“One should try a number of different things in their lives. Even if one is very knowledgeable, when you try to experience something only in your brain, then you know nothing. Homo sapiens today has been looking to experience everything without it actually happening in reality. For me it does not work. "
This is what the only Bulgarian acrobatic paraglider pilot Vesselin Ovcharov thinks about life. For the first time he flew a paraglider in 2000 and hasn’t stopped since then. Borders for him are like a tedious formality. Peru, Chile, Colombia, France, Hawaii, Namibia, Pakistan, Turkey are a few of the places he has visited. It might be easier to list those places he has not been to. This what is to have money means, some will say, but according to the pilot people often tend to deceive themselves, while the most important thing was actually finding what one truly wanted. The rest are details, he says. The “bird-man” has reached the highest altitude of 7000 meters and his longest flight lasted for 9 hours, during which he passed 200 kilometres. This happened in Pakistan.
In 2013, together with Serbian Petar Loncar he set a world record with 180 synchronous infinity tumbles. This year, the two pilots triumphed again, this time in the company of Czech Ondrej Prochazka. The flight took place over the volcanic formations of Cappadocia, Turkey. Preparing for the challenge took eight months. The result is a new infinity tumbling world record with 126 perfect loops executed simultaneously by the three pilots.
"We have always wanted to do acrobatic flights and in Turkey it was possible to fly high. The initial idea was to start at an altitude of 7000 meters and break a few records at the same time. Unfortunately, things did not happen exactly as planned and we started at 2500 meters above the ground, which was insufficient height for other records. We decided to set a record in a formation, which no one before us had done,” Vesso Ovcharov says.
More than 2,000 people were watching the record from balloons in the sky. The view is stunning and breath-taking. But what about fear?
"There are fearful thoughts but they make you more focused. And if you see that there is no problem, the process becomes even more pleasant. It is better to have some barriers in order to deal with them. If it was not scary, we probably would not have been doing this. But this record or similar ones are safer than driving down the road from Vitosha Mountain towards Sofia. Although we know this while driving, we do not fear, because this is our everyday life. People feel more comfortable on the ground but risks on the ground are actually more.”
After breaking a record, time for vacation comes. Of course Veso has the paraglider with him and this time he is in the Dolomites, Italy. What are his dreams now?
"I am dreaming of flights at over 8000 m. I want to fly great distances over 500 km. We plan this fall to go to Brazil and to try to set a new world record for distance. We generally dream to visit new and exciting places and be among the people of our community,” Vesselin Ovcharov told Radio Bulgaria.
English: Alexander Markov
Photos: Predrag Vučkovic/Red Bull Content Pool
