A bird of Passage

It’s true that travel opens you up to new experiences and pushes you out of your comfort zone, but at the same time, be sensible and safe.A huge part of traveling alone is learning to trust your own instincts when you don’t have friends or family there to discuss your options with. Before you can trust those whom you meet on the road, you have to learn to trust yourself. Develop this sense of self-trust before venturing any place alone.

Having set this in mind, I was almost half way through for paragliding from sofia before my tourmates woke up from bed. The moment I reached the bus station of Plovdiv, Atanas Koev was awaiting fo me to pick me to the sopot, markovo, the place where we are going to fly and jump :)

I found this glider online and he graciously offered to host me if I were in his Town. So I was excited to receive his invitation that I took it up right away and headed towards Plovdiv.He picked me up at the central bus station and we started moving towards ghatt roads to reach the summit.I subsequently came to know that Atanas is a licensed paraglider and a retired army pilot for twenty years. He made me to do Pranayama to improve my energy levels before we start trekking.

While trekking, I could see paragliders launching off from the mountain top. That really got me excited, as it hit me that I was going to be flying in a few minutes!!!  :D Just a few steps running down the hill and we were in the air! And so we started flying, driven by the wind, admiring the mountains around us and the villages beneath.Unfortunately wind did not support our fly and then we started to descend, slowly and landed on a lower altitude. More than me, glider was not happy with the quite a short fly.

He packed the entire equipment and informed me that wind is not great and so we need to climb back :O. We flew down from higher altitude to lower altitude around five minutes, just imagine what could be the height to climb back again :O

I had never done any extreme sport before, I immediately said, “YES!!! and we both started climbing up.

People say that if you want something, you need to earn it.

 Well, that’s true in this case — before you can launch from the mountain top, you need to climb up the mountain first and FAST, because you need to catch the wind conditions while it’s favourable for flying! I guess the climb would be around  600meters. Midway of the trek, I was already panting heavily, and I was carrying nothing. I had NO idea how Artanas managed the trek with his some-35-odd-kilo backpack filled with tandem paragliding equipment and he was scaling up the mountain faster than me. He is around 45 years old :) Kudos to the fitness!!!

We flew for quite good amount of time in the second and third attempts.Whenever I feel a breeze, sound of waves, a sea , a dynamic desserts or an altitude, I would be impressed with their eternal forces.When we got close to the landing point we still had to descent quite a bit, so my instructor gave me a choice, he asked if I wanted to descend , being him as forerunner or would i like to try. Asusual to experience some thrill i said i would prefer to land. I could not withhold the sheer force of landing wherein I need to run a bit and I fell down as i was unable to manage the equipment, anyways I knew i'm in safe hands so I just enjoyed the rollercoaster ride. 

All this excitement does make you hungry, so when the parachutes were packed up we climbed cherry and walnut trees on the way and quenched our hunger.I’m not that brave, but i enjoy the fascination and freedom about every detail I encounter.

I’m happy to have tried, but I’m not sure I would be brave enough to fly alone. Maybe a second trial, to see if I would feel more confident. He oferred me a stay at his place that evening and do the rest of the adventorous next day morning. But my schedule to fly bck to dubai did not support to continue the stay there. They dropped me at the same place they picked me, central bus station and I took the next avaialble bus and reached sofia.
By the time I reached my group, they were done with the local sight seeing of Sofia and Vitosha forests by bike , couple of others attended free walking tours around the city organized by no's. 

we all shopped soveneirs and bought some interesting gifts for our loved one's.   We returned to our hotel rooms and all set to go for pubs and casinos. But I had a plan  to meet one couchsurfer , a bulgarian!!!

He is a methodical teacher and a dancer. I always admire teachers and ofcourse music lovers! We got a chance to exchange some interesting conversations over  "Happy" restaurant  and eventually we moved in to the streets of sofia, walking around ,watching the paintings displayed on the roads , got a chance to see local dance and then we reached a local library where we ordered our choice of drink and continued conversating for a quite good amount of time, curious to know about each others life and daily chores. Time is quarter past 4 am in the morning.He then dropped me back at hotel. By then my tour mates were back from casino with winning colours and were looking excited on the same note. We hit our bed as we need to catch the flight at 11 am in the morning.

There I ended my tour and headed back to Dubai.