Yeah, with normal flight trips, as you know from the flight schools, it's actually about paragliding 99 percent of the time. You fly somewhere for twelve hours to a distant, exotic country, but then you're flying every day and you only really experience what the country has to offer through the transport from one launch site to another, or if you make a stop to eat at some point, or if it's not possible to fly one day and some kind of backup program is organized. But you normally don't really get a sense of the culture or anything like that. And Indonesia is way, way, way too good of a place to just come here and fly every day for two weeks or three weeks.
Podz-Glidz, the Lu-Glidz podcast. Stories from the cosmos of paragliding. Today with Stefan Gradl, and I'm Lucian Haas.
What do you do when fate takes away your job but at least gives you a good severance package? For a paraglider, the idea of heading out into the world and just seeing where life takes you isn't that far-fetched. Always keeping an eye out for flight opportunities. The German Stefan Gradl came to Indonesia this way in 2016. The culture and, above all, the friendliness of the people there captivated him so much that he soon decided to stay longer. For years. Now, the 54-year-old calls the island of Bali his home. He earns his living through a special form of tourism. Together with his Indonesian wife, he offers guided trips specifically for paragliding, taking people into the air on various islands in Indonesia.
His tours don't just focus on the flying; it's important to him that his guests also get plenty of opportunity to experience the exotic culture and nature of the tropical country. In this episode 130 of Podz-Glidz, Stefan Gradl talks about, among other things, the warmth of the Indonesians, some occasionally quirky customs of the local paragliding scene, his concept of flight-culture travel offers, a glider into a volcanic crater where dust devils dance, and a storm flight that he only survived with some luck and a bit of common sense. So, it's worth staying tuned. Don't be surprised if you hear some background noise at times in this recording. It's the acoustic color of birds, traffic, and rolling thunder on Bali.
If you enjoy this podcast, please support my work as a patron. You can find out how to do that very easily on my Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, specifically on the "Fördern" page.
Stefan, where do I catch you right now? You're catching
you right now in the south of Bali, Indonesia. What's the weather like? Rainy season?
It's the rainy season, currently thundery. It's just after four in the afternoon here. It was actually nice all day. The thunderstorms start coming in the evening or at night. It's the rainy season, the rain is always accompanied by thunderstorms here. So, it's already thundering in the distance. I hope it passes. Let's see.
If I were to fly over your house right now, what would happen? If you were to greet me in Javanese, what would you say? Selamat datang, a warm welcome. And what is the word for paraglider in Javanese?
Paralayang. Paralayang
means paragliding.
And the paraglider alone is just the paraglider?
There isn't really a specific word for that in Indonesian. Aha. They usually just use the English words for it.
Just paragliders? Exactly. Paragliders, some say parachutes. Are there even any local paraglider pilots in Indonesia or on Indonesia?
In Indonesia, there are, in total, well, you don't know exactly because many fly without a license. You're supposed to have one here, but there are no statistics, nothing. But it's estimated that there are about 2,000 paraglider pilots in all of Indonesia. Right. Yes, with a population of over 250 million. It is
that's already very few in comparison. Yeah, so you can probably find them like a needle in a haystack. What's it called? No, it's searching for a needle in a haystack.
Yeah, exactly. Because these good 2,000 pilots are distributed across—let me just say the total number—over 17,000 Indonesian islands. That means they...
The pilot density isn't very high. You say 17,000 islands and 2,000 pilots, that would be like 0.1 something pilots per island.
Exactly. On most of the islands, there are no pilots or no flying takes place. Most of the pilots are on the island of Java, which is the main island with the capital Jakarta. That's where most of the pilots are.
Where you are, the southeast of Java? Bali. Bali. You're in Bali. So, the southeast of Bali. Are there any pilots there, or are you the only one?
No, there are several pilots here, although everything here is actually focused on commercial tandem flying. So, pure cross-country pilots like me—there are only very few, just a few here. A
A handful. And for commercial tandem flying, is it mainly tourists who get flown there? Or are there also locals who go tandem flying with paragliders?
So here on Bali, it's mainly tourists, because the whole thing is a bit more expensive here. I mean, the tandem flights. On Java, there are also a few professional tandem organizations. But there, it's mostly local tourists. Here on Bali, it's predominantly Chinese people coming here.
Do you fly them too? So, are you a professional tandem pilot as well? No, I'm just a private one.
Tandem pilot. I don't want to get into conflict with the locals here and take away their business and all that. Even though I've been here for several years, I'm still a foreigner and that wouldn't be good.
You say "despite having been here for several years." You live there on Bali now. Tell me the story of how you even got to Indonesia in the first place. Where did you come from and why?
Yeah, that's how it actually started. I've been fascinated by Southeast Asia for a long time. I'd been to Thailand several times and I've traveled around here a lot. Generally, I've loved traveling my whole life. Different continents, all over the world.
And the thing with Indonesia actually started with my last employer in Germany. I worked for a very large tobacco corporation. The largest plant in the world was in my hometown of Bayreuth. I worked there for many years, and then at some point in 2016, the management—which wasn't based in Germany, but in London—announced that the plant in Bayreuth would be closed for economic reasons. Germany is simply too expensive for production. The manpower is too expensive. Taxes keep going up. The regulations from the EU regarding cigarettes are becoming increasingly strict.
And it's just hard for a corporation like that to produce anything in Germany nowadays. So it was decided to close the plant and move the entire production to Eastern Europe. But no employees are being taken along. Everyone has to pack their bags. Thank God the works council negotiated a very good contract with management, including severance pay and all that. Then I started doing some math and thought to myself, "Now you're going to travel for a bit. You have time now, you don't necessarily have to run to the unemployment office right away. You can travel for a while." And my idea was Southeast Asia, I really like it. I want to travel through Southeast Asia for six months with my paraglider.
I had Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Indonesia on my list. Regarding the rainy season, we're having it again right now. I wanted to start in April. 2017, yeah. I wanted to get going in April. And because of the rainy season, Indonesia is the only country in this group where the rainy season is reversed compared to the others. So, right now it's the rainy season in Thailand and the rest is currently the dry season. You can fly very well right now. So I was forced to start in Indonesia. I didn't really have that on my glider at all before. It's not like Indonesia is the top vacation destination. You mostly only know Bali and Jakarta from the media.
And there were often only negative news stories, some volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, or demonstrations in Jakarta or whatever. I did a bit of reading and thought to myself, this all sounds very interesting. So that's how I came to Indonesia for the first time. With a paraglider already? With a paraglider already, exactly. That was my plan, to tour these countries with my paraglider. I hadn't made a fixed plan for how long I wanted to stay where. So I let things come to me a bit, saw what happened, and how I liked it where. I started here in Indonesia. I was on Bali at the beginning, because it's a bit easier to get into here. The infrastructure here is very good.
