Khaabon ke Parinde

Hey guys, now let me tell you about this adventure that I experienced. Recently (Feb) I was in Goa, reining the south coastline.  Initial aim was to go for Scuba diving but as it turned out, it was full moon time and the sea was rough. So the trainers didn’t risk us to invade the great waters of the Arabian sea (lol :P). 

So, what to do next? We went on to hire a bike and travel the whole coastline day by day, halting on every beach we found. Our major targets were –Paloleem, Agonda, and Golgibaga beach, the two later ones being natural turtle habitats. As it was the breeding time (for turtles :P) then, we were hoping to catch some live hatching of the little turtle eggs.

While strolling at Paloleem, we met a brit from Brighton. His weird activities caught my attention and soon we began to converse. From him, we learned the beautiful places that surrounded the beach including Cafe Blue Planet (the best place for complete organic vegan homemade delicacies), Neptune point (wildest party ever) and a perfect natural paradise – Cola Beach. He gave us some handy tips about all of these places and it really helped us make our moves (:P).  In this article I am going to talk about Cola beach experience.

To get down at Cola beach, its one hell of a ride. The road is all very rough and muddy (kacha rasta) and you got to ride on top of mountain and then get down and park your bike at some place from beach. After parking the bike you can climb down and reach the beach. We went by bike but I would suggest hire a bicycle and then ride till this place but only if you have stamina (it is hardly 4 to 5 kms from Paloleem). Mountain forms a steep cliff of about 150-200 feet so it looks really scary when you look down from the mountain top. But the cliff is only at one side and from the other side you can climb up/down the mountain.

To describe the beach, as you walk on sand towards the face of cliff - on the right side you can see the beautiful Arabian sea and sun heading for a perfect sunset, Cliff straight ahead and on the right side – formed by the mountain carvings, a perfect sweet water niche. The sweet water structure is in a form of canal which opens like a pond in front of sea separated by sandy beach. The mountain which is at both sides of this pond hosts a perfect stay relaxing you completely. There are tents and cottages to have a stay starting from 1500 INR per day for a hut/tent/cottage for two people. The most convenient thing is these accommodations can be booked online (Kudos). We did not stay there as we had special plans for the night at Paloleem (Saturday night @ Neptune point! Hell yea!).

Let me talk about the adventure I had there. As we were strolling on the beach before a swim in sweet water pond, we saw a yellow big canopy gliding over us. Coincidently the person who was gliding in it landed just in front of us. It looked really cool and we went and appreciated the whole thing. He acknowledged with all the beautiful scenes that he could see up from there gliding with no strings attached from the ground. We heard in utmost awe. Then he started packing up the canopy to which we helped. Suddenly he had this wild idea to glide with one of us on board with that canopy. This particular idea came in my mind at the first instant when I saw him glide.  Instantly, I agreed to fly with him on that canopy. Hell, this was thrilling!

We (that Russian Guy and me) quickly packed the canopy and trekked to the mountain top for this amazing adventure.  The mountain was steep and it was difficult to climb it at same pace, nevertheless it made my adrenaline level high. Now, we unpacked the canopy and he tied me with all the required equipments to the canopy. Then he got attached with canopy himself, all we were waiting for was – gushing wind!

It was the time for instructions that I should follow while airborne. That was the time when I figured out; there was a small problem- the Russian guy did not know very good english and could not tell me the exact instructions. All I was able to understand was wind, run, jump, up, sit, stop, land, tight and ”is it ok?”. Finally I could manage to understand as he said – Run till the end of the cliff and then you have to jump from it. I said to myself – is this guy out of his mind? Telling me to jump from a cliff straight 150 feet down into deep blue sea? I detached myself from canopy and went at the very end of the cliff to see what was waiting down for me. The scene was very very nausiatic to me. Oh yea, I forgot to mention, I have alto-phobia (fear of heights). I walked back to the spot where we had been waiting for the wind to come and attached myself again to the canopy. So all that we were waiting for now again was the wind.

My muscles tightened, my nerves tensed, determined look towards the cliff and my heart beating thousand drums at the same time as I thought “Lets do this!”  All of a sudden there was a strong rush of wind blowing my hairs and somewhere back in my head I heard a voice subconsciously telling me to run. I started to run towards the cliff end, seemed like all is happening in a very slow-motion, I felt so aware of the environment. The cliff end neared, heart beats escalated to what must be a million in a sec, legs almost trembling with ‘what will happen next’ thought. Again I heard a voice, JUMP and I pushed my last footing on the cliff edge hard to be airborne.

Suddenly, everything went silent, I realized I was not falling and instead had this amazing feeling of being in the air without any support. I started rising upwards due to wind pressure and I began to come at normality, heart rate returning to normal, adrenaline at the highest peak and a scene I will not forget in eternity of my life. Gliding in the air, I could see the never-ending sea, the horizon, the sun going down it -glittering every drop of water I can see ahead. Towards my left lush green mountains, towards my right, the sweet water niche adding every possible colour nature can portray and in front glittering silver sheets of sea.  Now that was the perfect time to say I was drooling in awe of it! Totally graceful.

Amidst that, I heard that voice again “ is it good”? I yelled with all my strength ‘It is F***ing awesome man, I was feeling like an eagle hovering above, everything at my will (actually his will as he was steering the canopy). We lingered about 20-25 minutes in the air and headed back towards the cliff. Air was pretty rough so we have to land on the cliff otherwise we could have landed on the beach. Anyways, I did not want to come downwards, it was bliss all around me.

Now, this landing was one hell of a scary thing. We were supposed to land some 100 meters away from cliff edge but at that moment due to sudden wind rush, we were about to land on the cliff edge and easily fall down. But luckily we got a small area to step and push upwards again which was what we did. Again we got airborne and headed to land in quite centre of the cliff. This time we landed inch perfect.

“Hum ho gaye jaise naye, wo pal jaane kaisa tha!” (Lines from Khaabon ke Parindey, ZNMD)

Crazy crazy adventure!

For the conclusion part – “You have to be extremely crazy to do something very crazy”.  Thanks for reading Folks!