A Sakura Story: Bali Paragliding

Aug 02 2010

Bali Paragliding

One of the main reasons for going to Bali was to give Kingsley a chance to get his paragliding fix, but we ended up doing so much more and making new friends along the way. Singapore is not set up for paragliding so after 9 months of no flying he was so excited to stretch out his wings and get in the air. A great friend from Seattle, Suhas who now lives back in India, invited us to join him and the Temple Pilots paragliding group in Bali. There were about 20 pilots and non-pilots in the group who welcomed us with open wings.

Timbis, the main flying site, is not on any maps. It is on the southern most coast of Bali, a beautiful rugged coastline with seaweed farms below that transformed the ocean into a checker board of blues and greens.

We rented 3 large SUVs to get around the island with all of the paragliding gear. The flying site was an hours drive from where we were staying. Kingsley was in charge of car # 2 which made me very nervous. Bali driving is pretty crazy...few traffic lights, no road signs or marked lanes and thousands of motorcycles weaving in and out of the cars makes for an eventful ride. Once we got near the coast line the roads went from pothole ridden blacktop to bumpy cattle grazing trails.

Kingsley was a driving pro but I'm still surprised we brought the car back in one piece.

After driving through the back country seeing nothing but a few cows we arrived at a gate which was monitored by a little old lady called Betty Bu. She sits at this gate in the middle of no-where to collect the 10,000 RP ($1) fee to enter the paragliding site. She had a twinkle in her eye and a contagious toothless grin.