There are a lot of tourists here, not just out in the wilderness. I started here on Bali, but after two weeks, I headed straight east to the next island, Lombok. And there's already very, very, very little tourism and it's completely different from Bali again. That's where I had my first really good experiences on the island of Lombok regarding the locals here. The hospitality and the warmth of how they are. I had never experienced that anywhere else in another country before. In many other countries, people are open and hospitable. There's no doubt about that. But here, it's another level. What I experienced here, I hadn't experienced before. And it was so heartwarming.
And I felt so good here. My gut feeling was so good that after a relatively short time, I told myself I wanted to see more of this country and the people here.
Yeah. And then I spent a few weeks there on Lombok.
Yeah, just a quick story, the good experience on Lombok. I had been on the big volcano, Mount Rintjani, 3,700 meters high. We actually wanted to fly down from there, but it wasn't possible because of the clouds. We had to come back down. And up there, even in a tropical country, it's very cold at that altitude. And I caught a really bad cold there. I was lying flat out with a high fever for a while. I started on the way up the mountain. I met a local pilot there who lives on the coast in the south of Lombok. He gave me his contact info. He said after the tour, "Come visit me, then we'll fly around a bit down by my place."
And then I was out of commission for a bit. He messaged me asking where I was and why I wasn't coming. I explained what was going on. Then he said, hop on your scooter, come down to my place, and you can recover there. Up where you are now, the village is still at 1,500 meters, and it gets really cold at night. There's no hot water, no heating. So washing with cold water at 5 degrees Celsius... when you have a fever, that's not very pleasant. Okay, so I bundled up and rode over to him with all my luggage. That's about, yeah, I'd say a good three hours of riding. And then I was there. He cleared out the kids' room for me and made some space. And then I stayed with him for a week. They took care of me and nursed me back to health.
He got me some medication from the doctor. And so on. And then I felt better again. I was healthy again. And that was the first really beautiful experience I had here. And that continues, bit by bit, throughout my entire journey. I had similar experiences again and again. Not that I was sick, but with the hospitality. How selfless the people are. The people here, they don't care where you come from, what religion you have. Whether you're Muslim or not religious at all. Or what skin color you have. Whether you have ten times as much money as they do. Most Indonesians are actually poor in our eyes. The people here don't care about that. They are simply selfless. They share what they have with you.
And that's just beautiful.
That means for you, too, I can imagine, after experiencing this kind of rejection from your employer, who lets you down, you suddenly end up in a kind of paradise that catches you. Yes,
Exactly. Right. You could put it that way. Yeah, and you don't really get this kind of hospitality in Germany. I mean, I lived in the countryside in Germany. And if someone who doesn't look German walks through the village, the curtains twitch. Everyone looks out the window and thinks, "Who is that now? They don't belong here. Let's see where they're going and if they actually leave the village again." It's intense. But unfortunately, that's how it is. Here, I'm recognizable as a foreigner to everyone now. If I walk through a village where there are no other foreigners, people come out of their houses and invite me in, offer me a coffee, or whatever.
That's completely normal here. So it's a completely different...
...feeling, as you know it from Germany. Do they do that too if a foreign Indonesian walks through their village? Or is that now the privilege of the white people? Like, the people who walk through and say, okay, he's a bit exotic, let's invite him in. So they are certainly just as friendly to others. But are they, like, that, that, that attentive if a foreign Indonesian walks through a village where they say, we don't know him, he's not from here, but we're inviting him in now too. Actually, yeah,
Actually, yes. If it's clearly a foreigner, someone who doesn't belong here or something, they usually start a conversation and then immediately offer coffee and bring you into the fold. That's completely normal here.
That's completely normal here. When you were traveling back then—and you still are today, but back in 2017, if I remember correctly—how did you actually communicate with the people? Could you speak Indonesian? There are hundreds of Indonesian languages and such, so how does that work?
Yeah, exactly, there are over 700 Indonesian languages in total, and that doesn't even include dialects; those are really fundamentally different languages.
And no, I didn't know any Indonesian at all at the beginning. I'm not really a language talent either. I only knew a bit of English, mostly because of my job. And on Bali, it's easy; tourists are used to it and many people speak English. On Lombok, it was already more difficult. So there, it was a lot of gesturing, you could manage to communicate, or the Indonesian person knew someone from school who could speak a bit of English, then the friend would be fetched and he'd translate. So, somehow, you'd get by like that.
But over time, did you learn Indonesian?
Well, my wife is Indonesian and I can say that I know the basics in Indonesian, but it's still not enough to actually have a discussion with someone or anything. So, like with you right now, I can't have a conversation with an Indonesian person.
And how do you speak with your wife?
We speak a mix. We speak a mix of English, Indonesian, and Javanese.
Three languages, Indonesian and Javanese. So Indonesian is basically the national language that actually works. Everyone should be able to speak it, so that's what the TV programs run in or something like that. And then every island still has its own language, or how are you supposed to imagine that?
Yeah, something like that. So Indonesian is a language that was created. That was back after the colonial period, which happened around the same time as the end of World War II, the colonial era here came to an end. And before that, there was no Indonesia. They were all independent small islands.
And that's how Indonesia was founded, so to speak. And since they all spoke different languages, and there were often different languages even within the islands, the government naturally said we need an official language. And then this Indonesian was created, which is based on a Malay language. So anyone who speaks Malay also understands a bit of Indonesian. In Singapore, they understand a bit of Indonesian, and so on. The language was then created and the children learn the language here in school, if they go to school, from the age of six. Otherwise, the children here grow up with their mother tongue, with their regional native language.
But there are also people here, very old people or children who were only in school for a very short time or not at all, who don't speak Indonesian. I've been to regions with my wife where the children didn't go to school, and no one spoke Indonesian there. My wife didn't get very far there either, even though she's Indonesian.
So that means the Indonesians themselves have to somehow communicate using hand gestures and body language? Right, right.
Exactly. So, my wife, where she comes from, East Java, the town is called Banjewanki. In that district alone, they speak about three completely different languages. There's Indonesian. Then there's Javanese, which is spoken all over Java. And the Banjewanki region—let me just say, it's like a government district on Java, the largest one. They have their own language again, which is called Osing. That's a language that is completely different again from Indonesian or Javanese.
When there are so many different languages, do you also notice significant cultural differences between the individual linguistic regions? Or are the people ultimately very similar? Or is it ultimately just the language that's different?
Yes, you can definitely notice differences. The most distinct cultural difference is here on Bali. Because Bali is the only island that is over 90 percent Hindu-influenced. So, most people here are Hindus. That's why Bali is also so well-known for the temples and the temple robes, and the ceremonies that take place here. So everything here is completely Hindu. It's a completely different culture than on Java or Lombok. And even from island to island, the cultures and customs are already very different.
You're living on Bali now and have sort of emigrated. But how did you even get the idea? Or how did you come to the decision to say, "I'm packing up my tents in Germany"? And how hard was that for you? I mean, I...
