Why us?
The Mangalore kite team invited a truckload of kite legends to their festival. Kosta. Bob. Andreas. Andres. Antonio. Axel. Jan. Claire and Dave. Sandra and Guilherme. Team Magnetik from Greece. Raymond, who drove his bike all the way down from Mumbai. The trio of fantastic Indonesians. And the Indian masters: Hanna, Rauf, Ashok, Digant, Jass, Mahesh, Nitesh, Rajesh, Sandesh … One India kite team, KiteLife foundation, Fly360 team, Kohinoor team, the insane Odishans … And of course the Mangalore kite team themselves: Sarvesh, Subhash, Pran, Shriniketh, Giridhar …
And us.
“Where? There is no space!”
Someone not a kite master (yet)
Flying kites with kite masters is great – and nervous – fun. Normal people know that a kite, especially a large flying monster, needs space. A lot of space. Tannirbhavi beach is huge, the fenced-off portion of it where we were supposed to fly was more than 200 m long.
But no, everyone dragged their anchors in front of the festival huts, closer to the stage and to the crowds.
The wind was simply perfect. The sky was instantly full of kites, the lines formed a veritable jungle, the anchor bags dotted the beach …
It was an incredible sight.
And not a single kite crashed (until later, when some smartass decided the crowded sky was perfect for a kite aerial photography session).
Even when we, usually flying humbly at the edge of the festival, took a bold stand and lifted our biggest kite right in the middle of it all.
Not gonna lie – one of the best kite flying days ever.
“No komplikasi – relaksasi!”
KAP Jasa team butchering Bahasa Indonesia
IKF Mangalore is organised by kite flyers, and it shows. For example, the first day was a day off, so they took us on a really amazing trip (we shall cover that in the next article).
The flying started after lunch (which was always fantastic), served in our hotel (which was well above and beyond our expectations).
Plenty of time to explore Mangalore and do the shopping (it wasn’t easy to find everything, as a certain niece wished for an elephant. Alive. Two of them, a boy and a girl.) …
We were really pampered in Mangalore …
No wonder the mood on the bus going to the kite field was … calm and easy:
After the rather insane tempo at the IKF Gujarat, this was a welcome change. No complications – relaxation!
“Timeo Danaos et dona ferentes!”
Saša, to a Greek guy
Every festival is an opportunity to meet friends. New ones are especially coveted, and in Mangalore we met quite a few. Masters all of them, of course. Andreas, a mysterious Swede from Bali (who packs a mean whisky); Jan whose mandril we almost destroyed; Claire and Dave, whose trilobites we get to know really up close; and a trio of Greeks: with Kosta they are Team Magnetik.
“Here, have a banana chip.” Theodor was offering, well, a bag of banana chips.
“No thanks, absolutely not!”
“Eh? … Why?”
“I fear the Greeks even when they are bearing gifts!“
The laughter echoed and distracted a tuk-tuk driver who almost crashed into a biker who almost got himself buried under a truck. Almost.
The Greeks are not only Greek, but also stunt kite flyers, and therefore are a pain in the ass – but, as Kosta pointed out last year in Belagavi, a necessary pain in the ass.
When people stare in awe at the giant flying monsters, they do it for fifteen minutes, maybe half an hour, and then they have enough. But a ballet with kites and a nice background music can be spectacular for hours, especially if some true masters are doing it. And Kosta, Yannis, Theodor, and Panagiotis are true masters of their trade.
The master of ceremonies was in love with them. The crowds were in love with them.
And they had to fly deep into the night.
“Un Sarvesh por favor!”
Sarvesh, on learning the word ‘cerveza‘
Unlike Gujarat, Karnataka is not a dry state. Which meant that after a hard day’s flying, we could reward ourselves with a cold one.
One, right …
Remember, we have a superpower: we always find a shady bar – in every town, no matter where.
First Andreas invited us for a glass or two at his room on the fourth floor, because he wouldn’t carry the bottle back to Bali. Gregor got stuck at his neighbours, the insane Odishans, who were packing for the trip home – the doors were open and Gregor got sucked in. And then Rajesh came and said in a conspiratorial voice:
“Come to room 206.”
Saša was explaining that you basically need to learn just two sentences in every language in order to cruise happily around the world.
The first is “One beer, please.”
The other: “One more!“
And since there were no Spanish speaking people around, he chose Spanish to illustrate the point. And that left Sarvesh perplexed.
“You mean my name in Spanish means beer? I am – mister Beer?”
And thus the honourable mister Sarvesh Rao, the man in charge, the big boss, became – mister Beer.
Fly hard, party hard …
“Mr. Saša, I am ready for my closeup.”
Team Octoposse’s trilobite, to the DOP
As we grew into flying, got more confident and relaxed – yeah, mingling in and with the big ones! – Saša decided it was time to add a Rokkaku to the crowded sky and do some kite aerial photography. The Original Blue Rok went up smoothly, but during the procedure of attaching the camera to the kite line a momentary lapse of concentration (“no worries, I can feel it on the line”) brought the Rok into the path of our trilobite.
The Rok bumped into the trilobite and closed a part of its vents. The trilobite veered right and kicked our 40 meter snake from the sky. While the snake draped itself over some dense jungle-ish grove (full of real snakes, for sure), the trilobite started to recover and for a moment it seemed a major mishap was averted – but our manta was dancing to the left, caught the line of the trilobite, swung to the right, turned upside down and crashed, bringing down a leopard from Odisha with it. The trilobite was pulled down by the manta and it also crashed, defying Gregor’s frantic efforts to keep it in the air.
There was a lot of fabric on the sand, and Saša was standing innocently in the middle of the mess, the Original Blue Rok the only kite still flying.
