31May One aspect of being in a Muslim country is that there is no women visible on the street or anywhere we get invited for that matter. The few that we see cover their face with their scarf as soon as men arrive or if adhering to the stricter Sunni group they wear the full burka. The streets are full of men and for us there is definitely something missing. We are amazed by the kindness of this people. Where ever we are people go out of their way to help us. We get invited for cups of thee and people on the streets greet and shake your hand. We may get charged a higher rate for certain food or services but there is non of the money oriented aggression that prevails in many other countries. I really have to pinch myself sometimes to check if I’m not dreaming. If only life at home could be so pleasant.
Today we have set ourselves the task to try and fly around Trichmir, the big mountain that dominates the valley towards the north. The weather is again perfect and all three of us are able to get to 5500 meter before we cross the valley onto the foot hills of this 7700 meter giant. About an hour into the flight we lose contact with each other. Some high clouds move in from the south-west and the top of the mountain disappears. We are all flying with our bivi gear so that we can camp out if necessary. I fly along the south face of Trichmir and fly across some spectacular glacier landscape on a easterly heading to end up in Booni, another Para Gliding base camp. The sky looks threatening towards the west and I decide against camping out. Again the unbelievable kindness of the people blows me away. I land on a soccer field and one of the young boys there takes charge of the situation. He makes contact with the local pilots and organizes a ride into the village for me. Once at his house he produces a huge dish with mulberries, which are in season at the moment and we talk about al kinds of things till one of the local pilots shows up to take me to a place to spent the night. I get fed and we talk paragliding and politics till after dark. The scene is paradisiacal, the stars are out, the honey suckle is spreading its strong fragrance trough the garden, the frogs are croaking and there is the noise of water running through the irrigation channels. I sit in the dark in this walled garden for quiet some time before going to bed and feel totally at peace.

June 1 .In the morning at seven I get woken up for breakfast. Muzafara runs a school and needs to go but I can stay as I wish. The sky is totally bleu apart from a few early thermal clouds. For a moment I regret not having landed in the mountains to be able to fly back to chitral today but then I wouldn’t have had the encounter with these nice people. Plenty of time for flying. The bus ride back is spectacular. The landscape is barren but for the places were people have diverted the water to irrigate the land. Channels, kilometres long, have been carved out and build on the mountainsides to bring the water to the fields. They have clearly been doing this for centuries as the villages and orchards are full of big trees. Higher up in the valley the fields are still green with growing wheat and barley but on the desend back to Chitral the grains are riper and the fields look like a patchwork of greens and yellows. Outside the alluvial fans that are used for irrigation the land is rocky and under constant attack of the elements. The erosion is visible everywhere and the river is running black with silt.
I come back to the hotel around lunch time to find Grey already there. He has had an adventure of his own, landing in some mountain village and staying with a local family. He caught a jeep ride back to the hotel. Mukrim arrives back later in the afternoon, having flown to Booni. He top landed on the local paragliding launch site and camped out but decided to fly down in the morning and catch the bus back to the hotel as he run out of battery power on his GPS.
June 2. A big cyclone in the Bay of Bengal is playing havoc with the weather and it looks like we are in for a few non flyable days. We need a day anyway to do some domestic chores, do some Emailing and enjoy walking through the town and soak up the local pace of life.
June 3. Grey is having a craving for toast and jam. The local breakfast of fried egg and chapatti is not agreeing with him. He has a point, as the eggs are swimming in cooking fat. We pay a visit to the one luxury hotel in town and sit at a table, eat with knife and fork and sip black thee from an almost un chipped cup. The place has 45 rooms and is almost empty. White toast, scrambled eggs, butter and jam and black thee for 2.5 $US doesn’t break the bank and gives our stomach a break in the morning. As the day doesn’t look flyable we organise ourselves a excursion to a valley about 40 km from chitral where the non Muslim tribe of the Kalash people live. Much of their culture is being preserved in the newly build community centre with museum, medical centre and school. The local building stile hasn’t been replaced by concrete yet and the place looks rather idyllic. I guess the biggest attraction are the women, as they dress in very colourful costumes and don’t hide behind scarves or burkas. Our visit was a bid to short to get a good look around but we had to take the last taxi back otherwise Grey would have ended up sleeping with one of these girls.