Even before I did my first tour here in 2017, I already had it in the back of my mind that if you travel through these countries, maybe you'll find a place where you'd even want to stay longer, could. It's not that easy everywhere with visas and residence permits and and and. Everything has to line up. And also in terms of feeling at home. I already had that in the back of my mind a bit. Here in Indonesia, I spent the entire half-year that I actually wanted to travel through Southeast Asia in Indonesia. After a few weeks, I made myself a used travel plan. I bought a scooter here and drove a few thousand kilometers around here with it. And I met many, many people, including pilots and also my current wife.
And I had the entire six months—well, not really, I had truly only good experiences. There wasn't a single bad experience. Nothing at all. Not a single moment of fear or where anything went wrong; everything fit perfectly in those six months. My gut feeling was so good that I said, I want to stay here longer. I like it here. I want to stay here longer and I feel really comfortable here. So, over the course of these six months, I kept coming to the conclusion that I wanted to come back here pretty quickly. I did a bit of planning and also did some math with the severance pay I had. How long I could stay here if I didn't earn anything else and so on. And I thought, yeah, it'll last a few years.
Life here is very good. Very cheap.
And then I made a plan, went back to Germany in September 2017. I told myself I'd give myself two months to get everything sorted out in Germany. Cancel all the insurance policies. I had a car, a house, a scooter, and and and. Lots of stuff, tools, lots of knick-knacks. I said I'd give myself eight weeks. That's very ambitious, but it has to work. And by December before Christmas, I want to be back here. I made this incredibly long list of everything that needs to be canceled. It was insane how much stuff you have. A huge backpack full. Yeah, I really put my back into it. It took a lot of time, a lot of energy.
But it worked. I worked through the list and the list kept getting smaller and the weight on my back kept getting lighter. And my grin kept getting bigger. So I noticed, it's working. Yeah. And then at some point in December, everything was really gone. The only thing I still had was international travel health insurance that covers several years.
My mountain bike and my glider. Yeah, then I'm off. For me, that step wasn't hard at all. Of course, everything has to fit in your social circle too. Like if you still have minor children or parents who might be a bit ill or whatever. Some kind of social obligations. Then it's naturally difficult, if not impossible. So everything around it has to work out so that you can actually do it.
You just said that in the end, you brought your mountain bike and your paraglider. Are those the two most important things for you in life? Besides the social side, which you're experiencing there in Bali and so on?
Yeah, I didn't really need anything more than that. I really enjoy mountain biking. And since my bike wasn't that old yet, and the bikes here aren't that cheap and aren't that good in terms of quality, I thought to myself, why not just bring your own bike? Why should you have to sell it for next to nothing and then have to buy some piece of junk here? And yeah, the paraglider anyway. There aren't any paraglider shops or manufacturers or anything like that here. In Indonesia, it's difficult to get your hands on a paraglider. Generally, a new one. Very difficult here. And yeah, those were the things I brought with me. And... yeah, you can get everything else you need here again. But generally, you don't need most of it.
Why the paraglider? Another question related to that: What does paragliding mean to you? What does it give you?
paragliding is
for me is a passion. It's not just a sport or something you do every now and then when you're bored. Paragliding is a passion for me. It's part of who I am. It's just like a surfer, a wave rider. There are masses of surfers here. Here in South Bali, that's what it's known for. For them, it's also a passion. They're out there every day waiting for the perfect wave. And they're in the same spot. They do that day after day, week after week, year after year. And they can't imagine it without. I can't imagine it without paragliding either. It's just part of me.
Are you out there every day, at least when it's not raining? Not on a wave, but at Sohringhang or wherever. And do you go flying? Yes, every day.
Not right now. It's also a bit difficult here with the Sohringhang and all that. Through the vegetation. You can actually only fly here where a launch site is designated. Otherwise, it's just difficult because everything is overgrown. Or if you clear something somewhere, it's overgrown again in two weeks. And from that perspective, it's not that easy to just go out to a meadow like people know it in Germany. That's nice in Germany. So, head out, two kilometers away, and you can do some ground handling or a bit of soaring in a meadow. Unfortunately, that doesn't work here. But when it's flyable, I go flying here about two to three times a week.
Is that also somewhat around the corner for you, where you can ride there by mountain bike or scooter or something? Or from where you are now, do you always have to take the car and drive a bit further?
No, where I live, it's about ten minutes by mountain bike. Twelve minutes from the nearest launch site.
And is that coastal soaring, or what do you do there?
This is Küstenzoring. This is the well-known coast of South Bali that you see in many YouTube videos. And this ridge is about 15 to 17 kilometers long. It's a spectacular landscape and you can fly it completely up and down if the wind is right. And yeah, you can play beautifully there and
...just let your soul wander. Doesn't that get boring eventually? I mean, that ridge, how often have you flown there now? You've lived there for several years now. If you go flying there every two or three days, you've probably racked up several hundred flights there by now.
Yeah, the last time was just yesterday, yeah.
No, I don't really get bored. I'm not the kind of pilot who constantly needs a new launch site. There are many pilots who get bored very quickly. They have to discover something new, a new launch site, and fly somewhere else again. I'm already happy just soaring before Indonesia. I mean, I like flying thermals, but I'd rather be somewhere in Germany on a small slope that doesn't have to be spectacularly high. If the wind is perfect, just soaring, a few wingovers and staying close to the ground. And that's the thing I enjoy, the playful side of it. And it's perfect here. And if you keep trying new things, the wind isn't the same every day either, sometimes doing a few wingovers and letting loose. So, I don't find it boring.
But you don't do that for hours either; you say, I'll do this for an hour or two and then that's enough, then I can head back home.
Right, exactly. I'll head out there, fly for an hour or two depending on how good the wind is, and then I'll head back home, drink my coffee, and enjoy
the rest of the day. And it was beautiful. Enjoying the rest of the day. What else do you do for the rest of the day when you're not going flying in Bali?
Planning for our tours. Planning and organizing new tours. That's the general stuff here. There's a lot to do around the house and in the garden. With the tropical vegetation, you're constantly tied up, especially now in the rainy season. We're always busy with something. The tropical rain here is so incredibly heavy that it sometimes drips in from the roof somewhere. That has to be repaired again, or a tree falls over outside, or something gets flooded. That's almost part of the daily routine here. So there's always something to do.
You just said preparing tours. What kind of tours do you offer or what kind of tours do you do? Yes,
we offer guided paraglider tours through Indonesia. The idea came to me in 2018. I hadn't planned on it at all before. So you
you had basically already moved abroad
And that's when you first got this idea? Right, exactly. I had already emigrated, I was already settled here, I was already together with my wife.
