Sky Diving At Seventy Three

Why do people do skydiving? Is it not risky and dangerous? Are these guys mad or out of their mind? Craziest of the crazy?

Skydiving gives you a thrill. Thrill beyond words. Because you dive from an aircraft for a free fall! Hurtling down to the earth below at a speed of 200 kms an hour! And before you get scared of crashing on the ground, the parachute opens and arrests your speed. Then the gradual descent begins. Sounds cool? Or, scary? Have you done it? Would you like to do it?

I recently did skydiving with Ankur our son-in-law, Nikhil our elder grandson and two other friends Satyam and Sachi the father-daughter duo, in California. It was an adventure beyond words. The feeling of having done it is like climbing a summit. Am grateful to God that I could do it at my 'young' age of 73! Of course the other thrilling aspect was that three generations did it together. Same day, same aircraft, same height but two dives! We all couldn't be accommodated in one sortie as explained later.

It was a long wait before our turn for the dive came. Let the pictures do the talking.

After three hours, Sachi, Nikhil and Ankur got their turn. The jubilant trio returning after the dive.

Each skydiver is thoroughly briefed and kitted up before boarding the flight.

Time to board the single engine plane for the air drop.

Ready to go!

See the short video of my parachute coming in for landing.

Finally, the touch down! Felt dehydrated.

Sharing below a video showing the highlights of the skydive.

Special thanks to Ankur and Ashi for making it happen. In Neeta's absence, Ashi tried her best to dissuade all of us from doing it. She even interviewed Clark one of the experienced instructors, about the safety measures and the risk involved. Thank you Ashi for relenting and let us do it!

Location

Bay Area Skydiving is located in Byron, California.

Cost of a Dive

We thank Bay Area Skydiving in California for giving us a lifetime experience. Bookings can be made online contact ID jump@bayareaskydiving.com. Week day dives are a bit cheaper. The dive costs USD  300 per person for up to 60 seconds free fall from a height of 15,000 feet. There is a discount of USD 10 for students and military personnel.. Videography charges are extra and vary from USD 100 to 200.

Other Adventure Stories

We are sharing below a story of another adventure sport called 'paramotoring' where you fly in the sky like a paratrooper! Heard about it? If not, then browse the link below for a picture story:

Paramotoring in Hyderabad - Shows what a paratrike is like. It includes the picture story of a 'young' lady who celebrated her 63rd birthday doing paramotoring after reading our blog! She called it a glorious experience.

Here is another story of four young women hiking in a river having chest high water with strong current! They had left their children behind! Sounds crazy? Browse the link below:

Women Hiking In Water - Picture story of four young moms hiking in a flowing river for 25 kms!

We end with a PQ picturesque quote about life and the spirit of adventure.

Hope our story has shaken you to rise above your comfort zone! Take risks and enjoy life.

Thanks for browsing and stay connected.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad/ Pleasanton, USA/ 7th Aug 2025

#adventure #livinglife #comfortzone #risksinlife #thrill #skydiving #california #bayarea #freefall #threegenerations #crazyguys #ghumakkadhb #ghumakkadharsh

Ghumakkad Enters The Teens

Celebration time again. Ghumakkad's blog, your blog, is thirteen! Ghumakkad too is thirteen but with sixty years of wandering around!

Ghumakkad expresses his gratitude to each one of you for this exciting journey together. Like all life on earth, we the human beings are also dependent upon Nature. Ghumakkad too loves Nature. And that is why my tagline on Insta says  'Forever at Peace Outdoors'. Nature is amazing as well as mysterious. A lifetime is not enough to fathom Nature's mysteries like the picture below. The khoj खोज meaning 'the quest' continues.

With the support of our readers worldwide, we have crossed the milestone of half-a-million page views this year. In fact the count now reads 603,000 page views! Eight years ago when we crossed the 100,000 mark, Radhika Sareen one of our regular readers had commented 'You will soon cross a Million mark!' It did not seem attainable becuse it had taken us five years to reach 100,000. A ten-fold growth meant another 50 years. Not in my life time I thought! But now it seems we are getting there! It is the magic created and continued by the readers!

As we said earlier, numbers don't matter for our blog. Being a non-political, non-religious, non-commercial, non-celebrity blog it has limited readership. We are happy with the readers that we have. Your insights and encouragement keeps us going. In fact our readers have been contributing many guest stories to our blog, your blog.

