Gaurav: In India, I live in Bombay and have been riding long distance for almost 10 years now.

Yes, it is still not considered normal behavior to go on motorcycle rides and Nicky skipping her brother's wedding to join us on a trip to northeast India, I think would be a big deal in any culture. God knows how she managed to pull it off!


I love traveling to the remote parts of India. Most places are thickly populated, a sea of people everywhere, sometimes it will exhaust your idea of space, so I love going to places where I would find very few people and India still has many unexplored areas.

Before making Riding solo I used-to work as an assistant director on film sets. So I knew about the craft of directing a film, but the filming and camerawork was done by qualified cinematographers. So handling a professional camera for the first time was a challenge. It took some doing to get the exact thing which I had in mind on the camera. But the most difficult part was facing the camera!

Actually the name of my motorcycle is Loner. In India, we simply do not have a choice of motorcycles for touring. Enfield is the only company which makes 350cc and 500cc motorcycles. All the others are making 100 to 200cc motorcycles which are not fit for touring. So we don't have any other choice but to ride on Enfields, which are very costly to maintain and prone to breakdowns.

Yes, I did increase the air intake in the carburetor and removed the air filter completely, but the bike still struggled. But it is natural, the oxygen level at 18,000 is very low and on top of that I had a lot of luggage and the quality of fuel you get in the remote parts is not good.

The footage at the lake was included in the film at the very last stage, as we wanted to include the difficulties on working at high altitude. Watching that scene even now takes me back to those days. High altitude indeed does make riding difficult especially the first couple of days when it is hard to concentrate in general. But once the body is well acclimatized to low oxygen, riding becomes normal.
I used the Panasonic DVX-100 for both riding solo and One Crazy Ride.

 Yeah that's a cool partnership they've got going on. Same deal with their still cameras too. Panasonic makes a great camera and Leica makes a great lens to go with it.

In India, if one hires (rents) a camera there will be two attendants who come with it to take care of the equipment. 

Really? It's required  to have two people attending the rental? I mean it's not exactly a huge, complicated camera!  

Yes, so getting the camera for Riding Solo... Was a big challenge. We used our contacts in the industry and asked a company to send the camera without an attendant to "test" the equipment. They had no idea that they would get it back after two months of testing.
As soon as I got the camera, I left Bombay and started the journey and learned how to use the camera by reading the manual. The guys at the camera hire company were very upset when we returned the equipment - but tempers cooled down after I showed them the film and the concept of riding alone without any back-up or film crew.

I take shots according to what inspires me in a landscape or in a situation. Separate shots are to underline and highlight the different aspects involved, and once those shots are combined on the editing table, my personal perspective becomes universal. Multiple shots are a result of my training as a film director, where a film or story has to flow through images and not by narration. And sometimes multiple shots, changing the magnification of the image, close-ups long shots are necessary to emphasis and justify a landscape, conversation or any other situation.

Camera batteries indeed was a big problem, especially in the high altitude regions with sub zero temperatures where the batteries would discharge very fast. The military camps had generators which would run for four hours in the evening from 6 pm to 10 pm. Four hours is not enough to charge the big Panasonic battery, especially in cold. So I had to be very precise about the shots I wanted. Midway in the journey, I had to stop referring to the LCD monitor of the camera while filming, as it drains out the battery really quick I also had to ride in extreme cold conditions in the evening and night to leave and fetch the batteries back from the Army camp.

All the sound was directly recorded onto the camera. Another aspect of Panasonic which i love, it records great audio from the inbuilt camera microphone.

Filming solo is any day better because of the sheer luxury of time you get to set up camera shots or wait for the light to be perfect. 

Having said that, I loved filming the group in One Crazy Ride. A group ride will always have a lot of energy, interaction and the film maker will always be on his toes. Plus I have known Vinod, Sanju, Sobby and Nicky for years, so filming this group ride was relatively easy because I know their personalities well.
I think the biggest ice-breaker is the motorcycle. The initial conversations start with curiosity. Questions about what I am doing out there and on how I can manage with such limited stuff. It also helps that not many outsiders have visited and stayed with these indigenous people in remote regions. So curiosities from both sides about each others life increases the interaction. The interaction becomes richer over time, as I prefer to stay at their campsites or villages for a few days.
I don't think so learning Hindi is a must for foreigners traveling here. Survival has it's own language and I think one can manage just fine. And once one is on a long journey here, he will pick up the language and gestures which will help him a great deal.

People do react differently on seeing a group of motorcycles making a lot of noise. Some will even get intimidated in remote parts, as Enfields are mostly used by the police or the army. But if one is solo, most often people around would be curious. Yes, it really helped having Nicky with us in One Crazy Ride, as the village women were comfortable interacting with her.
I am actually in middle of it, my third film; Motorcycle Chang Pa. The film is about a one-year journey in the Himalayas. Today I complete seven months away from home and have another five months to go. I am in Leh to renew my permits as most of the filming is happening near the India- China border and one needs special permit to travel and film in these restricted areas.

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Motorcycle Chang Pa is again a travelogue and the main objective is to capture the life and the landscape in the Himalayan winter, which is hardly filmed or witnessed. For this film, apart from traveling on a motorcycle, I am traversing the terrain in winter by long treks with luggage on horses. The temperature in the winter here went down to -37 degree Celcius and I am so glad that the peak winter is now behind us.



There is some images from the film's progress at our Dirt Track Productions Facebook page

Hey, looking at those photos it looks like you've made an upgrade from your old tent, what is that new one? 
Yes that's a Nemo Tenshi, nothing like it. I don't say this because they have supplied camping equipment, but their Tenshi tent in my opinion is the best tent for high altitude and sub-zero temperatures. And the sleeping pads they make are the best I've used to insulate from the cold ground.

Favorite dish would be dal makhani and roti - with lots of onions and lemon on the side!
I am dying to have this as soon as the summer arrives, because for the past four months we only have had dry meat and rice for all our meals!