And we then in 2018—I had the idea when I came back right away at the end of 2017—at the beginning of 2018, I bought an old used Ford Everest, which is a larger jeep with 4WD, and converted it into a camper. I mean, there are no motorhomes or caravans in Indonesia. It's just starting very slowly now, but there are no manufacturers here and generally, camping hardly exists here at all. I just thought that with a camper like that, you could still explore the area and the islands nicely, and you don't always have to stay somewhere. You have to look for accommodation, you're flexible, you can go somewhere in the wilderness, and if there's a nice beach or a beautiful coastline, you pull up there and then you try it out. And that was my idea for the project.
So I bought the car, and my wife's cousin is a carpenter, so I thought he could definitely do the interior woodwork and everything. I took out the seats and all that, and made a plan of everything that needed to go in, like the electrics and what all had to be part of the camper. And then he completely fitted out the interior with teak wood. It's beautiful, and above all, dirt cheap here. And then I built a roof tent on top, which I had custom-made in China. You don't even get something like that on the market. And then my wife and I drove across several islands for a few months. With the paraglider along, and the mountain bikes on the back. And that was a wonderfully beautiful time.
I've scouted out a lot of launch sites for this tour, discovered launch spots, met pilots, and met locals. And over time, I realized that there isn't a single provider, flight school, or whatever, offering tours to Indonesia. I've done tours before—I've joined a few tours with flight schools to Brazil or wherever—so I knew how those kinds of tours work. And I thought to myself, we could really try to do this.
Getting pilots from the German-speaking region here to Indonesia to do a guided tour. Something like that isn't offered yet. There's no point of contact here, no guide, nothing at all. And that was my idea. And I thought, you could try that. You don't have much to lose. No big investments. You build your website, make a few contacts, and try out a few launch sites. And that's how we got it. We started it at the end of 2018. We made the website and came up with a few tours together with my wife. But what was important to us with this project was that we don't just focus on paragliding.
With the normal flight trips, as you know them from the flight schools, it's actually about paragliding 99 percent of the time. You fly for twelve hours to some remote exotic country. But then you're flying every day and only really experience what the country itself has to offer through the transport from one launch site to another. Or if you make a stop to eat at some point. Or if it's not possible to fly one day, some backup plan is organized. But you normally don't really get a sense of the culture or anything like that. That was something that was missing a bit for me on the trips I did with flight schools. That you... get more of a sense of the country and the people.
And Indonesia—my wife and I are 100 percent in agreement on this—Indonesia is way, way, way too good of a place to just come here and fly every day for two weeks or three weeks. The country has so much to offer in terms of culture and especially nature. Volcanoes, absolutely spectacular. The rice fields here, the nature, the jungle. We said it has to be a good mix. Fifty-fifty. So 50 percent flying and 50 percent culture and nature. That's what we want to show people. And since my wife was born and raised here, in a small village in the jungle of East Java, we have completely different possibilities for what we can show people.
If a normal tourist comes here now... what we show people, where we take our guests—no "thing" goes there. No normal tourist goes there. It's really very close to the locals here. And that was our plan for the trips we offer. At the beginning of 2019, I launched the website with the plan to maybe make a few contacts now and then maybe in 2020 some guests would come. But surprisingly—or at least surprisingly for me—there were already quite a lot of clicks on the site. Right from the start. And we even did our first two tours in 2019, which we hadn't really planned at all.
And that worked great. People liked it. And yeah, we were already fully booked for 2020. So we set a goal of about five to six tours per year. It's not supposed to be completely packed. We don't want to do assembly-line work, zack, zack, zack. We also want to have a week or two in between to do follow-ups and preparations, and we don't want to run tours in parallel. We're both personally involved in all the tours now. And yeah, we were already fully booked for 2020. And then, unfortunately, Corona hit.
How long did Corona basically rage for you? I mean, did it destroy the business in that way?
Yeah, until the beginning of last year. In 2022, I think we had one or two tours at the end of the year. Then last year was really good for us again. We did five tours then. Now for this year, we already have six tours that are firmly booked. It's actually going quite well.
How should one imagine such a tour? I mean, what do you offer there? Or what is it? Is it that you fly to Indonesia, stay there for two weeks, and you have a small bus or something else that you use to drive the people around and visit different starting points? Or what does something like that look like? We have the
The tour size is limited to a maximum of eight participants. That way, it stays manageable and the transport vehicle doesn't get too big. Because the roads here are small and narrow, you can't get very far with a large bus. So, it has to be a small van or a small bus. And with eight people, their luggage, and so on, it's a nice size. So that's our maximum. We can also use different vehicle sizes depending on how many people there are. It could also be just two people. So we've had couples here for two people several times. And yeah, no matter how big or how many there are—two, three, or a maximum of eight—we have the corresponding vehicle size we can use. Yeah, and then we basically set up the tour exactly how the first customer who books the tour wants it.
So, someone contacts us. For example, we have a tour on the website for three islands: Java, Bali, and Lombok. There's a rough itinerary on the website showing everything you do there. Now, someone contacts us saying they're interested in the tour. There are no other interested parties yet. And then we offer to customize the tour exactly how they'd like it. He's the first one booking. And he can now decide what he'd like to do. So I ask him what he'd like to do. Does he want to go snorkeling at the coral reef? Or does he prefer to go hiking in the jungle and and and? And then we put the tour together so that it suits him. And the next participants who are interested in the tour have to take the tour as it's currently set.
And the tours are designed so that a non-flying partner—wife, husband, whatever—will also have things to do for their money. That's what you don't have with normal paragliding trips. If a non-flying wife goes to Brazil where paragliding is being done, she's usually just sitting at the launch site or landing field waiting. You don't have that here. Here, we create a really nice, diverse program where there's something for everyone. And even when we're flying—say we have a group of six pilots and two aren't flying—we're at the launch site and the driver has time. Then the driver can take the two non-flyers somewhere to see a temple, go to the beach, or whatever.
And
then you also split up like that, so you basically look after the flyers and your wife is with the others, showing them more of the Indonesian culture.
Exactly, my wife doesn't fly herself. At most, my aunt flies with her, but even then she's not really into it. It's just not in her blood. And yeah, exactly, she takes care of the non-flying guests and drives around with them, showing them a bit of things while we're flying.
How often does that happen? I mean, you probably have very mixed groups at some point. Somehow. How do you deal with that kind of classic flight group dynamics, where some people say, "I really want to fly now" or more, and the other person doesn't? And you have your own vision of wanting to offer them more culture and bring them closer to Indonesia and stuff like that. How do you find a balance there?
To be honest, we really don't have that happen much here. Everyone who comes to us knows the exact program beforehand. Yes. So before anyone books with us, I give them different itineraries showing how the tour is structured, and then they choose one, and they know exactly what we're doing every day, which activities we're doing. And they also know on which days we're going flying. There are no surprises. So we haven't had it yet where someone is here and says, "Now we've been in the jungle on Java for three days, I absolutely want to go flying tomorrow. I'm hungry for it now." Even though there's still Java left somewhere for tomorrow. We haven't had anything like that because they know exactly how the plan is fixed.
