202. “The Flying Yogi” Jim Mallinson - Jim Mallinson

Hi there, everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Cloudbase 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 Safari's legends, Eddie Colfax and Antoine Laurence and John Sylvester. I did my first tour with these guys back in 2009 when I was just a pup in beer. I came back in 2011 when I was still just a pup and did my first big bivvy, which set off all the bivvies to come with John Sylvester. An amazing flight we did over the back and landed in Manali 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 that. He had dreads for most of his life because of living as a sadu.

A sadu 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 hold of him with India 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 sadu, which is basically just wandering around, not doing a whole lot, and then would come back to Oxford in the UK and pursue

his career.

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, he'll be a professor of Sanskrit at Oxford. He is a sir, a doctor, a professor, a mahant, a bayonet. 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 talked to him about it. We talk 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, what it has maybe wrong, mental health, and just his incredible, I'm going to say it, although he doesn't like this word, you'll learn about that at the end, his incredible journey through academics and also flying, of course.

He's done some pretty amazing things. He's done some pretty amazing things in the Himalayas, and we talked about some of his more recent exploits because of COVID in the UK, and just a blast. This was a little intimidating 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 Mallinson.

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, though, 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 them for over 30 years. Is that right?

Yeah, that was 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 take off, 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 into people regularly going, hey, what the hell happened? Have

you been able to keep up your going to India every year through the pandemic, or did that get shut down? Have you broken your record?

That got shut down, and then I got really jinxed. I was hoping to get back to beard in October last year, and then there was some fight between the UK and India over visas, so 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. Anyway, so it feels like I've been slightly jinxed on going to beard. 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 time lucky, third attempt lucky in a year or two, yeah.

Well, take us back to 88. I've had a fascinating and very interesting and fun morning reading all about you on Wikipedia and everywhere else, and I knew a fragment of this stuff, of course, when we spent our time together in 2009 and 2011 in beer. And 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 Antoine and Debu and everybody. But those of you listening, those are all names I would imagine you've heard of, at least in passing. But I'd love for us to go back to, I don't know if it was before 88. I think you would have been 18, so around there. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's kind of with hindsight, the Rudyard Kipling thing. I don't know if that was really in my mind at the time, but I did have to read it at school. But then in England, or in the UK, what we often have, people will sometimes take what they call a gap year between school and India. Which I always get confused. I think you call that high school in the States. And then we call it school and university. So at age seven, I was young. I left school at 17. And I was like, you know, what am I going to do in my gap year? And through a weird succession of coincidences, whatever you call it, I decided I was going to 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 two and two together.

And I thought, right, this is it. And I went off with a good friend from school. And he's now a professor of Indian philosophy in 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. That one trip to India, like completely set the tone for the rest of our lives.

And can you put a finger on that? What was it? Was it the language? Was it the people? Was it the religion? Was it Hindi? Yeah,

it was a mixture of everything, you know, wandering around. You've been there. It's so great. I think it was, I think, you know, 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 going on, still manifest. So you can, you know, read all these old texts and so forth. And it's, you can see a continuity today. And then in particular, I got into also hanging out with all these crazy 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 stalagmite in a cave called Amarnath up in Kashmir. And I couldn't actually do that because my visa was running out. But I spent a few days hanging out with all these wild chill and smoking bubbles who 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'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53. I'm 53.

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53. Okay.

I'm quite a fan of Wade Davis. I imagine you're familiar with him. He talks about the extinction of language. And I read today that in the early 2000s, 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 Sanskrit, and I read in your bio, Old Iranian, are these languages that are part of that potentially leaving? Or are they pretty safe?

Well, they're very different. Those two, they're like the opposite extremes of the historical record. Because 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. But Sanskrit is definitely not going to die out, even though it's very old. It's the classical language of India. And of course, you know, particularly at 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 don't know what the latest is. They used to say there were 1200 languages in India, something like that. 1200 in India? Dave's a huge fan.

And I got lucky to meet him a couple of times in India. He's

amazing. Yeah, fantastic. The navigator stuff. Yeah, he's really amazing. Malinson is best described as perhaps the only baronet to wear dreadlocks. Back to your dreadlocks. What is a baronet?

A baronet is an inherited English title. So I get to call myself sir if I want to. I have a lot of titles. Gavin, it's crazy. I'm also Mahant. I'm professor. I don't know what order they should go in. Doctor. Yeah, crazy. But that one is achieved by doing nothing at all, which actually these days, nowadays, the politicians here just give titles to their mates and their cronies and the people who give them money. So I think it's actually nowadays the most honourable way to get one. I used to think it was a bit ridiculous. I mean, the whole thing's pretty ridiculous. But yeah, so I get to call myself Sir James Malinson if I want to. It doesn't happen very often. And in fact, all that seems to result from it is a lot of chaos when I try and check in at the airport because my passport's a mess.

So something I found quite interesting as 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 living with the holy men. And you're kind of a vagabond. I guess, I don't know if that's the right term. Fair enough. On the other side, you've authored nine books. You're the world-renowned expert on hatha yoga and its origins, which was also fascinating. You're reading texts that are still around from, I think one of them was 1100 or earlier, maybe.

How do you mesh these two? 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 almost living in two completely different worlds, at least from my perspective.

No, you're right. It's absolutely right. It's two completely different worlds. But I think I need the two to, I couldn't do one on its own. You see what I mean? The sadhu life, A, it was never feasible for me to completely commit to being a Hindu yogi. Not least because I've been lucky enough to have the love of a good woman for more than 30 years. And part of that, well, renouncing 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's going on, what are they doing? And then vice versa, the academic stuff would be too dry. I mean, there are famous scholars in my field who never even went to India. You know, they're just reading the texts. And that could never be me. You know, I had to have the living.

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.

