 'cause I thought I listened to the early ones and I,
Speaker 2 (1h 25m 9s): No, these are different. Yeah. Like I said, I, I actually looked up the real pr question and this was part of, at least according to Wikipedia, this was, these are the questions that were on that one. So they're very different than what I used to ask.
Speaker 3 (1h 25m 22s): Oh man, I can't think of anything right now. Favorite word.
Speaker 2 (1h 25m 28s): It could be Hindi.
Speaker 3 (1h 25m 31s): Ah, Hindi. Yeah. There's some good Hindi. Yeah. There would mainly be swear words and Hindi words. That's true actually. There's lots of good Hindi words. Yeah. They'd normally be terms of abuse that my guru used to use that would make me laugh. Hmm. Or what else? Or some place names God.
Speaker 2 (1h 25m 53s): Oh, you said place name. I thought of Denali for some
Speaker 3 (1h 25m 56s): Reason. Yeah, I was thinking place. He know the h which is somewhere I really like. I'd love to fly from a mountain in, in Southwest Gura in, in India.
Speaker 2 (1h 26m 5s): There's some nice place names aren't there? It's beautiful.
Speaker 3 (1h 26m 9s): Yeah. And Heino, that's the place that conjures up lovely images for me. Oh. But I could, that's a whole other podcast. I could talk to you about that. For
Speaker 2 (1h 26m 17s): What, what's it called?
Speaker 3 (1h 26m 19s): Heino. It's a volcan, a volcano in India where Yogi's meant to have stood on his head for 12 years in this really wild place. Really remote in the far, far south. We far west, west of Gura. Cool. Yeah. So is that it? You gonna, don't you normally ask this? Don't you normally ask some question about what's the craziest thing you've seen?
Speaker 2 (1h 26m 42s): Let's do that one. Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 26m 45s): I did have one prepared because this is a story I want to get outta that. Yes. It's a short, anyway, it's not too long, but it's something I remembered the other day, and I think it was actually written up in a cross country years ago. So it would've been about 2005. And this is not an India story. This is uk In fact, we took off just from my house with Hugh Miller and Jerome Moua. Mm. We had this fantastic flight. It was called Harvest. It did this fantastic spread in, in cross country. It was this time of year, but it didn't look like it's, it's the bog out there at the moment.
It was a lovely golden harvest season. And we did a great cross country flight of about 120 K or something, I can't remember. Up to the VINs with Jerome just taking pictures all the way. And there were crop circles. So where I live is like the, the capital of crop circles. There's lots of ancient monuments and the hippies like, oh, my local pub is a sort of where all the very interesting gatherings of people throughout the summer. So he got these wonderful shots. Anyway, we were about a hundred K out and Hugh was in front of me and I think Jerome and I were behind and I was looking at Hugh.
And then suddenly this sail plane comes screaming in from the right goes under Hugh loops him
Speaker 2 (1h 27m 57s): What?
Speaker 3 (1h 27m 58s): And carries on. I said, what,
Speaker 2 (1h 28m 0s): What did I just see? Oh yeah. What?
Speaker 3 (1h 28m 6s): And then, okay, well then, then and then we finished the flight and we, we had, you know, hitch, she whatever retrieve got on a train, on a train back. And this, and a text message comes into Hugh from Richard Westgate, who I mentioned earlier, whose brother guy Westgate was the Pilot, was a, a sail plane. Aerobatics Pilot. And so he te he Richard texted to say three paragliders southeast of more than 3:00 PM My brother says hi.
Speaker 2 (1h 28m 35s): No way. Are you kidding me? So would did he just see you guys and do it or was he tracking you on some kind of flar or something? No,
Speaker 3 (1h 28m 43s): He, he must have just seen us. He must, there was no tracking in those days. 2005.
Speaker 2 (1h 28m 47s): Oh, this is a while ago. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 28m 49s): But he, he would've known that his brother would, you know, his brother Richard was just like the, you know, the guru of cross country paragliding in the UK always wanted to know what people had been doing and stuff. So he knew that his brother would know who it had been. And so he must have already landed
Speaker 2 (1h 29m 5s): Is awesome. What
Speaker 3 (1h 29m 7s): I, I I thought I I I couldn't, I thought I'd imagined it. I just SailPoint
Speaker 2 (1h 29m 14s): And sketchy at all. Or just total. Oh yeah. Clearly he's got a, he's not just, he, there's plenty of distance. He was totally cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (1h 29m 22s): You got enough distance, enough margin. Yeah. People
Speaker 2 (1h 29m 24s): Ask that all the time. How sketchy it is. Flying with sail planes. I just find it. So I've never had a situation ever with a sail plane that was, Cody McCain told a story on the show that was the funniest ever I'd ever heard. They were Flying across, they were trying to make, make it to Moab. So they're out in the middle of the Utah desert and you know, he is up there almost 18,000 feet. It's a big day and he's freezing cold and shaking the hands. And his, you know, his, his visors icing up and it's, you know, he's 18,000 feet.
It's, it's paragliding at 18,000. It's kind of sketchy and wild and cold and turbulent. And the sail plane, you know, just cruises at the Cloudbase just goes by him. And he's thinking, you know, that guy's probably just listening to Bach, just cruising along.
Speaker 3 (1h 30m 10s): Exactly. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 30m 13s): But they seem to be, I don't know, I I, I'm always very encouraged when I see sail planes out there. You see a lot of 'em of course in the Alps. But it's always, I think, I always think of it as a good sign. They're, they're
Speaker 3 (1h 30m 23s): Beautiful. Yeah. But I get a bit nervous at Cloudbase by going
Speaker 2 (1h 30m 26s): Into cloud.
Speaker 3 (1h 30m 26s): Yeah. I've seen a sail in the last half hour. Like kind. 'cause I saw go a little bit into Yeah. 'cause they all radio each other, don't they? In fact, that reminds me of another cra I'm gonna, okay, one last thing. Excellent. This is a stupid thing with Eddie. Crazy Eddie. We were, a few years ago, we were in a thermal going up just off a hill near here. And so it's one of those lovely calls when you're opposite each other and there's the two of you going up like that. And we're getting near Cloudbase and Eddie's chats over. Jim, let's hold this pattern and take it in. I'm like you Luna it no ing way.
I'm outta here dear.
Speaker 2 (1h 31m 2s): We'll just keep it up.
Speaker 3 (1h 31m 4s): Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 31m 6s): Oh, I'm glad you left, Jim. That's good that, that would be terrifying. Can you imagine? Yeah. You just wait a minute. I don't know where I am. I don't know where he is. I dunno. Excellent Jim, what a treat. I really appreciate it. Thanks for your time. Thanks for making the connection come together. We're on different sides of the world right now, but I, I really appreciate that was a blast.
Speaker 3 (1h 31m 29s): No, it an honor. Thanks a lot for asking me on Gavin. I hope you get to see you come and do the north south Cup. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (1h 31m 34s): Yeah, I'd love to. Late August. That might be tricky. I'll still still be down here. Yeah. But I will join you guys one of these years. That'd be, that'd be a hoot.
Speaker 3 (1h 31m 41s): May next year will be.
Speaker 2 (1h 31m 42s): Yeah. Perfect. I'll do that.
Speaker 3 (1h 31m 44s): Alright,
Speaker 2 (1h 31m 45s): Thanks bud. Right.
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