So, a handful of us got together Sunday night for cocktails, and to review several motorcycle related films, from Sturgis Parties to this 1.5-hour flick from Gaurav Jani in India. His solo production called Riding Solo to the Top of the World immediately hit us as an ego trip for a guy to ride solo from Mumbai, India to the highest point he could reach on a motorcycle in Tibet. He filmed, rode, and narrated his own film.
A director's propensity to pound his chest, in his own film, is shortsighted and against the entertainment code. All films take teams of editors, managers, graphic designers, travel agents, etc. Hell, in this case he solicited welders to enhance his cargo totting abilities by building racks along the road. Folks befriended him, took him into their homes, fed, and acted as his guide through some unbelievably rough territories. So, it's too bad he initiated the film with such a limited credit slant. He could have handled that much differently and still made his point of a solo ride without a film crew.
Aside from kicking off the film in this negative direction, the film is an amazing effort for one rider to load down this classic, but less than state-of-the-art single, built in India after the classic Royal Enfield of the '50s, then head north from Bombay or today, Mumbai out of India into the Himalayas. “I like the crazed monkey in the tree,” said Markus Cuff, world-renowned photographer for Easyriders, American Iron, Tattoo magazine and Bikernet.com.
Gaurva endured mountain sickness, wind-biting colds, roads no more than stream beds and tents shared with large groups of travelers. Most of his roads were desolate, cold, and mountainous. Throughout the film, you learned how he shot segments from a distance by traversing a winding road, finding a camera location, and traveling the rough terrain again, while his unprotected gear took the footage from a distance. Then, of course, he was forced to retrace his steps to retrieve his equipment. Gaurva narrated the entire film in English, and even in distant villages in Tibet young students are taught English.
From time to time Gaurva was asked to step in as a substitute teacher in very remote one-room schools. He rode past highway signs in English that said, “Highest Road Construction in the World,” and, “When the Going Gets tough, the Tough Get Going.” At one point, the oxygen ran so low his bike would barely run and he was forced to push it up hills looking for Datia, 19 days and 1,700 kilometers out. He was running low on fuel, his camera batteries were low, and he suspected he was lost.
He found the 1000-year-old village where highbrow folks live in aerodynamic tents made from Yak fur. He finds a monastery with one inhabitant and a mummified monk. In one area, the villagers called him the motorcycle compass, and he met the Donald Trump of Yak ranchers with his turquoise treasure. It's an amazing film, with footage you wouldn't believe possible. It's a mission in the study of mountain families, like American Indian tribes of the mid 1800s, small societies, religion, and faith to live by the land in very harsh conditions.
From a photographic standpoint I relied on the published eye of Markus Cuff who said, “The film footage is an amazing travelogue, full of brilliant panoramic visuals of lands on the edge of China, in disputed territories and Tibet.”
If you want to watch a run to a desolate place you may never see, and learn about the people who survive at 18,000 feet. This is a film to check out. The one-man band did a helluva job.
–Wilburn Roach
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