Is the transition for you quite simple? You know, for me, 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 was kind of lived as if, you know, your life. 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 and working like a dog for quite a long time. And I 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're home in the UK, you're with your kids, you're with your wife, you're wrapped up in the things you do at home, writing books and being an academic and getting fun.

I would imagine, you know, if you're home in the UK, you're with your friends and being an academic and getting fun. And I just thought, you know, if you're home in the UK, you're with your friends and being an academic and getting fun. 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 tough.

No, I agree. The transition, I mean, it got got easier over the years, but it's pretty difficult. I will normally find it more difficult coming back from India. year and then going back to normal life in the uk but it got easier over the years and i i'm the same with flying as well i don't know about you but like if i've you know if i've had a layoff for a few months i feel like a beginner but i can't quite even believe i'm doing it i'm like what i fly that crazy thing

it's very uncomfortable which yeah 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 uh alpine triangle guy who goes out six alex

roby alex

roby and then there are others what's his name uh danini didn't he you know when he was the dad uh yeah he's luca is he luca is the dad yeah yeah and he would just you know just come out of his hot his hotel job and then go and win world cup 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 the 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

yeah but like i said it's it's it's it's not easy for me i i'm one of these people i like to get things done i like to you know i like to accomplish things and i feel like and i keep telling i'm accomplishing a lot spending time with my family that's all i came down here to do to do i should just do that but it's oh it's

tricky did you got a wing with you or a kite kite board 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 because i'm not a tandem pilot you know we were way way way underweight i wouldn't say it was very natural because i was trying to act very natural with my daughters but you know you've got when you're flying your family i found it very uncomfortable for me just just being overly cautious i guess

she's fine right she's just turning those little

small harnesses you strap on the solo that makes it a bit easier that's why i used to i'm

gonna do that now i i shouldn't have a tandem 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 wind we'd be in trouble

how much of your own uh you know your your studies of of hatha yoga and history and meditation and transcendental meditation how much of these i i've also read that you don't go you don't go to a studio and practice yoga you never have uh 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

i probably shouldn't make this too public cabin but here i am on your mind maybe maybe there's not so much crossover like you say compartmentalized lives i don't know 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 Denali mean for me it was more always the lifestyle i mean i've done a lot of yoga over the years and i've mastered most of the weird techniques that i've read about and published about in these old manuscripts and so forth but nowadays you know i do maybe 20 minutes a day i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know if that at the moment i've been a bit slack recently actually i put my arm out and they got tennis elbows i'm not doing the postures so much and i just uh sit sit for a bit but i'm not super dedicated for me it's always been more about the whole sort of lifestyle uh about 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've been living in in india that was well represented in sanskrit texts because you were asking like you know do the sadhus and the yogis do they are they also scholars i think i'm going to have to ask that question because i think it was the implication of your question absolutely 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 got to do is live your live your life and do your yoga and and so forth um so i guess i subscribe more to that but to be honest gavin i've i'm kind of it's it 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 covered i haven't really lived in that well i mean i'm in touch with people but i haven't lived in that world now for nearly five years i guess what is

kiwi used to wear a shirt that said i i am not your guru uh what what what does that mean having a guru what what did that relationship look look like what was it

yeah i guess it sounds sounds weird to some people there they think it means you know just completely giving yourself over and uh like being brainwashed 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

being you're being sort of brought into a a tradition a lineage of yogis or whatever so by being initiated and i was initially i didn't even realize i was being initiated with my wife and well she wasn't my wife at the time it was 1992 at one of these big kumba mela festivals which kiwi used to come to actually kiwi came to two or three he was uh yeah i 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 camp some people that couldn't find us and so 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 he

was just led to you yeah

yeah one of those festivals when we first hang out with our guru he's very charismatic i don't know if you've seen the movie i made with them uh dominic west called west meets no i just i just

i'll need a link to that because i read about it today and i wanted to ask you about dominique with the yeah yeah

it was they it was because it was broadcast on various channels but i think and they said they were quite careful i think you can now watch it on youtube anyway so i can give you a cool thing um but so he you'll you'll meet my guru if you watch that he's 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 um and a part of this this huge lineage of hundreds of thousands of yogis and stuff all over india so it's great music you know i think

it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's 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 then in fact that's one of the you know that 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 this is 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 but that's what i particularly like in flying as well as doing new things that i haven't done before and same in india so that facilitates being part of that network facilitates being able you know just to turn up at any kind of temple town or pilgrimage place or something and you're part of the gang and you can be looked after yeah we

mentioned kiwi how much of your journey or being with sadhus or this living as a vagabond exploring this lifestyle does that involve do the sadhus or does it involve a lot of drug use involve a lot of hallucinogenics or is it mostly just weed i mean i know they smoke a lot of weed but there is that has that been a critical part of your critical thinking

maybe it's damaged by critical things like plenty of weed with them yeah no they yes it's a good point because people think of india as like the um 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 uh one river isn't it where he he falls in the footsteps of what's his name evans schultz and they're 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 so people might argue slightly against it and there's this notion of soma which is three or four thousand 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 sadhus are just sitting around smoking dope and the interesting thing about that is that the smoking dope part of it is a new arrival in india as well it came 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 scientists are quite keen to be honest they're interested they're interested you know they'll take it they'll take it but it's not kind of a part of the of the culture

interesting yeah tell me about dissolving your mind i have that in quotes i read it read an article that

