Bir and Billing

The flying is why Bir is on the map, and it is worth understanding how the two halves of the name fit together. Billing is the launch — a bare grass shoulder at 2,400m reached by fourteen kilometres of rough road above the village. Bir is the landing field, a thousand metres below. You go up in a jeep and come down under a canopy.

The site is genuinely good rather than locally famous. The valley faces south, the thermals build reliably through the morning, and there is a clean approach with somewhere to put down. That combination is rare, and it is why the World Cup came here in 2015.

For a tandem flight you need no experience and no preparation. There is a briefing, you are clipped to a pilot, and you take a few running steps down the slope — the wing is already flying by the time your feet leave. Most flights are fifteen to thirty minutes. On a good day in late October they are considerably longer, and that is weather rather than something you can buy.

Two nights is the sensible booking. Flying is cancelled for wind and cloud fairly often, and people who allow a single afternoon end up driving away without having gone up.

The other half of Bir is the Tibetan settlement, established in the 1960s, with four monasteries and the Deer Park Institute in it. It is quieter than McLeod Ganj by a wide margin and a good number of people end up staying for months on the strength of that.