The Pilot

Driven by Curiosity

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to go flying. First I asked my mother for permission to start parachuting (no!). Then I discovered hang gliding, but it never happened. Instead my mind turned the other way and I became an avid diver and underwater film maker, and served on a submarine in the Royal Swedish Navy.

In August 2004 I finally took a course in paragliding in the Swedish ski resort Åre. What a revelation! I just regret I didn’t do it ten years earlier.

Since then I have done some soaring at Hammars Backar/Kaseberga in Southern Sweden, tasted some thermalling in Mayrhofen, Austria and in Southern Spain.

For 20 months I lived in Belgium and tried to discover the local flying scene there and in neighboring France, with much help from some enthusiastic Belgian pilots.

I continue to travel with my glider to get the most out of the pleasure of being airborne under my own wing. The summer of 2006, I spent in Israel, enjoying the coastal soaring and one of the mountain sites in the Golan Heights.

In the end of November 2006, I moved to Jerusalem, so there will for sure be more paragliding in the Middle East.

And in February 2007, I was appointed Editor-in-Chief for the Swedish paragliding magazine Hypoxia. So there will definetly be more flying :-) Like when I went to the Xaló Valley in southern Spain to write a story about the paragliding there. Or when I travelled to charming Gréolières in Provence for another story.

Paragliding by Marko