And it's been like that until now, we've had cases where, due to the weather, it wasn't that good for flying near the start of the rainy season because they were a bit late with the tour and there was little flight time. But even then, there were comments saying, yeah, it was a bit of a shame, but I didn't necessarily miss the flying that much because we saw so many interesting things and did so much. It was so entertaining. It wasn't that bad at all that the weather didn't cooperate.
But if you come during the classic dry season, is the weather so stable that you can really say, I can make a two-week plan and say we're at launch site XY on day three, instead of the next one on day five and the one after that on day seven? And you know you can stick to this plan because the weather just always works out?
99 percent, yes. The wind direction here is actually always the same during the dry season. We have two wind systems here. In the dry season, the wind comes from the southeast, and in the rainy season, it comes from the southwest to the west. Not much changes in terms of wind direction. So, the wind direction isn't a problem at all. The only thing is the wind strength; it can be that during the dry season, the wind blows a bit harder at times, but at some point during the day, a window opens up where we can fly. So, we can say with 99 percent certainty that we can fly well during the dry season.
Do you even look at weather reports anymore? Or do you just say, no, I actually just have to look out the window and see, yeah, yeah, everything looks as normal as always. And the wind, it has to be coming from the southeast at this time now, and that should work out.
Well, a weather report doesn't work here anyway. I've learned that from experience. There's really nothing that predicts the weather for tomorrow. It just doesn't work at all. And as for the wind, what's actually most interesting to me is the wind strength. Not too much, not too little. That works relatively well with Windy. With Windy, you can predict that quite well, even for the next few days. It works really well, and that's also the app I actually always use here.
Describe some typical flight options for me. Earlier you mentioned the south coast of Bali, where you can do some nice soaring. But what other options are there? Or you mentioned volcano flying or something like that earlier. What are some of the most spectacular flights you've done in Indonesia so far?
So the most spectacular flight I've ever done was on Java. East Java, on the border to Central Java, it's pretty far over to the west already. There's a volcano there called Mount Bromo. You can Google it, the landscape there is absolutely spectacular. It's like, a bit like being on the moon, volcanic ash everywhere, and it's also an active volcano, so it's still bubbling away down in the crater. I had that on my plan during my first tour—the six months I was here, I had no experience with Indonesia, flying and all that, but I had it on the plan. You can definitely fly there. And that was my most spectacular flight; actually, it was a very short flight, only ten minutes, but in terms of the experience, it was truly the most spectacular flight here.
Mount Bromo is somewhere around 2,400, something like that high, I don't know exactly. There's a huge caldera made of sand, volcanic ash, and sand. And in the middle of the caldera, there's a small volcanic cone where it's bubbling. And surrounding this caldera is a rock wall. It used to be basically one single giant volcano, I don't know, 4,000 to 5,000 meters high. And it eventually collapsed in on itself. And the crater wall is still there around the caldera. And it's about 400 to 500 meters higher than the caldera floor itself. And there's a nice viewpoint up there called the Sunrise Point, because you get a beautiful view of the sunrise.
The sun hits the volcano from the side, and the whole thing up there appears in this dreamlike, unimaginably beautiful light. There are some clouds drifting around, like wisps of mist—it's completely surreal. My plan was to fly down from up there if there was a bit of lift, maybe over to the volcanic cone, or if not, land somewhere in that sandy caldera. So I drove there and hiked up at night with a headlamp. I took off at about two in the morning to be up there early for the sunrise.
And it worked out timing-wise too. There was a bit of a scramble involved. When I got up there, it was still before sunrise, and I had about 30 km/h of a tailwind. So, flying was completely out of the question. But at that moment, I didn't really care because it was so beautiful up there. I watched the sunrise as the sun came up and took a lot of photos. And every minute, as the sun came over the flank from behind, the wind speed—the tailwind—dropped. And eventually, ten minutes later, there was suddenly no wind at all. And ten minutes after that, a slight breeze suddenly came from the front. So the sun completely reversed the wind system. And I thought to myself, wow, great, pack up.
And I found myself a spot on the slope in the tall grass, since there's no launch site there. I unpacked there and yeah, it worked. I took off from there. Unfortunately, it didn't provide enough lift, but it wasn't that bad. I then flew over this sandy landscape towards the volcanic cone. And that was just so unforgettable and spectacular. Yeah, beautiful. But you can really only do that in the morning. Because up there, the conditions are so utopian. It heats up extremely fast as the sun rises higher. And that vast, bone-dry landscape up there heats you up like an oven. Yeah, up there it cools down to 5 to 10 degrees at night. And during the day, it heats up to over 30 degrees up there.
Dust devils start forming then, 10 or 15 of them at once, dancing through this quarry. And you don't want to be in the air when they form. I landed, and then really 20 minutes later, the first dust devil formed. And just a few minutes after that, they were everywhere. So you really have to know about that and respect the whole thing.
Did you know that beforehand? I mean, you're a non-local, so you probably hiked up there for the first time. Did you know it could get that extreme?
I knew that because I was there the day before. And I hiked through this crater over to the volcano. And I noticed for myself what was happening down there. So I hiked over there and there were already dust devils moving around. On my way back from the Kekiltan volcano, there was a real sandstorm. I took photos of it. You can barely see anything from the GoPro selfie stick to my face. So there was a complete, total sandstorm up there. And yeah, that's just normal there. And during the day...
that can happen. You took that on yourself. You just traveled around there, did that flight, and surely did other exciting flights too.
How do you see it? I mean, you're offering tours now, but you can still give a personal assessment. What's it like in Indonesia? Discovering it on your own as a paraglider. Is it recommended, or is it something you'd say, no, you actually can't recommend it at all?
So if you bring enough time, you can do it. But it's also always only possible with contact with the local pilots. Without contact with the local pilots, nothing works at all. On one hand, because the launch sites are hard to find since there's so little paragliding activity here. How do you get up to the start? And the other thing is the weather system. Which launch site is suitable at all? And what awaits me there? So that's actually like everywhere else too. If I go to La Palma or Tenerife for the first time now and want to go fly somewhere on my own as a pilot who's been flying for two or three years, that's not that easy either without someone there explaining something.
That's actually the case everywhere. And in Indonesia, it's a bit more difficult because there are fewer pilots. And because we're flying on islands here, the weather patterns are a bit different than if you were flying somewhere on the mainland. If you have enough time—if you say, for example, I have six or eight weeks—then you can do it. But if you only have three weeks, it's pretty much impossible. You can fly a bit here on Bali down on the coast where the cross-country flights are. That's no problem at all. But now Lombok, Java, or some other island, that's where it gets...
...already difficult. Regarding the tours you offer, you mentioned that you've scouted out different launch sites and things like that. Are those, as you said earlier, all prepared launch sites? Or are there some that are, in a sense, very adventurous? Where you'd say, I know you can take off there because it's so exposed up there, or nature hasn't encroached as much, or the jungle doesn't grow as much there or something? Or are they all actually launch sites that are also operated by locals there?
