Skydiving - The Ultimate Leap Of Faith

Everyone has a bucket list, well almost everyone. And one thing that usually appears on top of every bucket list is Skydiving. Skydiving is so attractive because it is inherently risky and can be done by anyone with almost no prior experience. The only reason more Indian's don't do it is probably because of the cost and the mistrust of anything "made in India".

I have always known about a couple of places in India where I could have dived at almost the same price. Its getting more popular with some place in Mysore offering tandem skydiving too. However I am highly skeptical of them. That is why when I went out of India, I had to strike this off my bucket list.

There were a lot of places I could have dived in Melbourne. Its a haven for all kinds of hobbies. I chose the Euroa Parachute School. There was a Groupon offer that helped me save more than a hundred dollars. And the journey to the dive site was interesting too. I had to hop on to a V-Line, the chic trains of Australia.

Euroa is a small town with virtually no people living there. I haven't seen more than 10 people in Euroa in the 5-6 hours I spent there. It was quite an interesting experience to visit a place with immaculate Station and Roads, but has hardly any people on the streets. The Roads in the interiors of this town were better than highways in India. I wish I could have spent more time exploring this small town but then trains aren't very frequent.

While in Euroa we experienced the crazy Melbourne weather. When we reached the dive site in the early morning, it was windy and drizzling. We and some others had to wait as it wasn't ideal for a dive. In a couple of hours it changed to bright and sunny and it would be hard for anyone to believe it had rained in the morning. The good people at the Prachute School had a hard time explaining to the people who had dive's in the evening as to why there is a delay and some cancellations. The weather seemed perfectly good when they arrived.

We were given ugly looking sweaters and a jumpsuit. Then a lot of harness and belts were attached. Things started to get exciting thereof. We were given instructions on keeping the right body posture and hand positions. We got onto the small aircraft and slowly started climbing. It took us sometime to reach 10000 Feet, and it got really cold. The temperature was well below 0° C . Then the Moment of Truth arrived and I jumped.

There are few things that happen in life for the first time once you are an adult. But the feeling of absolute terror is not usually one of them. The moment we jumped the next two seconds made me realize why skydiving is so different than anything. It really felt then that I was falling, and there was nothing to hold on to , nothing to stop myself from falling. and then there was the gust of cold wind hitting my face. After the first two seconds of the jump we were in free fall. But except for the wind and the beautiful and scary sight of the ground approaching things were very stable. It didn't feel like we were falling. But we were indeed falling at the rate of 200 kmph. Sadly ended soon and the parachutes were out and I could hear myself again. This has been the best thing I have done in my entire life without any doubt.