Having met some people in Bir over the previous few days a plan had formed to head to Bivi at “Golf Course” near Bir in the mountains for Diwali, in order to get away from the noise of the fireworks and firecrackers which go on well into the early hours.
I did not think the conditions were going to be that great on this day, so my aim was to have a nice flight and ensure that I got to the golf course. However as soon as I reached launch it was clear that the day was much better than I had anticipated.
Day 1
After launching I was able to quickly climb up to 3500m with wonderful views into the back, despite being tempted I decided to stick with my plan to stay on the front, and I am really glad I did as I had a wonderful flight.
I really enjoyed myself on this flight, the views were excellent, the flying was great fun and there were loads of birds of prey, the only ones which came out on the camera were the massive Himalayan Griffon vultures.
As I had no real plan to start with I was just flying along the ridge and enjoying the wonderful conditions, it’s great how removing the stress of xc can occasionally increase the enjoyment of flying! Eventually I was making great progress and still climbing high, so I switched into XC mode and made my aim to fly to the Dharamshala turn point. I was elated when I got there, the challenge was just to fly back, however this went relatively smoothly (other than a large wee tube accident…) and I was soon over my destination of Golf Course.
At this point I was in a dilemma, as I knew that I could get the classic 100km triangle if I continued east, but I could not guarantee that I would get back to Golf Course in time. Reluctantly I decided to prioritise the bivi plans and went in for a top landing. Unfortunately I missed my first pass of top landing, mainly due to lack of committing to it, which resulted in a slightly downwind landing lower down on my second pass and my glider ending up in a bush with massive thorns.
After landing more and more people started to turn up and we ended up with a nice group. Very late in the day three Germans turned up, just to bring us beer. It turned out that they had been there earlier and realised people were camping, so flew down to Bir, bought an 8 pack of beer, took a taxi back to launch and then flew back with 7 spare beers (they shared one between them), before flying off into the sunset. It was an amazing and very generous gesture.
The evening was enjoyable with a fire, food and a few drinks, one of the group had even bought a few fireworks! With the dark and cold evening I was tired pretty early and was the first to head off to bed, to enjoy a fairly poor nights sleep.
It was really interesting to see what other food people bought to bivi, a big lesson was that popcorn is a great bivi snack, as it takes up no space in the bag and is a pretty nice treat.
Day 2
The next morning I woke up to the warmth of the sun on my test, which at that point was very appreciated. The morning was very chilled waiting to see if anything was going to happen with the day, but as the morning went on and we still couldn’t see anyone climbing out above launch it seemed like it was just going to be a very stable day.
As I was pretty tired after a poor nights sleep, combined with the forecast not being great and there being no signs that it was better, I decided just to take a glide back down to landing and have a rest day in Bir where I visited the famous Chokling Monastery.
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