“Why are you all laughing? …. Oh. It was me?”
Before the camera was safely on, the crashed kites were back in the air, ready for the closeup.
Guiding the Rokkaku in the sky filled with huge kites (each in a different mood) was possible because only a Rok is stable enough and responsive enough to dare doing it. In fact the Original Blue is so reliable the kite and the camera could be brought inches away from the flying giants.
The walk through the dense jungle of kite lines was intense for the flyer, joy for the kite, successful, and concluded safely.
No kites were harmed in making this kite aerial video!
“So if your kite falls down, you will stop flying forever?”
Gregor to Akash, on matters of love
A bunch of volunteers were helping at the festival, and each team was assigned one, with basic tasks of carrying the kites, winding the lines, bringing water, filling anchor bags with sand, waving the big fans of ostrich feathers while the kiters rested, stuff like that.
We got Akash – and promptly made him a kite flyer. He got a KAP Jasa badge, a quick course in kite flying, and a line with a trilobite on the end.
“I made it fly!”
“Cool. Now tie it to the railings, and let’s get something to drink.”
As a young man, Akash has a problem in the heart department, in matters of love …
As in …. There is no one in the whole world like her, he will never stop loving her, it’s over for him, love is gone forever. Etc.
If your kite falls down, you just walk away and never fly kites again – or what?
So Gregor and Saša listened, offered a shoulder to cry and a truckload of really cool advice, as old wise men do, – until Ivor came by:
“These two are giving you love advice? Hahaha, just forget it – they are both divorced!”
And there was a smile on the face of Akash …
“I need your manta.”
Nitesh, seconds after having a rather insane idea
Flying with kite masters has its perks. First thing out of the window is general caution and deep consideration regarding where and how one should put a kite up. When the wind on the second day kinda died, kiters were having problems getting their huge kites in the air.
Nitesh, blessed be his crazy soul, came to us and declared he urgently needs our manta. His giant INDIA lifter was not enough to pull his mega rose up. “I need more power, captain!”
The idea was to stack the lifter and the manta on the same line, and attach the rose on it. The upside? The combined pull of two large kites would overcome gravity and make the whole bouquet fly.
The downside? Manta is not a well-behaved kite. And the sky was terribly crowded, because kite masters are doing it in small spaces.
Manta was absolutely excited to help, and when it felt the pull of the lifter, it started to wiggle its tail so vigorously the whole giant kite was dancing left and right, almost overturning out of sheer joy.
The beautiful mandril Jan was flowing right behind it (he was there first, too) was not happy.
Manta is 25 meters long (with the tail) and 10 meters wide; the mandril is a delicate pointer kite, barely over a meter long. When the happy giant crashed into it, the poor mandril was basically eaten alive.
“What the hell are you doing?!”
Jan rushed in and grabbed the mandril’s line, we were pulling the manta away from it, and after a short but brutal fight (the combined pull of two very large kites was wreaking havoc on our hands) Jan managed to get the mandril to safety. A moment later the stack was flying – and the magnificent rose of Nitesh … rose magnificently into the sky.
Teamwork! (Both in flying kites and in apologising to Jan and his well-shaken mandril).
Meanwhile Aji and Juan put two huge lifters on two lines to pull their lion fish up, and we still don’t understand completely how the lifters didn’t crash into each other and on the huge crowd below.
Yes, there was an enormous crowd. So many people came to the festival on Sunday the police had to close the access road leading to the beach. Tens and tens of thousands of people, eager to see the greatest kite show of the world.
Some tried to fly our kites …
… and others made their own kite festival, with hundreds of little kites dancing in the air.
Then it started to rain.
“It never rains in Mangalore in January.”
Subhash, the resident meteorologist
As we all know, meteorologists are the biggest liars there are. We also know that the weather has a special secret connection with kites. You unpack the kites, the wind drops. You pack them, the wind comes back. The kites are in the air – so the clouds gather to admire them, and offer them water.
Kites don’t like water.
It was dry season in Karnataka, and Subhash swore there will be no rain – so surely just after Nitesh managed to put his giant rose up, a distant thunder rolled over the beach. Then another one, much closer.
In a matter of minutes everything and everyone was wet.
“Now I know what you mean by ‘laundry’ …”
And since we were first completely wet from all the hard work, then completely wet from the rain, why not get completely wet again?
The Indian ocean was … wet, warm, and moody.
The incredible IKF Mangalore 2025 was over, but the flying monsters now needed an international kite drying festival. That’s also something we will tell you all about in the next article – let’s end this one on a high note.
There were so many unforgettable moments at the IKF Mangalore 2025 … our hearts are full, our minds still spinning.
We have never been at such an impeccably organised festival; filled with so much care and attention to details … the most warm welcome, the best company on the bus, on the kite field, at the parties. Even the after-flying cultural programme was amazing – and hypnotic:
Andreas said it would take a poet to aptly describe what we have been a part of.
We believe he is right.
The wait for the 2028 IKF Mangalore will be long …
As Panagiotis said (in a veritable clash of ancient civilisations):
“India may try to stretch the time, but the time was already stretched by the Greeks!”
We were rubbing shoulders with masters, and apart from the mandril of Jan, and the crash during the KAP session, didn’t do much damage. We got a bunch of new friends, and we all had the best time ever.
The reception, the attitude of the legends, the open hearts of Team Mangalore and the kiters; all the fun, the flying, the parties, the deep conversations – all that got us thinking …
Maybe – maybe! – the Mangaloreans didn’t invite kite masters and us to their festival …
Maybe they invited just kite masters 🙂
Thank you all.
I Hawe visited different festivals in India. Gujarat, Goa, Belgaumi, Hubbli, Nipani. But Mangalore is te Best. Best wind conditions, Best acomandation.