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 the term samadhi and that's a liar the sanskrit word for dissolving the mind is liar and so you find that in text quite a lot and normally it just seems to be the idea of a state of kind of no fluctuations of the mind so you kind of achieve a state of no thought really but it's said to be blissful at the same time 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 that's you know you're not trying to have nothing you're just okay fine let it go okay fine yeah that would be a

sort of buddhist mindfulness approach where you know buddhism understands there not to be any self any permanent uh 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 um you know 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 identity then that's you know that's enlightenment or smart people however it's termed there are various different terms for it yeah

mental health this seems to be a growing topic these days and it's also a big one in flying there seems to be quite a bit of mental health there's certainly anxiousness depression is prevalent in our in our community is this headlines or is this something you feel like mental health is declining around the world? for various reasons... reasoned

well i don't know 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 going to 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 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 a few i'm not going to name any names a few pilots that come to mind who are also quite sort of dour and uh you know not particularly sparky there's plenty of others of all sorts but yeah um i imagine there's quite a lot of uk pilots at the moment with pretty poor men i understand you're

having some some pretty rotten weather

it's appalling as i said right now we've got the first named storm of the of the year outside storm anthony about 50 mile an hour winds 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 out and had some good ones but it's i think i still haven't looked at the numbers but it must be the worst year for many many years yeah

that's i've been hearing that i'm on some groups

i'm on on some groups with the keen you know we got one called size matters uh for about a dozen of us who are keen cross country pilots around here and everyone's very glum it's like we've basically written off the season already this

is the problem with putting too much weight into flying isn't it we've got to have an escape you

live another thing going on if you live here that's a sure

yeah no it can't be it can't be tough but i've i've gone down that path quite a lot uh i it can't remember if we opened up with this but you're an indologist 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've 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 how we're, how most of us live in Western society.

Without having to have spent the kind of time you have in academics and studying it and living with the sadhus 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 are you teaching your kids? Where, where do you want your kids, your kids to go with your. What you've learned.

You're putting me on the spot. I feel like, I feel like I've got, I should get Kiwi's t-shirt. I tell you, my, my, my friends and my wife, well, not my wife, not so much, but my friends for years have been saying, Jim, you've got to set yourself up as a guru. I'm in the perfect position. I really could, as you know, you've read my bio, 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, what reality throws at us.

So I don't know. What have I learned? What I have learned is if you stick at anything for long enough, you get good at it. Don't 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 them to do stuff that they're interested in and stick at it. And just, just keep going with it. Other life lessons. I know it's terrible. You've, I've, by accident, I've 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 puzzle most of the time. I'm still like, what the hell's going on? I think that's actually great to hear once you've got the answer, you know, you're enlightened on you. That's right. And then you, then I'll get myself up as a guru, you know, but,

uh, yeah, I, I, yeah, I mean, you, you could probably, you could tell me, I'm sure, better life lessons than I can

tell you.

No, I don't.

I mean, it's, it's interesting at your time with the sadhus. Do they have something? Do they have something figured out that we don't?

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. Um, even though the example is not something you can follow unless you're fully committed. So they occupy this position in Indian society, you know, where they've renounced everything. They don't have a job. They don't have. 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 that the, the, 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.

Um, 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, 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 brothers would set themselves up at convales, sitting on a bed and preaching, and then the others would come along and throw them off the bed, beat them up and say, you shouldn't, you mustn't do that. You know, you're not allowed to, they couldn't have a phrase for it in, in, in the yarn dinner, you know, basically telling everyone how it is, and they don't like you to do that, you know, you should just get up, get on with your thing and, and impress people like that, rather than telling them what to do. Well,

is this what drove your interest initially in learning Hindi is just so you could communicate better? Yeah,

absolutely. Yeah, yeah. I was obsessed early on. I kind of just, yeah, I taught myself. I mean, I was learning Sanskrit 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 like, I've been with Eddie last week. He's been doing Hindi Duolingo. Really? Finally, I'll be catching up. Yeah. Ah,

nice. That's fantastic. Yeah. I did. Yeah. Got to get him on the show as well.

Um, okay. One more on the spot kind of question. And Western, we've 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, uh, again, thinking about your kids, obviously the phone is, is a tough one, uh, 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?

Gosh, I wouldn't make that dichotomy, you know, that distinction between Western and Eastern culture. So, so 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 go. I think half and half. The CEOs of the tech companies in the States are all Indian, aren't they? It's not like, I wouldn't make, yeah, I wouldn't make that distinction. In fact, that's so that 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, so it's called West meets East. All right. Is the, is the title, but that's a, that's a play on a line from a Kipling poem, a poem by Rudyard Kipling, which is like East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet. Are you saying there is this kind of. You know, there's two totally different cultures, but I wouldn't draw such 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 why I've said my elder daughter's 18, you know, and at this age, I mean, she's going to 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 oppressed. They're 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 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 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 in some ways that's encouraging. 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. Mad. Maddening to you.

Well, I think there's a, there's a, you know, richness of, of, of life that people in India see, I think, but particularly in 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 personal, you know, just going down to 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, there's sort of personal interactions. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We 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.

The, the, the journeys you've done to India over all these years, are you always with your wife? Are you alone or how, how, how has that worked? And how did that work with the kids?

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 uh it was a farm rented farmhouse with a bunch of friends and then in october we would say see ya 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 when we had to make a decision what we're going to send them to we're going to live in india send them 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 certainly like sitting through the mud and the rain um but uh 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 like that that point but um you know i think you know how it is now with you now you've got kids they 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 got to go i've got to go you know i didn't have a formal academic job it was

a reason more than just fun yeah

yeah i mean it was i mean i love the idea it was brilliant and when you know when john agreed so eddie and i kind of thought it'd be cool and we thought let's ask john how amazing it'd be to get and when he said yes it was like dream come true and off we went um so that was fantastic but that part of the motivation was to do something more you know justifiable you know that you can explain it's all right don i'm not just going off having fun i'm actually going to come back with a few couple of thousand quid or something were

you part of the initial forays into pakistan as well no

i've never well i've been to pakistan i've never been flying in pakistan okay i

i that came up this morning and when i was when i was looking into you i didn't know that eddie was a part of

it i didn't know that eddie was a part of it

that i knew john was of course with his films and everything but i didn't know eddie was was