So, the launch sites where we go with our guests are all operated by the locals and they are also prepared. We don't want to take any risks with our guests. We don't know how good they are, what skills they have, etc., before they arrive. And of course, we don't want to take any risks. So we don't go to any adventurous launch sites. Unless, for example, we have two pilots here, I don't know. And after three or four days, I see the guys have it totally down. They're better than I am. Then, of course, you can go to a launch site where you'd say, I wouldn't go there with anyone else.
How risky would you say it is to fly in Indonesia? Because there's probably no air rescue or anything like that. So if you were to, say, just sprain your ankle in a stupid spot, that would already look a bit bad, wouldn't it?
Yeah, of course. But I think it's not much different in many other countries, whether you go to Colombia or somewhere in Brazil, away from Rio, away from the big city, a bit further out. I think it's not that different there. I mean, there's no mountain rescue here, clearly. There are no rescue helicopters. There are no emergency doctors. Hospitals are often several hours away from where we fly. But I explain that to our guests on the very first day when they arrive. I explain that to our guests. And they also have to sign off on that I've explained it to them—that they shouldn't take any unnecessary big risks, because recovery can often be difficult and a hospital is often far away. And that can be decisive for certain injuries.
So you should really just take it down a notch and not try to act like some new action hero, but just enjoy what you can do out here.
In the time you've been offering tours, or in the time you've been flying yourself—meaning you've experienced it firsthand—have you ever had something crazy happen where you thought, "Oh, that was lucky," or maybe even something stupid, not just lucky, but maybe you actually had an accident where you thought, "Hmm, that was bad"? Like, for yourself? Or during your tours? With
On our tours, there was actually only one accident. A pilot broke his elbow. That was, well, you have to say, fortunately here on Bali on the edge. And here on Bali, because of the many tourists, there are special tourist hospitals that are internationally certified. Yes, I'll say for now, it's a first-class hospital. And that's only 15 minutes from the launch site. And the pilot was lucky that it happened here. Yes, they took great care of him. Probably better than in some hospital back in Germany. And yes, it worked out. But if something like that happens somewhere on Lombok or Sumbawa, yeah, Sumbawa is the next island after Lombok, there's a bit less infrastructure there.
If you get some nasty injuries, it's possible they'll have to fly you back to Bali specifically by helicopter.
And have you personally had any stupid incidents while flying in Bali, Lombok, Sumbawa, or somewhere like that, where you're like, how do I get out of here now? No, not me yet. Have you had any borderline experiences at all in your flying career? Yes,
...so a really borderline experience. I had it pretty early in my flying career. I mean, I've been flying since 2001. I've actually flown quite a bit from the start and had my first, or actually my only, really borderline experience. That was a good year after I got my license. So, at the beginning of my second year of flying. Yeah, I switched from my training A glider to the next B glider back then. It was an Advance Epsilon. I have no idea what number it was. Back then, in the summer, yeah, early summer, I went down to Kössen to fly. I didn't really have that much thermals experience yet.
And it was a beautiful summer day. The weather report predicted a slight chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. So I remember the experience quite clearly because I wrote it down after it happened to process it. That's why I can still remember everything very well. It predicted a slight chance of thunderstorms in the afternoon. Okay, up onto the mountain, there were already many pilots up there, as is the case in Kössen. Many in the air, many were turning, good thermals. And I headed out. I flew nicely, also turned in the thermals. I was super happy because it was the first time I had such good initial altitude gain. So, emotionally, it was really beautiful flying for me. And at some point, after about an hour, I looked around and thought,
too many pilots are no longer here. And I also noticed—I didn't have a variometer with GPS back then, just a normal variometer with Pipestone, no GPS or speed display—but I noticed that I didn't really have much forward speed anymore.
And then I went into the beat system and noticed it still wasn't really moving away from the mountain properly. I could already see why so many pilots weren't there anymore. I mean, behind me, it was really dark in the southern direction by now.
That means a thunderstorm was coming. That's also why there was that strong wind from the north. It was pulling. Well, I still had really good overheight over the summit. I thought to myself, what do you do now? So I put my ears down. But even with my ears down, I was still climbing well. I thought to myself, this isn't doing anything. Ears down, speed system, still nothing. Still climbing. Then I thought, we practiced the P-stall back in training. That worked great even with the old gliders. So I pulled the P-stall. That wasn't a problem. We learned it. But, yeah, now it's getting stupid. With the P-stall, I was still climbing. I don't know how many meters per second. But it was still going up.
And I thought to myself, this is not good at all. Horror scenarios were already running through my head. I had my girlfriend with me back then. She was down at the campsite in the motorhome. And I had a radio with me. My radio was set to voice control, and because of the rising wind and the beeping of the vario, it was constantly open and I heard everything.
And in any case, that was a goosebump moment. I knew it was going to get really critical for you. You're not coming down. And the storm had naturally moved closer. I already saw two or three other pilots coming down with a rescue glider. I thought to myself, the next thing after the P-stall is the steep spiral. You can try it out. I'd never done that before. Never tried it. But I thought to myself, for me, that was the moment where I said, this could be a matter of life and death now. You have to do something. Yeah, then I went into the turn. Pulled hard. And at some point I also felt the centrifugal force in my face and body. I thought, now you're in it. And it did go down at five, six meters per second. But it was going down.
And I thought, great, super, it's working. But unfortunately, I wasn't over the valley, but over the mountainside. So, if you're spiraling over the mountainside and getting closer, you eventually can't really judge the distance to the ground anymore. And there's no way to land there either. So, at some point, you have to get out of the spiral, do the spiral, stop the spiral, everything worked, great job. Then I shot upwards like a rocket.
And that was a moment for me where I really thought, this can't work. This could have been the end for you. I'd already read reports before about pilots being sucked into a thunderstorm cloud and spat out somewhere else as a block of ice. And that just went through my head. And I thought to myself, you have to avoid that at all costs. But how? Luckily, in this whole stressful situation, I still had clear thoughts. No rush and no panic, somehow. So I was surprised myself. So. My absolute last plan, it was like a kamikaze plan, where I thought, maybe it'll work. Fly towards the storm cloud, over the mountain peak, so that you eventually get into the lee of the mountain.
And that the lee rotor simply pushes you downwards. Whatever happens next. You can eventually throw out the rescue, whatever that may be.
A real kamikaze plan, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, but you don't get pulled into the cloud. Yeah, that was my thought. Not getting pulled into the cloud. You do something. And if you're kicking your legs or whatever, whatever. But you survive it. So, I flew onto the mountain. At some high speed, I don't know. Like I said, I didn't have a GPS on.
