As you guys probably all know, I’ve been blogging for a long time and if you are a really, really long time reader, you may remember that I volunteered/was voluntold to help out in the Saga International Balloon Fiesta for two years in a row during my university days. While that experience was memorable in many ways, what it didn’t give me was the chance to ride a hot air balloon.

So when my friend casually mentioned that it would be nice to go on a hot air balloon while we were in Morocco, I jumped on the chance. Never mind that I have a fear of heights, I had taken so many pictures of hot air balloons from the ground that I really, really wanted to ride one myself. And so, I asked the tour agency we went with to recommend a hot air balloon company and we ended up going for a ride with Ballooning Experience ON MY BIRTHDAY.

Even though we were both a bit sleepy because we had a rather late dinner after our flight in to Morocco and the pick up time for the balloon was 5:30 am, we woke up the minute we got out of the car because of the beautifully starry sky. There’s a lot of light pollution in Singapore and so I don’t remember the last time I saw a sky quite so beautiful. We were frantically trying to catch photos of this on our phones and this was the best I could do:

After some time looking up through the sky, we started the briefing for the hot air balloon ride. Basically, we were told that hot air balloons are very safe if you don’t jump and if you hold on to the side and bend your knees during the descent. We were prepped for a very calm experience as we wouldn’t really feel the wind because we would be travelling with it, not against it unless we turned.

And then… we were off! The whole group was basically put into one basket and we started the fly above the ground. The whole experience lasted about an hour and it was incredible.

The sun was more or less up by the time we took off but because there were plenty of other hot air balloon tours in the same area, we got to see other people flying in the distance, making the landscape very memorable. It really was calm and I was surprised that I didn’t feel scared during the entire experience.

We ended the morning with a very good breakfast, where my friend and I were impressed by (of all things) the cheese and the potato jam! The potato jam tastes like a sweet potato jam and the cheese was different from the triangle cheese we got from the rest of the trip, and so we had a great time eating.

There isn’t much to say about the whole experience because words fail me, but I had a great time. We got to chat with the founder (I think? he mentioned starting the company) on the way to the hot air balloon and I learnt that Ballooning Experience was started by locals and one of their aims is to help provide jobs to others, especially in the more rural areas. It seems like they started by providing hot air balloon experiences in the desert, which actually sounds amazing and something I’d like to try in the future if possible.