Freefall, hover, fly: Inside Hyd’s new indoor skydiving arena

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If strapping on a parachute and stepping out of an airplane feels like an odd fit, you can now try something that approximates at least part of that experience. India’s first indoor skydiving space lets “flyers” hover 20 ft above the ground held up by a wind tunnel, in an experience that replicates the freefall portion of a skydive (but inside a glass cylinder).

Wind speeds in the tunnel reach 200 miles an hour, creating a smooth column of air in which to float. In that sense, it’s more a flying experience than a skydiving experience, says co-founder Sushil Meda.

GravityZip, which opened at Gandipet in Hyderabad on April 17, is run by Sushil Meda and his brother Ram Meda. They decided to set it up after enjoying a similar experience in the US. The brothers also run an amusement park in Hubli, Karnataka, which helped them approach this venture with some confidence, they say. Bringing the indoor skydiving technology to India presented a completely new set of challenges, though. “We spent about a year just trying to understand how the wind tunnel would adapt to Indian climate or to fluctuating voltage,” Ram says.

Now that it’s up and running, the Medas say, GravityZip offers a few distinct advantages: it’s an experience for those not brave enough (yet) to skydive; it’s a place where aspiring skydivers can try it out and get some practice. Additionally, it’s an experience that is not dependent on the weather, and it can be replicated so that the flyer gets the same experience every time.

At GravityZip, flyers are given helmets, padded suits and protective goggles. A 20-minute session offers pre-flight instruction and a short list of hand gestures to use to communicate better inside the tunnel. Flyers then spend another 20 minutes acclimatising in a pre-flight chamber where they can feel the wind and watch other flyers in the wind tunnel. They are then guided into the tunnel one by one.

A flyer enters the wind tunnel at a height of 3 ft to 5 ft above the ground. Here, they can find a comfortable levitating position. Amid rising wind speeds, the instructor then guides them upward, to heights of up to 20 ft. This portion, called tunnel flight, typically lasts one minute. A package of two one-minute flights costs 2,800 (on weekdays; 3,300 on weekends).

Business analyst Ram Charan Devalala, 29, who has been skydiving once, recently tried the indoor experience. “The sensation of falling with gravity definitely felt scarier during the outdoor skydive,” he says. “The scariest part of the indoor version was right before you enter the tunnel, as you feel the strong wind and get a taste of what’s to come. The experience of being in the column of air was very similar in both experiences,” he says.

Puli Vanaja Reddy, a psychiatrist who tried the indoor experience and has never been skydiving, says she felt “ten kgs lighter” in the wind tunnel, and very refreshed after. She wasn’t at all scared, she says, “but it does get your adrenaline pumping”.

It’s designed to not be scary, says Sushil Meda, who hasn’t yet skydived outdoors but went as far as boarding a plane once (he didn’t jump because of bad weather). The indoor experience in the US proved to be far less scary, and that made the brothers want to bring it here.

“We want to give everyone a chance to have the experience of being held up by a column of air, as if they are flying or floating,” Sushil says. “For some, this may also help them decide whether they want to pursue the real thing.”

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