Skydiving has been long pending on my bucket list, i have always wondered what it would be like to fly. During childhood, we all have pretended to fly like a plane or a bird. I always wanted to be a fighter jet pilot but luckily or unluckily, life had a different plan for me.
As I have moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands for work from India, I am exploring europe, which has many of the planet earth's beautiful places. I planned to go skydive in Texel (sounds like "Tessel"), Netherlands which is an island in North Holland.
How to reach Texel from Amsterdam?
We decided to travel by public transport, which is quite reliable in Netherlands.
We started from Amsterdam Central around 8 am and took NS train towards Den Helder. (Trains run every half an hour.)
After reaching Den Helder, you have two options, either walk or take bus no 33 towards the port. We decided to walk and came across Dutch Navy Museum, Den Helder which we got to see some old ships and even submarines.
We didn't have much time to explore Den Helder and took a ferry from the port to Texel Island which usually flee every half an hour to and fro. You can buy the Teso Ferry tickets online or on-spot for a to and fro cost of 2.5 euros per person. Teso have some really nice ferry which have huge capacity and is largely used by people for transportation and you are even permitted to take your cycles, motorcycles and four wheeler (cars / vans).
After you reach Texel island, you have some public transport options, if you want to go to the main town, you can take Connexxion bus service ( your ov-chipkaart works :D ), but if you have to go to some other part of the island like we want to go to Paracentrum Texel (Skydiving Center), so you have to take TexelHopper which is basically a shuttle service which runs on hourly basis but there is a catch, you have to book your travel online in advance and there is no option to buy on-spot tickets and we were not aware of the situation and missed the most recent shuttle which wa available at 10 am and when we tried to book the tickets online, it required you to authenticate using e.identifier provided by your dutch bank to make the payment using IDEAL payment gateway.
Just a heads up, please make your booking in advance for TexelHopper from their website and tickets cost 3 euros per journey.
We finally reached the Skydiving center and booked our slot for skydiving and the wait started. It is an out of the world feeling which you have when you free fall and I enjoyed every second of it. My tandem was Mike Milton, a professional skydiver from Sydney, Australia and have a great interest in the cricket, especially India vs Australia matches, which are among the best cricket teams in the world today. Mike kept me informed about the basics and all the information which i needed to know like what altitude, we will be jumping from and at what altitude, he will open the parachute and he won my trust.
All set to go:
Just a few seconds away:
and there you go:
After he opened the parachute, we were in the sky around 4000ft above the ground and then he taught me some basics to control a parachute and we talked more about cricket and how much he liked the Indian Cricket team Captain, Virat Kohli.
After we landed, the skydiver (photographer) Kim Reuvers, interviewed me again and asked about my experience. I feel its an awesome sport for people who like to experience adrenaline rush. I will surely go for skydiving again, it's kind of addictive.
Thanks for taking out your time to read my post, hope you liked my story. I would request you to share your feedback / suggestions and upvote + resteem if you enjoyed my post.
Regards,
Abhinav Badola
Super nice post!
hope you like Amsterdam! i blog about it and my travels of the last four years.
You are very brave, dont think i would dare to do it.
will keep an eye out for your blogs
dont forget the "grachten festival" this weekend
@heyitshaas Thanks buddy, Yup looking forward to go for the festival. Looks interesting, thanks for sharing.
no problem, make sure to listen to the song they always close with "aan de amsterdamse grachten" so you can sing a long, enjoy!
This is awesome. I could do it tandem with someone I think - just not alone! lol
Thanks for sharing
Following you
Thank you @sallybeth23, you should give tandem jump a shot.
Nice dive and you captured awesome pictures. I went skydiving for the first time last year and I definitely want to go again. Have you heard of the wingsuit? You can jump with a wingsuit after completing like 180 jumps. LOL! I suspect that you have to work at a skydiving place to get that many jumps under your belt!
@aweinclusive Thank you. Yup wingsuits are awesome but needs a lot of practice and time to learn how to use them.
Definitely! It seems like a person would have to work at a skydiving facility for a few months to get that many jumps in. Would be so worth it though!
Wow! that's awesome. Skydiving has been on my bucket list for quite some time too. I should definitely find time to experience it :D
Thank you @vaelriey, you should go for it.
Good for you, I'm glad you had fun with your bucket list pursuits. However I have to point out that sky-diving isn't really flying, it's falling. If you want to replenish your bucket list add paragliding - it also has a tandem option to try it out on a good day you'll be able to climb up into the sky like a bird. Experienced pilots can fly for many hours at a time, climb to the edge of legal airspace (18,000 feet in the US - with oxygen of course), have even flown over Everest, and travel literally hundreds of miles cross-country.
We get quite a few sky-divers take up paragliding because they enjoy the chute time so much. If you take lessons then within just a few days you should be flying longer than the average sky-diver ever falls for. Within weeks you could be ridge soaring like a bird and only coming down because you need a bathroom break (yes experienced pilots have a solution for that).
Here's a post I did about paragliding at a Northern California site called Hat Creek: https://steemit.com/paragliding/@o1o1o1o/paragliding-at-hat-creek
@o1o1o1o, paragliding is also on my bucket list. I know flying and free-falling are completely different experience , but these few seconds of free fall are more thrilling as you experience 9.8G
I tried indoor skydiving - it was quite a blast! (pun intended). No freefall though. If you're a thrill seeker then you'll learn acrobat paragliding. You can easily pull enough g to black out if you're not careful, and part of the thrill is trying not to "gift wrap" yourself in the wing. It's not really my cup of tea - a few 360s and wing overs are enough for me.
Some cool PG videos (acro and freestyle):
These videos are awesome, but require high level of skill. I would for sure go for it someday. Following you 😀
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STOPLooks like you had a great time! I love skydiving, too - next time train to do it solo! There's nothing like the feeling of drifting under the parachute, far above the earth, in total solitude.
@therovingreader thank you. Yup i had a great time. Yup, i might take this thrill seriously 😀
Super awesome!!!!!You are really really brave i wanna do like this but i think i could not because I've been Amusement Park, I've played Giant Drop. When it dropping down my heart is beating like crazy. I think i would die and i never play it again haha. Upvoted
@alexwonderful thank you. Trust me you won't... You have to just win over your fears and that's how you conquer the world.
Congratulations on your jump bro ;-)