And I was still climbing steadily. Then I went over the summit cross. And then, depending on the wind direction, I drifted a bit sideways into the valley, where it goes down towards the south. Which way does it go? I think it goes down towards Kitzbühel. Drifted a bit sideways into the valley. At some point, what I had planned happened. Yeah, I got into a lee situation. My glider got shredded. And when I had the first real collapse, I positioned myself against the wind again. And then it just kept shredding me. I mean, the glider was just collapsing, left, right, left, right. I was just working up there to get the glider back up. And I lost a lot of altitude through all that collapsing and that lee situation.
Thank God.
At some point, the side twisted so hard that it got caught in the lines. And the glider suddenly flipped onto its nose and into a spiral. I knew immediately then that there was no point in trying anything. You can't get out of that because I still wasn't over the valley. So I didn't have much time to do anything. I was still over the mountainside. You can't get out of that. Wait a bit until you're a little lower and then throw out the rescue.
I then deployed the rescue glider. I still had enough time to think about which direction to throw the rescue glider. How was the glider rotating so that it wouldn't somehow get tangled with the main glider. And then I threw the rescue glider. It opened perfectly. Glided down nicely. And then I was slammed into the steep slope somewhere on the hillside, about 500 meters above the valley at the tree line. One glider was hanging on the rocks. The other glider was hanging in a treetop. And I was on the ground on my tiptoes. So without any fractures or a big scratch, I landed there safely. And then it already started hailing. Wow.
Yeah. Like I said, it stays with you. And it was a real lesson for me in terms of meteorology. Respecting dark clouds, and so on. I still have that in my head. So since then, I've often stayed on the ground when there are dark clouds where many other pilots would head out, where I've told myself, no, that...
was I needed. I don't need that anymore. How is it? I assume that at least during the rainy season on Bali and elsewhere, there are also more frequent thunderstorms. Do you experience them as threatening then too? Like, do you still have something lingering in your soul? Or is that not the case anymore?
I don't experience that anymore here, because the thunderstorms here behave differently than on the mainland. Even at the beginning. I had been to Java at a launch site in the mountains. And there were thunderstorms behind the next mountain range. You could see them, it was raining there. And you could hear the thunder. And the local pilots, they were diligently taking off without even noticing it. And I just said, don't you want to slowly stop? I mean, I'm not packing up. And they asked me, why aren't you packing up? And the answer was, no problem, the thunderstorm is back there and it's staying back there. It's not coming here. You don't have this phenomenon here either, this strong suction and these gust fronts that we know. They don't form here. I don't ask myself why that is.
But you don't have that here. Here, a thunderstorm is normally not associated with strong winds. The thunder here is extremely loud. So you have to imagine the thunder here, even if you're down on the beach, as loud as if you were somewhere in the Alps at 2,000 or 2,500 meters up. Extremely loud.
But hardly any wind. And the thunderstorms don't move much either. So it's completely different from what we're used to. And that's why, when I fly along the coast here now during the rainy season, on a good day like yesterday, and 20 kilometers further back over the capital, over the mountains, the thunderstorms are raging and it's raining and you can hear the thunder, but I don't really worry about it anymore because you know they move extremely slowly. So even if the storm really gets closer, you still have plenty of time to go somewhere to land on the beach. And still, no downdrafts are created. Those gust fronts don't exist here. Interesting. A bit more relaxed than with the thunderstorms back home.
That's the experience you basically had to learn from the locals. So, what's the culture like among the islands?
With the
...the Indonesian pilots. Is it similar, because you'd think pilots everywhere in the world think somewhat similarly? Or would you say a German pilot culture is somehow different from an Indonesian one?
Let's put it this way: the Indonesian aviation culture is different from the German one. The Indonesian pilots here don't really think about what could happen at all. And if something does happen, they don't think about why it happened either. Things happen here that I still can't understand or explain even after a few years. But that's the Indonesian mentality. If you break something here, no matter what it is, you don't think about why it happened. It just happened, it was bad karma, it was a bad day, Allah didn't abandon me, whatever. They just attribute it to religion or a bad day or whatever.
But the idea that you made a mistake yourself, misjudged the weather, or flew into nothingness—they don't think about that for a second here. There are no accident analyses either. I mean, there are fatal accidents involving local pilots. But there's no analysis at all into why the accident happened or what they did wrong, which might have prevented the next young pilot from making the same mistake and dying too.
It doesn't exist here at all. It's just a different approach to life. So, they probably take their whole life like, they say it's somehow karma, whatever might come next, and then you have to... that hit this one person, it doesn't mean that it should apply to the others in the same way.
Yeah, that's pretty much how it is. So, if a pilot is standing at the launch site and it feels like it's blowing extremely hard, you don't look at the anemometer to see how much wind is actually blowing, whether it's still doable or makes sense. In that case, a wind dummy is sent out. The professional paragliding sites here have a wind dummy, and people pay a lot to throw themselves into danger. So it gets sent out, and then they see if it flies forward or if it's already flying backward. That's how you approach it. And if it's not flying backward and is maybe just hovering in the air, then it's okay, then we fly.
And the wind dummy has to survive as a wind dummy for a year, then he can eventually move up to tandem pilot, something like that, or how does that work?
Yes, those are usually quite good solo pilots doing that, because he has to be able to handle the situation. Yes, if he accelerates with the speed bar and is already flying backwards, he has to be able to handle the situation and fly somewhere where he can still land safely. So, the wind-damme are good pilots, but I've already seen things where, as a German, you can only shake your head. Where you say, that's unbelievable, for me it's crystal clear that you can't fly like that, but they still send the guy out because he's being paid for it.
If you go there with your tours and your German pilots and, of course, you end up meeting the locals too, because those are the airstrips operated by the locals and so on, is there ever something like a clash of cultures, or do these international pilots get along very quickly?
No, they get along very quickly. I mean, if you move away from the tourist spots, the local pilots on the neighboring islands like Lombok—especially Sumbawa—the further you get from Bali, the more relaxed it becomes. They are extremely happy when foreign pilots come to fly at their local site. For them, it's an honor, a distinction. They're flying thousands of kilometers from Europe to fly with us at our launch site here. They're over the moon and extremely helpful, basically mothering you all day just because you're here and giving you all the support you could possibly need.
How do these Lombok pilots even get into paragliding themselves? I mean, if you say there are no paragliding schools or anything like that, how do the locals get the idea to go paragliding at all? Paragliding...
It started here in Indonesia, I think on Java. Java is the island with the highest population density. The capital is up there. Most of the universities and hospitals are there too. The biggest infrastructure is simply on Java. And I think that's where paragliding started. I don't know how many years ago that was. In any case, the pilot here on Bali who has the oldest tandem company has been here since before the landing zone. And he's been flying for 25 or 30 years. So paragliding has been known here for a relatively long time too. But back then, it was just a very few isolated pilots, who I have no idea where they got their equipment from, who then introduced this. And at some point, pilots from Java moved over to Lombok to look for new launch sites, a bit of adventure and so on.
