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Planning your trip

The parts that go wrong before you ever reach a launch.

Visa — this changed, check your dates

Since 31 December 2025, citizens of 55 countries (most of the EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Australia and others) can enter Kyrgyzstan without a visa for a maximum of 30 calendar days within any 60-day period. The previous rule was 60 days within 120. If you planned a long summer around the old figure, replan it. A trip of two weeks is unaffected; two separate trips in the same two months are not. Verify against your own foreign ministry before booking flights — we are an operator, not a consulate.

Insurance — the sentence that matters

Ordinary travel insurance excludes free flight. Almost always, and usually in a clause listing "hang gliding, paragliding, parachuting". What you need is a policy that names paragliding as a covered activity and covers helicopter evacuation and repatriation, with a limit that is realistic for a country where the mountain rescue is a helicopter charter rather than a public service. For the vol-biv programme we ask to see the policy document. For tandem passengers we do not, but you should still read your own.

Getting the wing here

Bishkek Manas (FRU) is the entry point, with connections through Istanbul, Dubai, Almaty and Moscow. Airline handling of paraglider bags is the usual lottery; the practical advice is to declare it as sports equipment, not to hide it, and to travel with your reserve packed in the bag rather than as cabin baggage. We can move bags between Bishkek, Karakol and Suusamyr and store them between two trips in the same season, which is often cheaper than paying excess baggage twice.

Permits and closed areas

Border-zone permits are required for areas near the Chinese frontier — the Sary-Jaz and Enilchek side of the range in particular. These take days, not hours, and they are arranged through a local entity, which is one of the things you are paying an operator for. Nothing in our standard XC programme needs one; parts of the vol-biv route do, and we arrange them.

Airspace

There is no public airspace app for Kyrgyzstan comparable to what you use at home. National flight restrictions are also occasionally imposed at short notice for state events — a national ban during a summit in August 2026 grounded flying with no warning to operators. We monitor it and we will tell you, but nobody can promise it will not happen during your week, and it is not an insurable event.

Altitude

Suusamyr's valley floor is reported at around 2,200 m and the cloudbase goes far above that. Cold at altitude and mild hypoxia are real factors for pilots arriving from sea level; plan the first two days low, drink more than you want to, and treat a headache at 4,500 m as information rather than an inconvenience.