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 i mean typical i think he had he had the world altitude record at the time he went up to about 7 700 meters or something but uh typical eddie didn't have the right instruments i think he had something that told him he but there was no he probably probably couldn't get a track off it or something like that 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 him and then sky

so and when did that start i

think that must have been i think it was i was looking into it the other day i think it's 2007 yeah because 2006 i made a film with kiko then if you saw that temples in the clouds flying around yeah um yeah which has a bit of the sadhu world in it and that then the following season i think was the first time i learned sky so far

so we were relatively 2009 and then again and yeah i remember i think in 2011 that's when we did the thing you guys were we're starting the the tandem volpev idea and we which i don't know if that got off the ground but i don't know how far that went but the remember we brought fair walker the writer from outside and he was the passenger and jody was the photographer and we did that article and i had my first kind of real incident there i don't i think you were right there with me but you're right you lost my wing at three and terrifying terrifying and i just walked away it was crazy but that was weird we were

breaking it we couldn't believe it when you reappeared oh my god that was that

was pretty spooky but i still talk about that one but yeah that i well anyway so the the 95 was the what was the catalyst what how'd you get into flying what that'll get

a friend of mine a good friend really good old friend from school rang up said hey let's you know let's learn to paraglide 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 because i'm not like an adventure sports guy at all not like you who's done every all this all this kind of stuff definitely not an adrenaline junkie you know for me if i'm flying if my heart rate goes up it means something's gone wrong and i'm not not enjoying it i'm like we've got to keep keep this relaxed anyway he and i was thinking about it actually the last couple of days because i was in the isle of wight and uh if had i realized at

the 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 i probably would have said oh no hang on that's not going to work out but no i kind of said yeah great sign me up and off we went and i got totally hooked straight away um claudia my wife and rupert the other guy you know they got into it but they kind of didn't didn't run with it at all whereas i was soon as i think it was as soon as i realized you could stay up i mean the first time my feet left the ground i was like wow this is amazing and then as soon as i realized you could stay up and ridge soar and i was like wow this really is and then when i found out you could go cross country um and i think it's that you know you were asking earlier if i've got a mathematical brain i have to some extent i think it's that the combination of sort of theory and then the you know being able the kind of flow movement of flying the two things together just worked perfectly for me and i didn't look back i got totally hooked straight away

and the back to 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 i i get i get quite stressed on takeoff i mean it's simple once you're in the air isn't it there's a lot of bloody preparation a lot of fapping about getting stuff ready i'm not very good at that i mean i like paragliding in that i'm not a mechanical person at all and the 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 i had a quartel uh cannibal two for a year but there's so many different things to click up and it's so big 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 don't like being rushed but yeah once you're in the air and it's all then it's then it's simple it's just you haven't got much to do you

won the british 2006 you were you were aggro about this for a while you were you were competing you were going for it

yeah yeah no i got i got i was so what happened yeah 2000 i did my first british nationals i learned in 95 and those that was a quite quick progression these days people get good in a year or two yeah more info out there but i then went we had a british nationals in wales and my first task they said like a 50k down winder it was pretty strong wind and i got quite near goal and then i realized i wasn't going to get there because it was too cross wind to make it and i thought well it's a great day i've only been flying an hour or two i'm going to keep going and i flew 135k 132k which at that point this is 2000 was a big flight i mean the british it wasn't the record the british record i think was 170k 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 just like yeah just by staying in the air for five and a half hours and uh you know made my name like that so that then got me into doing some other comps i did a lot of things i did a lot of things i did uh and then in beard in 2003 there was a pre PWC and i won the yeah

i must have done that on a comp wing mustn't i yeah i think i did it on a on a avax rsc and then so that qualified me for the PWC so i thought i'd do a season of PWC with um and i was going around nit grease funny enough hanging out with nit grease and jamie messenger i mean it's classic it was such classic

oh man yeah

hysterical as you can imagine but we the first the first leg was in basano or what's the place behind it felt felt true felt true and was

that where bill belcourt threw his reserve and ended up in the fence i

don't remember that did you 2004 i don't recall okay

all right was there a big big gust front one day it got canceled everybody was in the air was that that year okay different okay

no that rings a bell but no it wasn't because we didn't fly until we had six it was week-long comp PWC six days no you know terrible but i didn't know

what to do last

day okay and they said a regular task i think it was basano it was kind of out in return and so this is my first PWC task i'm stoked and i've got the i think i just got the avex rsc which is a proper comp wing you know in those days uncertified all that and i got low quite early on with a group of pilots and then i got out of this hole and a few like quite a few people landed and there was just a league gaggle in front of me and i thought right i'm i'm a nuts

and i this this glider had trim tabs and speed bar and so i let the trimmers 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 virtually looping it and then i looked down i'm not sorting this out didn't have much room through the reserve and then started thinking about trying to pull in the main look down again oh no i haven't got much time and and hit the deck maybe and i was incredibly lucky because it was a steep steep mountainside with trees and rocks and then just a small patch of grass and i hit this patch of grass and i was winded and i was like i'm all right

and i then i kind of packed i just got a mobile phone and i rang claudia claudia was out there and i told her what happened she came to get me and i i did manage to injure myself walking down 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 think i think it was akim juice was the i don't know 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 uh you know so what happened and i when i told him i'd let off the trim tabs and gone full speed by he just looked at me like i was a complete moron i thought 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 at

your own risk yeah but

i then realized 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 uh but i kind of realized then that for me if i was going to do compete really seriously it was all or nothing as i was saying before you know these guys who just fly a few days a year and do brilliantly in comps all these big i find that very impressive to be able to switch it 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 i'm not going to be doing these um 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 it was a lot of fun hanging out with nick and jamie and the rest of them i think krieg i think Chrigel was just starting out so i can say i did pwcs with Chrigel but then i yeah he got a little bit better than i was getting a little bit better

