Wherever I have been in the world to fly my largest of kites, so much is the same. Pilots help each other, laugh with each other, analyze conditions together. Small crowds gather to take in the spectacle of humans hurling themselves into the void. Children shriek and dance with excitement with the wave of a passing pilot or perhaps a steeply carved turn directly over head.

Paragliding is also so often intimately tied to agriculture. To paraglide is also to explore the farm land and farm communities of a place. The sounds of cow bells ringing on grazing cow necks (in Bali they are made of bamboo and sound especially sublime). Roosters cry out in the morning. Fence lines divide properties and are criss-crossed by back roads, some of which are the little secrets that lead to launch or an LZ that pilots so treasure and others ignore. Farmers work their land, reap their harvest, lend a watchful eye to the strange people in the sky.

To drive the back roads, walk through the fields, pass through the gates is as much paragliding as is riding the lift into the sky. Greeting the farmers, the cows, the chickens is a sort of homecoming.

Paragliding is the same everywhere yet we travel the world to fly. Perhaps it is simply for the confirmation and to see another farm from the air.