16/05/2025
A kind of funny (not so funny) story of my drone crash in India.
Early one morning, I was flying my drone around this beautiful lake and temple in Jaisalmer, and ended up crashing it into a building. The GPS on the remote control told me the location of where the crash happened.
A group of us searched for the drone for over an hour- around the lake and on top of the rooftops that we could get access.
At one point, I was on top of a building, right next door to where GPS said it was located. While I was there, the sun was rising and hitting the temple so beautifully, so in the midst of searching, I pulled out my camera to hurriedly take a few shots. Unbeknownst at the time, I captured the guy who actually had my drone in his home.
This guy played dumb and gave us access to come on top of his building to search for the drone. He first met us downstairs and said he hadn’t seen it, but asked how much is cost. We searched and searched on top of his roof, since the GPS said we were literally standing on top of it. Finally after about 20 minutes of searching the cracks and crevices of this roof, the guy confessed that he had it.
At first he told me it flew inside the window of his apartment, but after questioning him why it was wet, he admitted he saw the drone crash, and ran downstairs to the lakeshore to grab it. He told me that he was teaching me a lesson to be “take care of my valuables”, and then requested a few thousand rupees ($25) as his reward for retrieving it and giving it back. I still wonder to this day what made him decide to give it back.
My drone never worked again, but at least I was able to recover the footage… and I got a photo of the guy who had it the whole time.
