I’ve had skydiving in my wish list for as long as I can remember and somehow I’ve always related skydiving to the US, mainly because there aren’t many places in India to do skydiving and also I haven’t heard of anyone in India doing skydiving before.

When I got to know that I would be traveling to the US for a business conference, the first thing that came to my mind was skydiving. Though I told my friends and family here in India that I would go skydiving in the US, they all felt that I was joking and no one took me seriously. Maybe since I always speak about many of my fantasies like going to Antarctica and walking on a frozen lake, watching auroras etc., they might have put this one also in that category and ignored it. The only person who took it seriously was my father. When I just casually told him on a phone call that I want to try skydiving in the US, he was worried and asked me to refrain from any adventurous activities on the trip as I was traveling alone. After his reaction, I didn’t talk to anyone in my family about this.

With these thoughts in my mind, I just went to my conference and when we were free on the last day in Vegas, I wanted to go skydiving and asked a few of my colleagues if they would be interested in joining me. Apart from one colleague from India, no one else was interested in joining. They asked me many questions – “do you really want to do this?”, “did you inform your family in India?”, etc. Their questions shocked me a little bit, as I wasn’t expecting that kind of a reaction from people staying in the US. At least in my mind, I had this stereotyped notion that people in the US are very adventurous and try a lot of these activities, so I was a little confused looking at their reactions. But after a few questions, they were convinced that I would definitely do it and asked me to send them a picture after the jump.

We couldn’t get slots in Vegas for skydiving, as we reached out to them just one day before. I was very disappointed about this fact and thought that I completely missed out on the opportunity on this trip. The only ray of hope was to do skydiving at my sister’s place in Raleigh, North Carolina, where I planned to spend one week after the conference. But I didn’t have much hope, as it was not a tourist place and a smaller city when compared to Vegas. Also, my sister told me that there were no skydiving points at their location. So, I almost gave up. After reaching Raleigh, my brother in law gave me hope when he found out about a skydiving place near their location, where one of his office colleagues went skydiving earlier.

After a serious discussion with my sister and brother in law on the risks of skydiving etc., they were convinced that I was determined to go for it and they encouraged me with a word of caution. We booked an appointment at Triangle Skydiving center for the next day in Raleigh. This time I decided not to inform my parents, but I informed my husband, who asked me to be careful and wished me good luck on the adventure.

My brother in law took me to the skydiving center which is around an hour’s drive from the city. It costed around 400$ which included photography and the complete video. I was given a jump suit and clear instructions on the sequence of events. A group of around 8 people boarded a small private plane. I had boarded a private plane too 😀 It was neither a regular plane nor a helicopter, but just a smaller version of a regular flight. Everyone on the plane was excited about the jump – two of us were tandem skydivers, doing it for the first time with the help of an instructor, while others were experienced jumpers who were doing it on their own. I clearly told my instructor to speak slowly, as I was afraid to miss his words, if spoken fast in the US accent. He was very friendly and tried to explain everything clearly to me.

After reaching 14000ft, it was our time to jump. I could feel the cold wind by the time I reached the exit of the plane. That moment when I jumped, I didn’t think about anything, but just focused on how to fold my legs the way my instructor told me.

As soon as we jumped, we took a small rotation initially and then got stabilized in the right direction. There was a heavy rush of wind hitting us from all directions. I opened my mouth for a brief amount of time and later closed it wondering if I should be breathing through my nose or mouth and thought for a few moments about their pros and cons. 😀

Initially after the jump, I was asked to hold my hands tight to the belts tied to me. After sometime, once our position was stabilized (when we were facing the ground), my instructor made a gesture by tapping to let my hands loose, but I couldn’t figure that out. My brain was not in a thinking state. I continued to hold my hands to the belts. After a while, he observed that I was not following him and he opened my one hand out. By then I realized what he tried to convey to me, but I was skeptical on letting the other hand loose and I felt very comfortable holding on to the belt. Maybe I was nervous that I might fall down if I let the other hand also loose. This is the one thing I regret I shouldn’t have done during my jump, but it felt so good and safe at that moment. The ground view from the top is simply amazing and I enjoyed looking all around like a bird in the sky.

I didn’t feel like we were falling down all of a sudden, because of the heavy wind resistance. I laughed at our physics problems where we naively used to calculate the time taken for an object to fall down onto the ground from a certain height. We happily ignored the biggest air resistance factor in the equation.

After around 2 minutes of free fall, my instructor opened the parachute and we started parasailing. The parachute opened all of a sudden and even before I realized what had happened, the gush of wind calmed down and then I observed that we were parasailing. We then reached a stable state where in we could breathe and talk normally.

My brain came back to normal state and then I asked questions to my instructor on how we steer a parachute to reach the location correctly. He explained to me that the ropes on the sides should be used to control the parachute. When the left rope is pulled, we move towards the left and vice versa and when both sides of the rope were pulled together, we descend. He steered the parachute for sometime and showed me the entire city. Later he asked me to steer the parachute for a while to understand the mechanism. I realized that the ropes were very heavy and it needed a lot of strength to maneuver the parachute. I don’t remember how much time we spent parasailing but it was a wonderful experience too. I enjoyed it a lot and didn’t feel like going back to land at all. Finally, we landed safely on the grass beside the runway from where we took off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sI5qJi0dNMQ

My brother in law was worried by the time I reached the ground, as all others who jumped along with me reached the ground long back. He was happy to see me safe and happy 🙂 All is well that ends well ! 😉

I was presented a skydiving certificate and also a log book which recorded all the parameters of my dive along with a progress report, which can be used to track my miles and dives, in case I wanted to do it again or become a skydiving instructor 🙂 That was the most memorable grade card I’ve ever received. I was equally curious to see how my instructor thought I did, but his comments were great much to my relief. It was a big day for me and I celebrated that moment 🙂 I really loved one sentence from my certificate which I believe is true, because it happened to me many times after skydiving.

“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return” – Leonardo Da Vinci