I've been living in Jeddah since mid-September.  Every few days I spend an hour or so trying to find a contact for someone in the KSA that could tell me the state of the union for paragliding... I finally stumbled on www.fly-windows.com.

Abdul Bari runs a school in Abha, KSA.  A quick phone call gave me all the info I needed.  The following Friday (the weekend here) I was on a plane for the one hour flight to Abha where I was greeted by a very friendly local pilot who was to give me lift out to the flyng sites. 

I arrived at 9:30am. After a little friendly chat I learned that the flying doesn't really start til 3:00pm so we took the long way around and Nasir showed me some other sites.  The main one being at Sooda (or Sawda) at 9600' asl... 4500' above the LZ and there is a cable car back to launch. At noon there were Qs popping of all over the place.  Tooooo sweeet... unfortunate it's  summer site.  The wind was blowing over the back so we drove down about 50 hair pin turns to see the land ing zone and the town museum where we found the "Section of Social Politeness tools"  Check the photos and use your immagination.

Next we were off to the site-of-the-day at Muhail.  Where we did some international parawaiting.  By the time a desion was taken there were 20 pilots in the convoy to the upper "launch"  which is quite litrally from the tarmac on the main road.  I waited for two pilots to show me the way before I hucked off. Although it was after 4:00 (the sun goes down around 6:30) there was still plenty of nice phat lift.  I drifted in and out of .5 - 1.5 m/s for about 2 hours before landing at dusk. I  bagged it up and headed back to town for my 8:30 flight home - which I missed.

As I understand it some bulgarians and some frenchmen got the ball rolloing here.  Around ten years ago. They taught a pince and a few locals to fly and it's been growing ever since.  There are no official rules or regulations exception that appearantly "private avaition" is prohibited.  I'm still not sure how these boys are getting around that but I was told that in certain cases this aviation-friendly prince (a PG pilot himself) will issue a universal get out of jail free card to paraglide anywhere in the Kingdom - I got get me one of those just to hang on the wall even if I never use it.

Well, I'm in now,for 500sr I'm an offical member of the club and my photo ID is in the mail.  I know there is bond in the brotherhood of paraglider pilots.  Everywhere I've travelled the local pilots bend over backwards to help a visitor.  Really though -  these guys raised the bar. They are brothers - and from the moment I said "Hi, I'm here to fly with you" I was a brother too. Very... very... kind and completely welcoming.... it was really a terrific day.  The only thing mssing was te beer in the LZ.

Tick... I got my first flight in the KSA and I'll be back there just as often as I can.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/gtissington/AbhaParaglidng

sorry there are none from the air. my battery died just as we were getting set up to fly.   I'll have to get them next time