then i said then i but i kept doing the british the only comps i 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 uh where you have four amazing days like 100k tasks every day and some of them landing back at the count 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 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 go to the northern alps and sit in the rain for a week and that would just do my head all the waste of time um 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 we got together and we we devised the north south cup we thought look there's got to be a way to have a decent competition in the uk uh 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 literally so everyone has to be prepared one day is 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 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 first or second year we had it right here because i live at the foot of some pretty good small hills but you can go a long way when when the conditions are right and so that's yeah that's kind of my competing these days um that just sounds very 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's like i'm not sure he's the best south cup he just he really lights up and and russ and everybody i mean they just it just sounds fantastic and i i'd love to come out and join it and join you guys yeah well

you're open invitation bevin for sure and

that's always in may right well

yeah well no this year funnily enough we wasn't in may because jockey was too busy with various stuff so we said it for july but unusually we've done it once or twice before we had to postpone the forecast that was really bad yeah so we've now got it the last weekend in august so fingers crossed it'll be all right and we'll get something so i haven't done it this year

okay okay so it's totally flexible you just pick a weekend yeah

totally flexible oh 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 yeah there's no gps scoring uh 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 you guys taking pictures of the turnpoints yeah

no we don't 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 south everyone has to put their pin in the board and then you know jockey and i stand back and look at it and go 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 working out whose line was strongest and uh

screw x contest now you're doing it with yarn

it's kind of yeah we're trying to trying to take the tech out of it 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 you get enough you know because all the all the best pilots like to take part um you know it's quite competitive to get a place although i often get accused of you know bribery and corruption and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so on and so forth but who gets chosen in the sound the 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 then yeah magic

happens yeah

and then the real crazy magic happens in the evening when you know jockey's doing because we was we as it's also now become the prize giving prize giving for the previous year's um 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 partners get together

yeah it's brilliant that's great well we're gonna go we're gonna go back to beer but talking about magic uh i had to look this up embarrassingly considering all the sailing i've done but tell me about this solent flight you flew some enormous distance over the ocean right i have that right

yeah yeah i wonder actually i've put put this out sometimes wonder if it's the longest ever i'm sure 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 would it is 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 is a pretty interesting you know you know flying between the hawaiian islands for example you know you see clouds yeah there are you're exactly you're right there it's just but it's just i can't imagine pretty committing i

don't know i don't know if you ever you were probably again before your time but richard westgate did he ever cross your radar

yeah the

brilliant brilliant uk pilot very sadly sadly died maybe because he was an airline pilot and i think it was through poisoning from the the air systems in the in the in the cockpit but he had he had he was one of these real dreamers as well of kind of crazy flight and he in his not long before he died he was seriously talking about trying to fly across the channel not the solent so it's 20 miles or something using sea thermal cloud streets i don't know i mean he was he was he was if anyone was going to do it and if he thought it was feasible there must have 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 yeah yeah really

unstable very good labs yeah something

like that

i've never been able to fly on the isle of wight and i grew up on the isle of wight and we still got a family place down there so it always been my dream to fly down there and he 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 solent you know where you've got southampton important 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 on hang gliders and then early paragliders but then they there's a new airport bournemouth uh and they closed down the airspace it's impossible to do that now so the only way to do it is to the east um 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 um i could put i could put the link to the flight in the in the notes you have to loop around southampton airspace and then come back into portsmouth

which is where you then decide right am i going to go for this or not and i think i've done it two or three times got there and thought no i didn't have the bottle it didn't look right uh and i so this time it was a couple of years ago i guess maybe three years ago maybe more time has gone weird hasn't it maybe four years ago anyway and i've done it once again since but yeah so 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 worry is the sea breeze and this the time that i did it first i got to portsmouth and 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 got to go for it i'll go for it but having said that i wasn't very well prepared in the radio didn't have a life jacket there but it's all a bit bit crazy um but i thought this is this is looking good and for about half of the half of the crossing i was just like no brown right 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 oh god

it's putting up in my harness you know that is when you the thing you don't want you don't want

the thing you shouldn't do is what you're now doing and you can't help but not do it yes

and that that that that period was only a couple of minutes where i wasn't but i was looking down looking at boats i might be able to land on that kind of thing as i said it's a big shipping lane um but then and then i realized i was going to make it but i only got i only had 500 feet when i got to oh that's

got it pretty tight yeah

so and yeah 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 i've

never heard of one you know that's it

would be possible it would be possible but yeah yeah that's

pretty exciting the

second time i did it i mean i was a bit more sensible i managed to well i don't know if i was more sensible luckier but i connected the other side as well and was able to carry on thermally yeah

would you if you had everything perfectly planned would you have a cutaway would you have a chase boat i mean what we don't want to do is have people listen to this start flying across the ocean uh you know water tends to be a little dangerous um but i would there be ways to mitigate some of the risk you know the the i've thought about this a little bit because the worst thing is just if there's any waves at all whatsoever you're in deep if you're in your gear but

i guess you're i mean it's chase chase boat with the radio yeah and it'd be like iv over a lake or something yeah yeah uh

it must have been beautiful it

was i was definitely screaming with joy when i realized i was going to make it that was amazing yeah funny enough i wrote it up for cross country and it's going in this new book they've got coming out oh

cool i just saw i just saw hugh's newsletter yesterday about that that looks that looks really neat does

that mean you've got a story in there no no

no no don't no because

he said i got center thing the authors i've got two stories in there i'm being 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 yeah it

should be good good win to read

speaking of just really memorable flights i asked debu 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 i'd 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 yeah

well i mean these as i haven't been there for a few years and you know things have progressed so much they said the really memorable flights that i've got people are now doing you know doing the same thing like flying to monali you did it with john yeah i

did i

mean that's an amazing flight yeah i mean but people back regularly yeah yeah first time i did that that was just that was incredible i mean and often it's not the the biggest or the longest flights that are the most memorable is i mean one of my first flights there was with them with bob drury and rob whittle and just flying into the back with them and i was really green and i'd only been flying two or three years at that point and they kind of convinced me to follow them over the back into the map and they were all prepared for camping out and i and i bottled it i said i didn't have any kit running so i flew back flew back to beer but i'll never forget that i

didn't realize beer had so much history i was a stupid question you know 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 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 driver had some he had a little guy next to him who because the brakes didn't work and a little guy would have to crawl down in a hole to activate the brakes and the brakes went out or something they're going down 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 don't have any brakes in this freaking 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 that was the 80s i think yeah i think that was in the 80s yeah um and then the first paragliders i mean i i because i started flying 95 but that was when i

