14-year-old Anil Kumar joined two German men on a hot air balloon ride across Bangalore skies.
Fifty years ago, in November 1963, two German pilots rode a hot air balloon in Bangalore on Children's Day- the first hot air balloon flight in independent India. One of the men, Hermann Johannes Scheer had organised the ride to raise funds for Pestalozzi Children's Village in Germany. Joining them on the ride was a wide-eyed and excited Anil Kumar, who was 14 at the time.
Anil Kumar, who now heads a placement agency in Bangalore, told NDTV that his father's close involvement in helping the group organise Pestalozzi children's village was the reason he happened to be at the venue that day. He recalls striking a conversation with Mr Scheer, which eventually led to an invitation to join the two pilots on the balloon ride.
"Mr Hermann Scheer, he was the director of the Pestalozzi village in Germany...He said would you like to go up in the balloon. I said wow, nothing like it," Mr Kumar recalls.
The memories, almost half a century old, are still very fresh for Anil Kumar. "It was just the thrill of going up, of getting away from the ground...the ground going away from you was a fascinating experience... for the first time, I saw Bangalore," he said
Anil Kumar hopes to encourage enthusiasm for hot air ballooning in India. But first, to mark the 50th anniversary of his amazing flight, he is travelling to Germany to meet the surviving pilot, Alfred Schulz, and the family of Mr Scheer. Once in Germany, he hopes to take another ride in a hot air balloon, the second in his life.