This is about the skydiving which I had done loooong time back
during my first visit to US early 2006. If you haven’t yet seen this
funny video of me skydiving do check it out, but do remember to
control your laughter

And here’s the photo slide show

Well, skydiving had always been one of my childhood dreams. My
room-mate Rahul suddently planned to go for skydiving and invited me.
Well I did not have much choice but to join him. So me, Rahul and
Karishma set out of the jump.

We wore the skydiving equipment and got ready for tandem. We then
started our ascent in the smalled plane I had ever travelled. It was
so small that one could almost touch windows at either ends if she
steaches her hands! Rahul and I were confident all the time while
Karishma was nervous and was not sure if she will really jump. But
what happened later was one of the greatest ironies!

I was really exited when I was about to jump with Gene. I had seen
lot of skydiving videos in TV and I had thought that I will float in
the air and will move towards earth slowly. Boy I was wrong big time!
All those videos are taken with camera falling at the same speed as
the person who is being recorded. So by looking at the video one can
never get the feel of the speed with which one would fall. As soon as
I jumped I realized earth was sucking me real hard I was falling
at a speed of around 200 KM/Hour!! And the gadgets I was having was
faulty. My glasses were coming off and I since the speed was so high
I was feeling that if the glasses come off my eyes might pop out!
Believe me the the wind was hitting my face real hard. I also
realized that I was unable to breathe! When I was jumping I was all
smiles and within 3 seconds my expressions had completely changed (as
you can see in the video!). We came down from 16,000 feet to 5,000
feet in 1 minute!

After this Gene opened the Parachute and it became real good. Now
I realized that the gloves with holes which was given to me was
causing severe problems. The air temperature was well below zero
degree centigrade and boy my palm really froze. But now the speed of
our fall had really come down and we were just floating in the air.
The view down was amazing. We took 10 minutes to come down from 5,000
feet to zero and this time was the most wonderful experience!

After coming down Rahul was very very eager to have a look at
Karishmas video. He thought that she would have been really terrified
during the fall. But we both couldn’t believe what we saw in the
video. Rahul and I were cool and confident all the time but we both
looked terrified on the camera while falling, both of us found it
difficult to breathe. And this was the best part, Karishma who was
afraid all the while looked really cool after she jumped into the
sky. She was smiling all the time in the video!!

It was an amazing experience which we would cherish for real
looong time.