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 everyone knew it was a tiny little tiny little gang you know nowadays i think last october eddie's saying probably four or five hundred over the course of the season yeah boy that'd be a chaotic launch

i mean it was it was a chaotic launch when i was there in 2009 and just that i that's one of the

yeah just because there's no wind there's a lot of people and there's a lot of screwing up it's just i don't want to watch this i don't want to watch this i just want to get off the hill

yeah i think they've they've massively landscaped it oh okay since they last time i was there already done a bit 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 don't know 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 money mahesh kailash and it's so kailash you know you would have probably heard of mount kailash in tibet but actually there are a few indian mountains that have a good claim to be the original mount kailash and this other one might be it as well um that's a whole other long story anyway i'm determined to get there and or to get close up to it and so it was with um 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 daladar you know we'd flown out and bivvied and then the plan was the next day to take to take off early because 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 know and so the plan was to take off early uh and then go over the back to uh money mahesh to this this holy mountain and you know 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 white flight it's now or never i'm never going to be in such a good position so i just logged over and only john followed me eddie and dean like those guys are crazy and we did get a bit flushed and anyway then had 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 four thousand meters which is a big pilgrimage place in fact john john said he'd

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 sketchiest landing of my whole life i think it's kiss the ground and this tiny little gorge above the town of brunt moore which is in a gorge itself and the wind was just switching everywhere but that was then it was somewhere i did with this town of brunt moore which is a long you know by road from beer it's about 10 or 12 hours or something like that we got there 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 because 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 cab back which i was able to charge to my university research account 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 but had been a taxi

driver and he was driving so fast and i kept saying i kept losing it with him in hindi and would give him a load of grief and say that this is just ridiculous stop it you keep this up i'm gonna have to take over but you're gonna kill us and uh 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'm doing that and he said he said i thought well i thought if i drove with only one hand i might drive a bit more slowly

some of them that 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 uh in lima peru as i say 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 they're so close to one another and so much so

much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much so much

speed it's very impressive

yeah well people's yeah because i've i actually found the end of my last trip in 2019 was not my life but that trip when i cut my hair i had to give back my jeep i don't know if you remember my jeep i had that black yeah black car i've been over a hundred thousand kilometers on that but people used to i don't for 20 years it's very sad to give it back but people would always say you know god you scared driving yourself and i said well it's safer than letting someone else yeah yeah yeah for sure do

you guys still have the house

no i had to give that back as well in 2015 or 2016 the guy who owned it the landlord he retired and said he took it on that was that was precious yeah that was fantastic that was amazing the best night of my life but

the colonel's still there

colonel's still there yeah and his son bickram taking over yeah i'm hoping as i say get out there next spring i think

yeah do you typically fly do you well you're out there for typically six months but the do you mostly chase the spring now or the fall yeah i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know and i mean i know for the guiding you always did the fall but the you know for you personally

well i think i'm going to go back in spring i mean i think and i maybe i'm more as i as i say gammon it's kind of you know it's been three or four years since i was there so it's a very weird time for me um but i 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 you think as you go and you go in the very short window of a month whatever it is but you can pretty guarantee that

you're going to

that out of 30 days you'll get 28 days fine or something like that or it's spring you'll there's a good chance you'll sit around for a week at some point with a decent flight and a good day i'll come home but yeah i'm hoping to get back there hopefully with eddie actually next next spring are

you guys going to keep guiding when that when it opens back up

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 don't know if he's still going to be doing sky safaris but he's now working with um 4am i can't remember what her company's called i don't know if he's still going to be doing sky safaris but he's now working with he worked with jockey yeah yeah so he's still doing a bit in deb debu and antoine they're all doing that stuff yeah you know all those

years of guiding uh i i've never guided i've always been nervous about that just 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 are the what

one thing from guiding has been most important in your own flight your own survival your own risk management um

so it's a very good question wait what did i learn from guiding um 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 well i got bored of it after a while to be honest it became setting it setting i love i don't know 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 especially with john and eddie you know we're pretty excited about it and i think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's a pretty good trio we all had very complementary different skills i think and uh you know amazing to fly with john i learned a lot from flying with john actually yeah i wouldn't and i don't know if that wasn't necessarily because of the guiding but the way you must have experienced this the way he could what do you call it milking it you know fly super close to the trees just soaring along ridges without turning yeah 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 would play play around actually being quite competitive with each other sometimes and i think it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's a great way of engaging people who are about you know in book terms and who could you know who could who could do the least terms and 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 cam you know that was the sort of thing i don't know 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 colonel's guy so people listening just to explain what that was was there was a a

place very easy to top land about 50 it's only about 15k east of the billing takeoff yeah that's a pretty good point. 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 like we gave it the name 360. um but what we could what we would do with our clients when we're 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 there we would 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 you know a bit of a party big bonfire and then the next morning you take off and fly off and sometimes we go off in a different direction often everyone you know we but the amazing thing about beard is people who are pretty inexperienced hadn't done much flying they'd still be you'd still be able to uh especially if you're doing one-on-one it's amazing what you can do one-on-one with them with people who have not got much experience and so often people would be quite that they would be stoked enough just from that that they'd want to fly back to beard but other times we would then you know lob over the back and maybe try to fly to manali 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 being is the weather's so reliable

yeah yeah that's the thing about the alps is it's it's not reliable like this 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 bivvy experience having that experience not have done any bivvying you know or toppling a lot of people i think you know luxury bivvy luxury bivvy yeah but

