Stubborn Man on a Stubborn Balloon

There are so many interesting anecdotes about Vijaypat Singhania's record breaking hot air ballooning feat that media space has fallen short to report all of them.

Singhania did not refrain from adding his personal touch to parts of the flight. For instance during the descent, Singhania's flight technician Colin Prescot had announced in Mumbai that weather conditions and misbehaving burners would make landing an ardous task spread over several hours. Minutes after the prediction, Singhania took matters in his own hands and landed anyway. Brute force works best in times of crises. That he landed in the same area in Sinnar near Nasik where he had performed practice flights earlier must have helped.

Soon after he hit the ground, Singhania cut the balloon off from the capsule. The balloon after detachment dragged away some of the burners with it, charring the grass for some distance. Funnily enough, the balloon then took off on its own again, and was still floating in the sky when Singhania boarded a chopper back to Mumbai. The balloon continued floating all over the place till late evening, giving some really nasty moments to the Singhania's ground team. Imagine their plight, as they had to keep chasing the balloon around in their SUVs all day in order to catch it the moment it touched down again!

It would be wholly amusing to find out where the balloon finally ended its love affair with the air... if it fell on top of some unsuspecting villager having a bidi or on farmland, damaging lakhs worth of produce. In the olden days, hot air ballooners carried a bottle of champagne along with them in the flight. Because you cannot predict where your balloon will land, the champagne came handy as a gift for cooling down tempers of the people whose property you landed on. Over time, property owners realized that a balloon carrying people in a basket dropping all of a sudden from the sky is not really God's curse. So the champagne was instead shared by the ballooners in a party after returning to the launch site. The ritual champagne party was thrown by the Singhanias after the flight too.

Anyhow, reporting the hot air balloon record was a wholly exciting experience. I watched the takeoff in-the-flesh, and then later followed the balloon all through its flight in a chopper. We veered above Mumbai, Trombay, Alibagh and the highway to Nasik for hours, catching both beautiful and ugly overhead glimpses of India's most complicated city before taking an exclusive return flight with the Man of the Day himself. These are the experiences that make me feel very convinced about having made the right decision about my career!