Why drive when you can fly?

Why drive when you can fly?
Some people simply refuse to tread the beaten path. They make their own road, live life their own way. As we step into the New Year, TOI catches up with a couple of them
Preetu Nair | TNN

Anjuna: It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Goa’s winged Austrian.
Meet Gerhart Lechner, whose fear of drunken drivers on Goa’s narrow roads has forced him to take to the skies.
“There is too much of traffic on Goan roads. If I have to go to a beach I just fly,” says the 44-year-old mechanical engineer who has been coming to Goa for the last 20 years for “sports and yoga”. A few years back, he purchased a house in Assagao, in North Goa.
“I need just three things: roti and dal to live, and petrol to fly,” he says. His 210 cc powered hang glider does about 40 kms an hour. “If the wind is good, the journey is much faster and more fun,” says Gerhart.
It takes Gerhart just about a litre of petrol and 30 minutes to fly from Anjuna to Tiracol—-a distance of about 30 km by road which takes at least an hour to cover, that too if you get the ferry across the Tiracol river immediately when you reach the jetty. “The cost of flying is almost similar to the cost of driving,” he says, adding that it is much safer. “There are too many harsh drivers and the risk of accidents is high. I am scared of drunken drivers,” he says.
For the past few years, he has been lugging his glider along on his annual winter visit. While the glider’s motor is from Germany, the rest of it is from Switzerland.
Though the glider helps him go from place to place as the crow flies, he is not free as a bird. Gerhart can neither fly everywhere, nor can he fly anytime. He can take to the skies only within a designated area and during designated periods.
“I have a six-month permission for para gliding and para motors in Goa from the Flag Officer, Naval Aviation, Vasco,” says Gerhart. The permission allows him to hand glide from Tiracol river in the north to Chapora river in the south, while the Maneri to Banda road acts as the eastern limit and NH-17 as the western limit.
“Within the designated area, my operations are restricted to 1,000 feet above mean sea level and I am permitted to fly only from 5 am to 10 am and 5 pm to 7 pm. However, before I take off, I have to inform the air traffic control at INS Hansa to ensure that there is no collision with any flying object,” he said.
Though he would like to fly further south, the airport at Dabolim does not permit him to. “I try to be as legal as possible and remain within the designated area of operation, avoid climbing above 1,000 feet above mean sea level and remain clear of clouds.”

January 1, 2009, The Times of India, Goa edition