24-05-2025
Weekend Warm-Up: Crossing Dreams
Crossing Dreams, subtitled "Solo bivouac paragliding adventure in Himalaya," documents the recent exploits of professional paragliding coach Francois Ragolski. His attempt to follow a long route through and over the Himalaya covered 60 days, four countries, 2,580km and 113 hours of paragliding.
Ragolski has been paragliding for 18 years and planning this expedition for six months. Like him, the movie is anxious to finally start, so it wastes no time launching into the first day of the journey.
It's a solo trip, but he avoids self-isolation, stopping to speak and share meals with the people he passes.
"I thought everybody here would speak Russian," Ragolski says ruefully, when his attempts to find a common language with two hunters in Tajikistan fail. "I was wrong, nobody here speaks Russian." But even with the language barrier, his friendly enthusiasm carries him through.
"Everyone was so load you with so much good food," Ragolski says. Every few days, he meets locals, usually shepherds, who share their food and shelter with him. Left to his own devices, he mostly eats packaged noodles and dried fruit, so a hot meal and friendly faces are a welcome change.
Ragolski spent months plotting his course on Google Maps using satellite images. But when he arrived in Dushanbe, Tajikistan to begin his route, officials stopped him. Government officials, military officers, and tour agency representatives told him the airspace he planned to fly through was simply too dangerous.
They gave him a new route. It was less likely to get him shot down, but it was also longer and more difficult from a technical perspective. The route change lands him in an area heavily populated by wolves and bears, where officials warned him not to stay the night. But the wind and weather conditions ground him, and he passes a stressful night hearing the sounds of animals outside of his tent.
Tired and hoping to avoid confrontations with the local wildlife, Ragolski hitches a ride into Pakistan. Some exceptions for bear and militarized airspace-related dangers aside, he aims to fly as much as possible. Doing that means landing -- and sleeping -- in places he can take off from again in the morning. This makes for some uncomfortable digs, but it's better than walking. "I am lazy," Ragolski jokes.
After the stark beauty of the mountains, the intermissions in crowded urban areas are another kind of striking. Later, a two-week-long spot of rain grounds him in India. He avoids despair through ping pong and a bit of light tourism.
"But as soon as I flew again, I was just so happy," Ragolski says when he finally gets back in the air on day 41. This is a frequent exclamation; his sheer joy at being aloft and moving forward is palpable.
The point of going solo is that he can go at his own pace, taking his time to explore, to meet people, to avoid unnecessary dangers and complications. It's not a race or an exercise in self punishment -- it's an adventure.
In the final days of his journey, Ragolski glides past famous peaks like Annapurna and Everest, marveling aloud. "Wow! What an adventure...I'm so so happy I came."
