The skydiver who plans to put Bangladesh on the stratosphere

You are standing at the door of a plane. It's a small one, let's say a Twin Otter or a Cessna Caravan. 

Cold air rushes into the aeroplane when the door opens. The idea of staring at the ground below might be scary, but you are so high, that the ground below looks like an abstract painting. Your brain can hardly register how high you are (it is likely 13,000 or 14,000 feet).

The only thing that is left to do is jump.

Once a skydiver jumps out of the plane, they fall for about one minute until they come down to about 4,000 feet and then deploy the parachute. It takes about one minute to go from 14,000 to 4,000 feet. 

"You're actually flying like Icarus! You're in full control and you're not scared. It is your moment for that one minute of freefall (terminal velocity), and you are like a child in a park going down the slide. Remember how once you came down the slide you wanted to go back up again to feel that freedom again?" Ashik Chowdhury, a 40-year-old career banker who has done 30 jumps since 2012, explained. 

Some compare the sensation of skydiving to an "out of body experience", while others describe it as very "intense" and "extremely liberating". For Ashik, it is akin to meditation, a sense of zen. 

"A lot of people think skydiving is pure adrenaline rush. But I think it goes beyond that. For the first few jumps, you feel scared, but after that, it is more about being at the edge of your physical and mental limits," he said. 

Once you can push yourself, you have a sense of freedom. And that freedom is what propelled this investment banker from HSBC to consider setting a Guinness World Record of jumping from 41,000 feet holding aloft the Bangladesh flag.  

A jump to put Bangladesh on the map 

Chowdhury was born and brought up in Jashore. His father was in the Air Force. He went to cadet college, the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Dhaka University. He then left for the London Business School and worked in the UK  for most of his life.

"I only came back to Dhaka in 2019 because I wanted to contribute. I am literally born and bred by this country. All of my education was subsidised by the country. So I genuinely feel like the country has invested a lot in me. 

"Though I have moved out of the country again to take a larger role at work in Singapore, Bangladesh is one of my markets and we are going back and forth. We'll probably return permanently at some point," he added.

For now, Chowdhury wants to break the Guinness World Record with his 41,000 feet jump. 

"I've always felt that we do a very poor job of marketing ourselves [Bangladesh] globally. So this feels like an opportunity. And a very unique opportunity, because I haven't come across another Bangladeshi sport skydiver yet." 

In May, when he attempts the jump, his HALO (high altitude, low opening) jumpsuit will have a Bangladeshi flag. 

What would a HALO jump look like? Just check out a YouTube clip of Tom Cruise doing it in 'Mission: Impossible – Fallout'. Although Cruise's one was a 25,000 feet jump (yes, he did the stunt himself).   

The record Chowdhury is trying to attempt is to fly with the flag as long as possible.

"So I jump at 41,000 feet. I open as low as possible, like 3,000 or 2,500 feet. Typically I open at 4,000 or 5,000. So I will have flown the flag for 39,000 or 38,000 feet," he explained. 

The highest jump ever was made from space, first in 2012 by Felix Baumgartner at 127,852 feet, and then by Alan Eustace two years later at above 135,889 feet. Both jumpers used helium balloons. 

But 41,000 feet is the highest ceiling for any commercial aircraft; only spy planes and fighter jets can go beyond that height. Above 36,000 feet, it is deemed as the stratosphere. 

"So, the record is the largest flag flown in the stratosphere. That's the record I'm trying to attempt," Chowdhury said. 

It is a new record, but a similar one, titled 'highest altitude skydiving with a flag' was achieved by Jithin Vijayan last year. His jump was from 42,431 feet, but the flag was a small one wrapped around his arm. 

"What I'm trying to do is take a big flag and then jump out with it, which means I will have to hold onto it somehow while I'm falling," Chowdhury said. 

Holding a big flag is going to make the aerodynamics more complex. He will have to do a bunch of trials, starting with a 12,000 feet jump, then 15,000 feet, and then with the full kit on at 30,000 feet.

"At work, I run a lot of scenarios in my head of things going wrong and what will I do as an investment banker? Risk mitigation. Now, every sports jumper who has done like 100 jumps will tell you they have had situations where things were going wrong. But you just need to be able to react and know how to react." 

Photo: Mehedi Hasan

The sky calls to Icarus 

Ashik had always been keen on going on adventures that take you to your limit. He has done bungee jumping. He has a pilot's licence, so he can fly an aircraft. But it was his father who was the Daedalus to Chowdhury's Icarus. 

"My dad was a pilot who pulled me towards the sky. Something in my DNA probably," he joked. "So skydiving felt like the next natural progression from flying a plane. After two to three jumps, I knew I wanted to do this."

The first jump back in 2012, though, was still quite scary. 

"I remember it very well. The first time you jump with someone else  — in tandem. He is strapped to you and he is the one who deploys the parachute. The first time I did it, the aircraft was full of solo divers, and there was one guy who asked, 'Is this your first time?' " 

When Chowdhury replied yes, the guy said, "It's the best experience you will ever have in your life." 

"My first thought was 'What am I doing here? This is a big mistake!' But you don't want to chicken out when you're standing in front of the door and everyone's jumping out. I was the last one left." 

So he jumped. 

"I think the fear went away about 10 jumps in. So every jump until the 10th one, every time the door opened and we were 14,000 feet up,  I was like, what's wrong with me? 

There was a big gap between the first and second jumps, since working as investment banker for a top tier global bank leaves little time for jumping out of planes. 

"Until last year, when I moved to Singapore," he said. When Chowdhury got some free time, he headed to Thailand, which has a good site for skydiving. And because it was so close to Singapore, he started making weekend trips. 

"So I would usually fly to Thailand on Fridays after office. On Saturday, Sunday, I would do three or four jumps. And then take Sunday's last flight back to Singapore. And then Monday morning, I would go back to work."

Since then, Chowdhury has done more than 30 jumps — all between 12,000 and 14,000 feet. As soon as one goes beyond 15,000 feet, the air gets thinner and the skydiver needs supplemental oxygen. 

But in May of this year, when he will attempt to jump out of a plane at 41,000 feet, it will be a different ball game entirely.

A jump from that height, officially the stratosphere, would result in a freefall time of about three and a half minutes. The air is thinner and your terminal velocity is higher. Speeds could reach as high as 320 kilometres per hour. 

At this point, many would naturally question Chowdhury's sanity (I did).

"A lot of people do. They say, 'Okay, you have done it once, it is off your bucket list. But why do you keep repeating it?'" 

The analogy Chowdhury uses to explain it is that of a plate of scrumptious wedding kacchi. 

"We love it. It tastes so good that we crave it again and again. So, the tourists who skydive, they do it as a tick mark exercise. But the people who do it as a sport, they actually love it. It is really about enjoying your time; that one minute is completely your own."

Chowdhury explained that generally, all perceived high risk activities usually have very methodical ways of doing things. When people have accidents, in most of the cases it is an error of the operator, he added. 

"Parachuting has become very safe since back in the World War II days. Now, the parachutes are very controllable. You have two parachutes in your bag, if the first one fails, there's a second one. There's also a thing called an AAD (automated activation device) computer chip built into your bag. If you pass out, a parachute will open automatically at 750 feet altitude." 

Chowdhury also draws parallels between skydiving and investment banking. 

"I think they complement each other in terms of confidence, calculation, and patience, and make you very calm. There's this book called 'Thinking, Fast and Slow'. There are times when you think very fast, you can slow your mind down. 

"Free-falling enables me to suddenly slow everything down, although everything is happening super fast, but still, in my head, everything slows down when I jump. And I can take that and then bring it to my client interactions," he explained.