Your first instinct, like ours, must be “What is this Dr. Dolittl-ing quackery?! Surely this cannot be real.” But it is, sir. It is.
Paragliding with hawks, or, Parahaking as we say in the biz, is a unique adventure vacation which combines the nearly-lost art of falconry with the still-unlost art of paragliding. Here’s what the progenitors of this high falutin sport have to say about it:
"Parahawking is the art of training birds of prey to fly with Paragliders. It was developed and pioneered in 2001 in Pokhara, Nepal by Scott Mason and two friends, Adam Hill and Graham Sunders-Griffiths. Two months into a world tour Scott Mason met Adam, the owner of Frontiers Paragliding and had his first paragliding tandem flight. Having trained birds of prey since he was 11 years old the experience of flying with wild birds of prey in their natural environment was simply awe-inspiring, and thus the idea of Parahawking was born."
Worried that you don’t know anything about hawks? Or paragliding? Or Nepal? Yeah, us too (well, we know one thing about Nepal). But don’t worry, all of those things are accounted for and if you’re inexperienced, you can still fly with the eagles hawks in a tandem flight.
The “parahawking season” runs from Oct/Nov to Apr/May, and whole shebang actually isn’t that expensive (excepting the cost of a plane ticket to Nepal).
A Parahawking Tandem flight costs: €100
A Parahawking fliming flight costs: €140
A Sky Safari (multiple jumps) costs: €260
The Parahawking solo experience costs: €180
You can book them at their web site. [Book it]
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