One Crazy Ride - Gaurav Jani's new film

Gaurav Jani does what most of us just dream about, he decides to ride to the top of the world by way of the most remote deserts on the Indo-China border. By himself. Not on a KTM, not on a BMW, he rode what I can best describe as a humble but sturdy bike where there are no roads. And because many of us wouldn't believe his story, he filmed it. By himself. He won many awards for his first film, Riding Solo to the Top of the World.

For his most recent adventure, One Crazy Ride, he found four equally unfettered souls to ride with him. The film is about these five individuals who fulfill their dream of charting a route which most people think is impossible. It's a story about friendship and community. For this group of riders, their community is their motorcycle club - 60kph. Like most communities where people have come together to share a passion, theirs has transformed into a family. The five of them are riding Royal Enfield motorcycles, three have 350cc bikes, two have 500cc bikes.

Nicolitta Pereira is one of the five riders. She's a bridal-wear designer when not riding with the 60kph motorcycle travel club, an (east) Indian adventure / cross-country riding group. More on her in a later post.

Check out the trailer for this movie - the "cliff hanger" scene takes the form a fully loaded bike poised and revving at the end of a suspended bridge, preparing to cross it. The bridge is suspended, but we're not talking about steel cables here - more like chicken wire. And the flimsy "planks" that make the footpath for the crossing are loose. If the rider loses his/her balance, it will be a long fall into the river. I might be able to crawl across that bridge on my hands and knees but ride across it? Nah.

Gaurav Jani must be Helge Pedersen's long-lost brother - the more crazy the idea (no one has crossed the Darien gap on a motorbike? sure...) the more attractive it appears to be. For One Crazy Ride Jani and friends traveled uncharted roads across the Himalayan state of Arunachal Pradesh, situated in North-east India. The trailer shows breath-taking scenery. And of course there shots of bikes riding where only goats normally travel - in some cases the riding gods are kind, sometimes not so kind. There's a high-definition (MP4) version of the trailer for those of you who aren't watching over a VPN.

If your DVD collection includes the Long Way 'Round, you might want to pre-order One Crazy Ride, which will ship in February 2009.