We spent a day wandering round the Tibetan colony drinking chai, checking out the amazingly colourful monasteries and generally reacustomming ourselves to Tibetan/Indian life. Getting ourselvs up the mountain was the first challenge but fortunately the competition meant that the the 'bureaucracy man' was slightly redundant so the expected 45 minutes filing out forms in triplicate and providing passport photos was avoided, at least for the time being. Saying that, the form filling at rego nearly made up for it.. you can always be certain of one thing in India - they LOVE their forms, and the need for photographs is mindboggling!
The practice days saw us up the hill well in advance of the general pilot masses, laragely due to the fact that no one had been told that there was transport / lunchpackets etc laid on. It meant though that we were airborne well before the carnage started as dubiously qualified soviets took to the air, or in fact often didn't.
We set ourselves short valley tasks that were fun to fly in preparation for longer days once the competition started.
As with most comps this year the weather Gods decided that it was their show and the opening ceremony saw a torrential mixture of wind, hail and lightening on launch. We were sheltered under whatever cover was available as Indian journalists scurried around dragging out and interviewing any likely suspect for National TV.
Wheeling out a Minister of State for an event certainly gets the media all excited! The ratio of sightseers and journalists to pilots was probably 20:1 but numbers were amply made up by the Indian army who made the most of the mountain top catering!!
The first 2 task days were stormy and windy so Ed and I tookadvantage of the sightseeing opportunities by visiting the nearby monasteries. At Sherab Ling we found prayer wheels the size of buidlings, monks up trees playing the flute and all manner of novice monks just doing what little boys do! The photo gallery from the trip will be online soon... I hope.
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