Flights of Fantasy over the City of Lakes - Bhopal

The feeling of being above the ground at 4000 feet plus, in an 360 degree open air basket, with early morning chill caressing your skin along with carrying a chilly feeling deep inside down your heart that if something goes wrong at that height. All this is fun at one time when you take a ride in a Hot air balloon.
What can shake one from not entering the fantasy flight is with your inaugural flight crash landing from a height of 400 to 500 feet, with you sitting in crash land position and the basket hitting tree branches and a roof of a building before you realize that you have landed with a roaring thud. This experience happened to me in my first flight along with another fotog from a agency, who refused to enter the hot basket sitting that he would rather shoot from the ground during an adventure ride with the 3 EME center based in Bhopal in December 2002.
The harness wire which the captain of the balloon handles caught fire and snapped. Thanks to Major Bhaskar who was our team captain who kept his cool and did the landing in the safest way possible, thus ensuring that there was no injuries to any of the five occupants. Later before we could reload our senses and take our seats with one member short, we took off again but this time with more confidence and after ensuring that all the things were in place.
As for me I took the bull by the horn, and was all excited to get some very exciting pictures of the city of lakes and the rural side of it.
What you get to see below appeared in the front page of the HT Bhopal Live of my personal experience and the pictures I took from 4000 to 6000 feet above ground.
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Its as close it gets to being on a flight of fantasy in the real world. Rising slowly above the terra firma in a hot-air balloon and seeing the world from 4,000 + feet high. And there's nothing to compare with a hot-air balloon ride. In a fast train the landscape whizzes by in a blur: In a hot-air balloon, the meadows just keep getting smaller and smaller as time virtually stands still.

Even for any Fotog with a seasoned eye for visuals, it's quite a spectacle taking time to sink in. And it was that kind of day for a couple of lens men, who were taken up a hot air balloon with them by Army Adventure Wing members of the 3 EME Center.
Major Bhaskar was at the helm as the balloon took off. For a slow rising mass of hot-air, contraption of ropes and the balloon itself, it was surprising to see it still took a lot of skill to rise slowly and navigate in the face of smoe pretty quirky wind.

Naib Subeidar Santosh was in charge of the other balloon as the two spectacular machines rose in tandem from the Jeet Stadium at the EME Center. The wind was strong throughout and favored North-West. The speed of the balloons was 25 nautical miles before we smoothly landed on the farmland near Khukaria village about 45 Kilometers away from the main road.
Major Bhaskar and Santosh plan to cross the Arabian Sea in February 2003, a feat that would be under-taken for the first time by any Asian. These rides are their practice flights and meant to sharpen their skills. After all, a botched ride over a desolate stretch of the Arabian Sea could be rather unforgiving.

During the ride, we saw nomadic tribesmen from Rajasthan herding their live stock and camels, across the rural hinterland. Their annual migration into the State's 'greener pastures' has just begun.
Even as the camels gently strode across the vast plains underneath, Major Bhaskar's balloon gently brushed some treetops, a bit scary for the second time in one day, for a ballooner but a routine experience for the immensely skilled officer.
The balloon itself was of rib-knit nylon to take up to 140 to 160 degrees of heat blown from four blowers fixed to gas cylinders.

Major Bhaskar says you need a keen knowledge of the wind velocity and also the knack of blowing enough hot air to avert mishaps.
Colonel Balasubramaniam, the head of the ground staff which helps retrieve the hot air balloons after they land, says it is easy to fly high but following the balloon is the tricky part because they have to stick to roads and then make their own track to reach the balloon far afield.