Jun 4. The weather will be upset by this cyclone for the coming days. Today was rainy and the temperature has dropped. Mukrim has made friends with the local bank manager who is very interested in our activities. In the evening he comes by to invite us to his place for lunch tomorrow. The day passes with eating, a visit to the internet café and an attempt to rewire the GPS cable so Grey and Mukrim can down load their track logs. Grey, yesterday, got a refund for our airline tickets for the flight from Islamabad to Chitral. Later he got a call that they gave us to much money and if we could please come and return the difference. Seen as that all the people seem so honest around here we popped in this afternoon to sort it out. We got the royal treatment with cups of thee and cake and biscuits and a nice chat with the PIA airlines manager and we returned the 600 rupees. It is clear that the people around here are desperate for tourist to return. The repeated request is that we please spread the message how beautiful and safe it is in this part of Pakistan once we return to our home countries.

June 5. I dropped off my Icebreaker jersey at the tailor yesterday to get new cuffs put on. As I went to check my Email this morning I picked it up next doors. When I asked him how much it cost he said it was up to me. He must have spend at least an hour unpicking and re-sewing the cuffs. When I gave him 150 rupees he only took 50, less then a New Zealand dollar.
The sky cleared in the morning and we decide to get our gear ready so that we can go for a flight after the bankers lunch. Im not feeling to great today as my head cold is really breaking through so I return to bed as Grey and Mukrim get picked up.

June 8. Grey and Mukrim never got to fly. Lunch turned into an afternoon affair as was to be expected. Next day I still didn’t feel that great so I stayed in bed till the afternoon. Grey and Mukrim went up for a flight and ended up in Booni, about 60km to the north, caught up with the local pilots there and got the last bus back to the hotel. June the 7th The weather is very unstable. The sky is bleu in the morning but very quickly the cumulus develop and by lunchtime there is big cumulo nimbus cells which bring thunder and rain. Just as we are ready to get in the taxi, Dimitri , a pilot from the Ukraine, walks into our hotel so now we are four We decide to try and fly a triangle. First we fly south as that is where the thunderstorms seem to develop earlier. The cloud base is low at 4000 meter and we hop from ridge to ridge. By the time we get to the fourth ridge, the one that separates us from the kalash village, the clouds get to threatening and we turn around. We fly back to the launch area and top land in the hope that it may clear later in the afternoon. On the way we loose Dimitri but he lands safely back at the hotel. The remnants of the palace on the launch area are guarded by a young family. We get offered thee and chapatti and we try to understand each other talking with our hands and feet. The weather doesn’t clear and we decide to stay the night. Doors get unlocked and we enter the main room of what once was a substantial walled complex. Inside we find some epoch furniture, a fireplace and mirrors on the wall all covered with a thick layer of dust. We drink more thee, go for a walk up the ridge to stretch our legs and get served dinner at eight. Not a bad spot for a first paragliding bivi.
At night it rains and the wind howls around the buildings but in the morning the sky is clear. Dimitri comes up with the taxi and after a breakfast of thee and chapatti we are ready to launch at half past ten. The conditions are the same as yesterday but we start two hours earlier. We have the same flight plan and I don’t mess around this time. With the base at 4000 I don’t even top out the thermals and lead the way hopping from ridge to ridge. We lose Dimitri again but the three of us stay fairly close together and help each other along. The landscape is wild and at some stage in the flight as we squeeze over a little saddle in the ridge, the ground falls away and we look down sheer cliffs several hundred meters high. The clouds thicken again and by the time we fly over the kalash valley the sun is gone and at times we fly through light snow. I push my luck trying to get over one more ridge but arrive to low and get hit by the rotor. By the time I get back to the wind ward side of the valley Iv lost a lot of height and have to do some serious scratching to gain a few hundred meters. In the mean time Grey has been waiting near cloud base and decides to fly back to the main chitral valley. Mukrim didn’t get the last climb and is hugging the walls to get out to the main valley as well. This is the place we visited by car only a few days ago so we know the lay of the land. Once in the main valley the sun is back but there is a 15km wind that is scattering the thermals. Grey and I land at the same spot and as usual a crowd forms in no time. At first there is no English speakers but then a big pick-up truck pulls up with two engineers from the local marble mine. They are on their way to Chitral, so our return ride is secured. The ten steps to the truck was even less then the walk to the launch site this morning. Allah must be with us on this trip! The weather forecast is good for tomorrow, maybe it is going to be the big one…… PS uploading photos is taking to long