24,000 FEET AND FALLING

CAUGHT IN A VIOLENT STORM CLOUD, THE PARAGLIDER WAS PUSHED HIGH INTO THE ATMOSPHERE.

- BY Bonnie Munday ILLUSTRATIONS BY Kagan McLeod

THEN HE BLACKED OUT.

BEN LEWIS STEPS INTO THE LEG OPENINGS OF HIS HARNESS, PULLS IT UP, AND SECURES IT TO HIS BODY, FASTENING TWO CLIPS AT HIS WAIST AND ONE AT HIS CHEST. ATTACHED TO EACH SIDE OF THE HARNESS'S SEAT ARE SEVERAL LINES LINKING HIM TO THE WING OF HIS PARAGLIDER.

He glances back at the canopy spread out behind him on the steep grassy slope in northern India—one last check, at 9:30 a.m. on 17 October 2024, to make sure it’s lying flat. Then he turns to face the distant jagged peaks of the Lesser Himalayas and the Kangra Valley around 4,600 feet below. It’s time.

Arms behind him as he grips the paraglider’s synthetic-fibre brake lines, Ben runs toward the valley. Air fills the cells of the 10-metre-wide, yellow-andpink ‘wing’. As he rises into the clouddotted blue sky, he brings his legs forward, tucks them into the glider’s neoprene pod, and sits back into the harness’s seat.

This is the moment Ben loves: He is airborne and soaring like a bird.

PARAGLIDING AND HANG GLIDING have been described as man’s purest forms of flying. But paragliders say their pursuit has the edge because the equipment is so portable; the canopy and harness can be packed into a bag, whereas hang gliders have a large fixed-triangle frame. That flexibility to fly anywhere drew Ben Lewis, 45, to paragliding.

The family doctor, who lives in the mining town of Watson Lake in Canada's Yukon territory with his wife, Lindsey, and their two young children, got hooked after taking a one-day course in 2009 while travelling in New Zealand. Back home, he bought a paraglider with a friend and began taking flying leaps off the mountains around Whitehorse, Yukon. He later got his own equipment and went soaring in Mexico, Spain and Colombia.