And then there were some interested young people on Lombok who jumped on board. They said, okay, I want to learn and try this too. And so paragliding spread a bit from island to island. Although on Lombok, there aren't more than, let's say, 10 or 15 pilots.
Do they share a launch site or does everyone have their own launch site, something like that?
On Lombok, there are actually masses of launch sites. In terms of terrain, Lombok isn't as tropically overgrown as Bali. In terms of terrain, Lombok isn't as tropically overgrown as Bali. There are extremely many small mountains and hills near the coast where you can fly. And there are also, I don't even know how many, five, six, or more launch sites that are flown regularly, which are also well-maintained and always looked after.
And is flying there actually always local flying? Like, surfing a ridge or a slope, or just a bit of local thermals? Or are there also people who really fly? Or who actually do cross-country there? Like, on Lombok, do...
That's not the case. It's local thermals and soaring.
Islands where you can actually go on cross-country flights are basically only Java and the island of Sulawesi. First of all, that's down to the size of the island. And second, it's because of almost all, pretty much all flight areas, there's a larger airport nearby somewhere. That's the main problem here. There's an international airport on Lombok, in Zimbabwe, here on Bali, on Java—there are international airports everywhere. If there were airspaces here, you wouldn't be allowed to fly almost anywhere. But there are no airspaces in Indonesia. Sounds weird, but that's how it is.
That also means, I assume, that since about 70 percent of the flying takes place near the coast, surfing, and so on, you'd say there aren't any large commercial aircraft operating there anyway.
Well, here on Bali, on the coast where we're flying now, we're about 20 kilometers from the airport as the crow flies. If that. Probably less. So we're already very close to the airport. And if there were airspaces, we probably wouldn't be allowed to fly here. But as I said, there are no airspaces here, and accordingly, you can fly almost anywhere. There are verbal agreements with the airport operators. Here, all private—meaning civil as well as commercial—aviation is regulated by the military. That means even the international airport on Bali here is subordinate to the Airbase, the military.
And they basically have their hands on all the flying that happens here in Indonesia. So, if you want to officially set up a new launch site somewhere on Lombok or wherever, theoretically, you just go somewhere and fly, yeah. But if you then want to do tandem flying there, commercially, or bring guests, and want to build a launch site out of the ground, then you meet with them at a round table. And then it's discussed a bit: how dangerous is it, how close are we to the airport, what are we allowed to do and what aren't we. And then it's decided: if you fly there, then don't fly in this direction, but only in the other direction, and don't turn more than 500 meters over the launch site, for example, and then you're allowed to fly there and that's that.
That's how the aviation regulations are handled here.
Did you have to make any arrangements for your tours either? I didn't have to make any arrangements,
but we always involve local pilots whenever we go somewhere. So, if we're heading over to Lombok with our tours, I'll text them beforehand, saying, "Look, we'll be with you for flying on this and that day next week." Then they know what's going on and everything is good. It's always important here that the local pilots are kept in the loop a bit.
But they always say, you're welcome anytime.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Absolutely. You're 54 now, do you see yourself staying in Indonesia, or do you have plans to maybe return to Germany at some point?
No, I see myself staying here. I want to be buried in Indonesia eventually. This is my home now. I still have a mailing address in Germany, but for me, Indonesia is home. I have friends here, and family through my wife. This is where I want to be.
And are there things that sometimes pull you back, where you'd say, oh, I'd love to fly over the Alps again, even if it might be a bad memory now, but something where you're like, mountain flying does have something beautiful that I just can't have here in Indonesia?
Yeah, but those are just brief moments. So, if you see friends or acquaintances on social media who are out in the Alps right now, having a nice flight somewhere in the Dolomites or whatever, you naturally say, yeah, that was a great time, flying there was really nice, it was all great. But those are just very brief moments. It's not like I suddenly get travel fever or homesickness; it's not that strong.
What other interesting or exciting projects do you have for Indonesia, where you'd say, "I'd love to fly there again"?
Yes, it's nice that you're bringing that up now.
We're currently planning a new tour for next year. Just before our conversation, I was sitting down and going over it again. It's a tour to Sumatra. Sumatra is a very large island west of Java. It's the most northwestern island of Indonesia, and they're already at the level of Singapore. It's the sixth-largest island in the world. Roughly a third larger than Germany, but with far fewer inhabitants. And we're planning to do a paraglider trip there for next year. Two tours in August and September. We're currently putting those together. That requires a bit more planning.
There are also designated launch sites and flight areas. But Sumatra is very special in terms of nature. I mean, on Sumatra, where we're going for the tour, there's still real rainforest. With orangutans, elephants, tigers, and other animals. We're going into the jungle during our tour for three days. Staying overnight in the jungle. We have local guides there who will tell us and explain everything to us, and teach us a bit of jungle skills. It's a real adventure. And what else is included in this tour? Sumatra, an offshore island. It's called Mentawai.
That's where Indonesia's oldest tribe, the Mentawai tribe, is located. And they still live today just as they did hundreds of years ago. I mean, they still wear their traditional loincloths and their body paint and all that. They still go into the jungle with blowguns and poison arrows. And they hunt their dinner. Whatever that may be. Some kind of birds or monkeys. And they still live as hunter-gatherers. And we're going there too. For three to four days into the jungle. On an island off the west coast. It takes a whole day just to get there. And that's going to be a very special tour.
And there's also flying involved. For instance, right at the beginning, there's paragliding. We fly there at the largest crater lake in the world. And on the west side, there are a few good flight areas with thermals and also soaring. And all of that is packed into three weeks.
That sounds very exciting. I hope for you that the plans all work out and that they turn into great tours. As well as the other tours you offer. I'll link your website in the show notes. Then people can go there and see what you offer for two and three-week tours across one, two, three, four different islands—if you count Sumatra now—or whatever it is.
That's very nice.
Thank you so much for your story. And I wish you all the best in Indonesia. May you stay healthy. And may you be able to lead all those tours in such a way that everyone who goes there gets to feel the same enthusiasm you have for Indonesia.
I thank you, Lucian Haas, for reaching out to me and offering me this. And I feel honored. I say a heartfelt thank you to you.
That was episode number 130 of Podz-Glidz with Stefan Gradl. You can find his website at paragliding-indonesia.org. In the show notes on the Gleitschirm-Blog Lu-Glidz, I've put together some additional links. If you enjoyed the episode, then please subscribe to Podz-Glidz. You can do that anywhere podcasts are available. If you also leave a positive rating there, you're helping to make Podz-Glidz even better known. Or tell your fellow paragliding friends about it directly. Podz-Glidz and Lu-Glidz are free of paid advertising. I do this out of conviction and for the sake of independence. Nevertheless, a lot of professional work and, of course, costs are involved in these offerings. To finance them, I rely on the concept of voluntary support.
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Until next time. Don't fall from the sky. Ciao.