you that was where you fell out of the sky yeah that wasn't even tough

no it was uh you know we had all top landed there and then it was you know relatively strongish i don't know if i would think that these days but it was to me back then and and john and i took off again and i was basically just 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 pup 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 manali in the back and that was just mind-blowing and but that day yeah 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 have no idea if this is the case but we later learned that that wing you know that wing had been in the ocean a lot uh i had done a lot of towing with that

and that was what was the chin rebel i think it was the sea and i think it was radically out of trim and so i i'd 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 had this thought at one point i should throw my reserve but it was quite windy and then i panicked because 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 hit one of those little flat you know terrace areas with 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 you guys couldn't see me and so everybody just thought i'm just and it was just i mean right before i hit i thought oh wow this is really gonna hurt and uh 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 in 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 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 looked sketchy i remember yeah yeah and that week i mean we it was um yeah i i think i got like going back to the whole the the himalayan sky safari thing it was great and people had to

go to the himalayan sky safari and i was like i had

such wonderful experiences you know the looks on people's faces but it once we got to a point i mean 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 rein 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 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 the Norwegian guy i was there correct yeah right because that year was that year um 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 paragliding we know anyone can hit get hit it wasn't anyone's fault that stein crash but it just became more stress than than fun

um what percentage would you say that has back to 95 % let's just take your life from 95 to today what percentage of your life is academics uh and study and writing and your life outside of flying versus flying god

in recent years much less flying than than before i mean yeah i haven't done much traveling for flying i mean i live in a brilliant place for flying uh as i said in small redounds it's kind of used to literally i can walk to a takeoff takes me about 20 minutes 25 minutes got a short up up a hill uh and the british hang gliding paragliding records used to be used to be from there now people now that's gone a bit further but there's scope for about 260k 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 be enough for three or four years uh hoping to get back out there for a good stint next spring as i keep saying i'm worried i'm going to get jinxed on that but yeah there's the north south cups 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 try not to look up at the sky because you know and nowadays of course you can bloody track everyone and all that's torture you've got to be sitting on some boring zoom meeting isn't it click out xcrt whatever it is and watch people having amazing flights but i've been i've been like i said this year i got out i've had three three really good flights um and that's kind of enough isn't it it keeps you keep i i find nowadays like but 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 now i'm just going to be completely hooked or something it's harder to ignore once you've had a bit of a fix like that then you just keep wanting 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 you

you've heard this one on the show but i love it and so do the sort of 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 70s you know would you tell that 25 year old self if if you could if you could

um well it sounds like an arrogant thing i don't know if anyone has said this in response to this question before but i the fact that i'm here touch wood i haven't broken anything um and i've had a lot of fun i've met some of my best friends you know it's still through flying like hugh eddie hugh's god godfathered 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 um i don't regret you know when you see all these comp reports these days i like for i will follow them i kind of you know check in that's been a PWC in turkey i don't know what it looks like just scared the pants off i tell you there's no i i wouldn't want to do it that doesn't not my idea of fun and in

i've been realizing more and more i like to fly on my own you know i don't know 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 i'm very competitive which i think is part of the reason why i don't want to do competitions because you can't sort of guarantee you're going to win for a start and it just kind of interferes with my head and i find i have my much so 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 plenty of people here in fact the people who are super keen you know who will go to the take off the net the day before and in the hope of applying 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 um but yeah to go back to your question i wouldn't change anything

yeah i like that i

think i think if i'd gone too professional as well i would have got sick of it i'm you know i don't i don't think i could be like a tandem guy doing tandems non-stop through the summer i think i'd give up flying pretty quickly

i think finding that balance seems to be the key as the years go by you know we can't all 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 going to stick around you know we have to fly for different reasons and have to find the passion in other ways but okay i haven't done this i'm kind of excited about this with you i haven't done this in at least over 100 shows uh if you listen to any of the early ones you might remember this but i used to do this the proust 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 question i don't know where they came from so this one has some of the real ones that were actually from browsed but not a there's i've kind of thrown in a little a little mix but so we'll take these and then i'll give you back your time because i've held on to it for a long time here but your favorite qualities in a man

oh gosh favorite qualities well

there's lots of my favorite qualities i mean you know reliability having one's friend being able to depend i mean that's almost the definition of a friend isn't someone you can you know if the hits the fan you can give them a call and they'll help you out someone who's there for you um 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 you mad you know like after a few days with him i was exhausted in the one evening i just want to watch a bit of tv and he's like come on let's go i just want to tell you please

so

much energy yeah he's

great yeah you know it just makes life worth living though it makes life doing stuff um yeah i guess is that it yeah 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 yeah

well that's you know you think i could get in trouble answering of course don't

worry nobody

listens um well it's a you've kind of pinned me i should say the same thing shouldn't i yeah remember that if i could be sexist i mean being there's i mean there's an accent in a woman in general you know you know i got a white if you i'm my wife she's also a mother you know she's extremely dependable and reliable and always there for everyone in the family absolutely um maybe not so much up for crazy fun all the time like eddie and that's probably quite a good thing yes great

great um back to balance yeah

yeah i guess um you know it's kind of loyalty sounds a bit patronizing but dependability you know something just i think that's that's what you want in in your in your everyone everyone who's there everyone everyone who's part of your circle yeah another

one from the actual questionnaire your idea of happiness and then the flip side your idea of misery and happiness i there's a weird word but joy however you like to think about happiness well

i wish you i wish you'd prep me with these guys there's

better on the spot because

you always ask another question which i have prepped i haven't been asked that final remember we can

we can edit you can think about this

hang on what was it what's what happened well 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 a researcher i'm constantly trying to find that 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 life generally like new stuff having to reappraise the situation so i like i like change and stimulation so that's my idea like my idea of you know someone has been at my hack is driving my jeep in india to a new place 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 really you know i like i need i need to get out there be stimulated be doing new stuff and i yeah there's i don't