When Fallen, Get Up and Go

This year Ghumakkad lost his travel companion (and life partner too). But Ghumakkad is trying to retain the spirit of the blog. The posts may have been fewer but the show has gone on. Sharing below the post dedicated to Neeta with eulogies from her near and dear ones.

We Will Miss You Forever 

Last year we had shared a snapshot of our content and its variety. We are re-posting it with suitable uodates. Read on.

The Journey

Ghumakkad started as a travel blog. Our inaugural story was a set of eight posts on picturesque Bhutan. Initially the blog was by invitation. Naturally it had very limited page views in the first three years. Once opened to public, more readers enjoyed browsing it. See the graph below which shows the current page views at 603,000 with more than 5600 comments. This is the 643rd Post of our blog.

As we mentioned, last year saw an increase of 153,000 page views as shown in the graph below.

The Content

Our blog has a variety of content with pictures and videos. Some of the themes are listed below with links to connected stories:

• Travelogues like Huka Falls Taupo New Zealand,  A Train journey in USA, Scuba diving at 65, Hiking up the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, Toddler on a Hike, Veterans Bash In A Train

• Wildlife including The Big Five of Africa, Tigers of Tadoba, Birds of Ranganathittu, Rescuing a Black Winged Stilt, Lakshmi The Tigress Teacher, Ajgar Dadar Preserving the Pythons

• Environment including Trees (Cherry Blossom Nature's Revival, White Jamun?, Neem Trees Under Attack), plants (Friendship With Plants), insects and flowers (Brahma Kamal)

• Online Contest called Kaun Banega Ghumakkad which has completed 80 editions so far! It is though temporarily suspended.
• Lesser-known India series Tunnel Tourism, Belum Caves, Hindola Toran, Devarakonda Fort and more

• Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship stories like Dreams to Reality, Young Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, Startup Fever Grips VVISM

• Teaching and learning (Ghumakkad is a teacher!) Jeevan Vidya Workshop- A Journey Within,  Yoga Mat With A Bandage, Implementing NEP-2020, real-life case studies and Innovations in A Convocation

• Obituaries of leaders like Ratan Tata,  Dr Abdul Kalam and martyrs like Capt Ravi Shankar

• Motivational posts like This Time of the Year and more during Covid

• Guest stories including those written by our grandchildren (Coyote Gulch Hiking in Stream), Covid survivors (I Got A New Life) and Animal Lovers like Rohini

• Picturesque Quotes having one of our pictures with a famous quote like Claude Monet on Nature and another one by a KBG winner.

• Adventure and Endurance like Ankush Does It The Ironman, Women Hiking in Water

The Readership

Thanks to the wider reach of internet, our blog is read globally. Readers from India account for only 45%, balance coming from across the globe. See the colour coded world map below.

Most Viewed Posts (All time)

Our story on 'Brahma Kamal The Queen of Night' has been read by almost 8000 readers. It shows the readers' interest in environment and Nature related posts.

Capt Ravi Shankar's life story has been read more than 7770 times. We salute his supreme sacrifice

.

See the list of most viewed posts below.

Most viewed posts during the last 12 months are shown below. Our readers have shown a wide preference for the blog posts.

Acknowledgements

There are numerous people who have helped us grow. We place on record our appreciation to the following for their unstinted support.

Trixie Asirvatham our content advisor

Chitra Shanker our advisor on plants, trees, insects and birds

Ramya Sriram logo designer of our KBG Contest

Yella Prakash Rao our ornithologist

We also thank each one of you for your continued support without which Ghumakkad wouldn't have been here! Do give us your feedback to help us improve.

Onwards to the 14th Anniversary of Ghumakkad next year!

Thanks for browsing. Stay connected

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad / 21st May 2025/ Secunderabad

#GhumakkadHarsh #GhumakkadHB #13thAnniversary #BlogAnniversary #ThrillOfWriting #JourneyOfLife #BringingSmiles #makingadifference #kbgcontest #kaunbanegaghumakkad #wellness #motivation #inspiration #positivity #nature #environment #teachers #learning #india #mysteriesofnature #travelforfun #wildlife #keepgoing #blogger #pictures #photowalks #powerofobservation #students #adventure #lesserknownindia #PQs #picturesquequotes #learningtogether #mangroves #adventure #IronMan #NewZealand #neetabhargava #lifeafterdeath