know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know i don't know

i can't i don't believe these people who say i love lockdown it's great but maybe the women maybe that's true so yeah for me happiness is is um is development progression you know just new stimulation which is maybe not uh maybe it could be conducive to poor mental health and that you constantly i mean i've always been like that in 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 making me sit on the stairs and with no books or anything and just have to look at the wall aren't

you thankful that guys like us when we when we grew up because i was born in 72 that they didn't have add you know you couldn't be diagnosed no one was add back then but i spent half of my youth in the principal's office i mean i would if i was born in the 90s they would have put me on zoloft or whatever that stuff is i just i'm so thankful they didn't have that back then because i i wasn't being fed sugar it wasn't my diet my mom was great you know she used to she took 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 we're gonna have to put them on something i'm glad they didn't have that back then yeah uh least favorite word least

favorite word at the moment i you know you i i don't like that that the the very common metaphor journey when someone says you're on a journey and i used that already a couple times

shoot no

i know you know you well i

don't know

i would have noticed you say 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 like that interesting maybe trivial minor one but it's kind of i like it cliches i don't like and

here's where we'll end favorite word

favorite

word

wow did you really because i thought i listened to the early ones no these are different

yeah like i said i i actually looked up the real proust question 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 oh

man i can't think of anything right now favorite word um could

be in hindi

yeah there's some good hindi yeah but there may only be square words and hindi words that's true actually there's lots of good hindi words um yeah they normally be terms of abuse that my guru used to use that make me laugh um or what else or some place names uh oh

you said place i thought of denali for some reason yeah i was

thinking he knows her which is somewhere i really i'd love to fly from a mountain in in southwest uh gujarat in in india

there's some nice place days aren't there it's beautiful

yeah and he knows her that's the place that conjures up lovely images for me but i could after a whole other podcast i could talk to you about that what's

it called

he knows her it's a volcano volcano in india where a yogi's meant to have his head for 12 years in this really wild place really remote in the far far south by far west

yeah so

is that it you're gonna don't you normally ask this time don't you normally ask some question about what's the craziest thing you've seen let's

do that one

sure yeah you have one prepared because this is a story i want to get out yes it's a short don't worry 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 have been about 2005 and this is not an india story this is uk in fact we took off just from my house with um hugh miller and jerome we had this fantastic flight it was called harvest it was fantastic spread in um in cross country it was this time of year but it didn't look like it's just a fog out there at the moment it was a lovely golden harvest season and we did a great cross country flight of about 120k or something up to the malverns um with jerome just taking pictures all the way and they were looking around it's like a big crop circle so where i live is like the capital of crop circles there's lots of ancient monuments and the hippies like my local pub is this sort of where all the very interesting gatherings of people throughout the summer so you've got these wonderful shots anyway we were about 100k out and hugh was in front of me and i think jerome and i were behind and i was looking at you and then suddenly this sail plane comes screaming in from the right goes under hugh loops him what

And carries on. And I was like, what

did I just see? What?

And then, okay, well, then, and then we finished the flight, and we had, you know, hit, shave, whatever, retrieved, got on a train, we're on a train back, and a text message comes in to Hugh from Richard Westgate, who I mentioned earlier, whose brother, Guy Westgate, was the pilot, was a sailplane aerobatics pilot. And so he, Richard texted saying, three paragliders, southeast of Malvern, 3 p.m., my brother says hi.

No way. Are you kidding me? So did he just see you guys and do it, or was he tracking you on some kind of F-large? No, he

must have just seen us. He must have, there was no tracking in those days. Oh, this is a while ago. Okay. But he would have known that his brother would, you know, his brother, Richard, was just like, you know, the

guy who was the pilot. He was the

guru of cross country paragliding in the U.K., 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 actually landed. That is awesome.

I thought I had imagined it. I just, look at this good sailplane.

And sketchy at all, or just total, oh, yeah, clearly he's got us. He's not just, there's plenty of distance. It was totally cool.

Enough distance, enough margin, yeah.

People ask that all the time, how sketchy it is flying with sailplanes. I just find it so, I've never had a situation ever with a sailplane that was, Cody Mittanck told a story on the show that was the funniest ever I'd ever heard. They were flying across, they were trying to make it to Moab, so they're out in the middle of the Utah desert. And, you know, he's up there almost 18,000 feet, it's a big day, and he's freezing cold and shaking hands, and his, you know, his visor's icing up, and it's, you know, it was 18,000, 18,000 feet, it's paragliding at 18,000, it's kind of sketchy and wild and cold and turbulent. And this sailplane, you know, just cruises at the cloud base, just goes by him, and he's thinking, you know, that guy's probably just listening to Bach, just cruising along.

Exactly, yeah. But they seem to be, I don't know, I'm always very encouraged when I see sailplanes out there. You see a lot of them, of course, in the Alps, but it's always, I always think of it as a good sign. They're beautiful. Yeah, but

I get a bit. I'm nervous at cloud base. Yes. I've seen a sailplane in the last half hour, like, because I sometimes go a little bit into cloud, because they all radio each other, don't they? In fact, that reminds me of another, I'm going to get 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 cloud base, and Eddie's chat's over, Jim, let's hold this pattern and take it in. I'm like, you lunatic. There's no effing way I'm earning it, do you?

We'll just keep it up. Oh, I'm glad you laughed, Jim. That's good. That would be terrifying. Can you imagine? Wait a minute. I don't know where I am. I don't know where he is.

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 really appreciate it. That was a blast.

No, it's always an honor. Thanks a lot for asking me on, Gavin. I hope you get to see it. Come and do the North-South Cup. Yeah,

I'd love to. Late August, that might be tricky. I'll still be down here, but I will join you guys one of these years. That'd be a hoot.

Maynard, it will be.

Perfect. I'll do that.

All right.

Thanks, bud. Thanks.

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