In Rohtang...
that’s when I saw them first, the wild horses..
I must learn to keep some things safe in my mind, away from words, away from film. Away.
That's what I thought when I saw them..
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.I walked up to this beautiful brown muscled mare and sat on the ground reaching my hand out.
I sat and kept the hand out.
She was grazing by a little stream.
She stopped and looked at me and stood still too.
She walked up.
She came a foot away from my hand and looked at me, raising her head to my eye level.
We stared for a bit.
She touched my hand with her muzzle, and stepped back. A second later ,she leaned it into my palm. I could feel her weight in the push.
We could have ridden, I know.
We could have ridden.
There will be time soon.

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We reached the Pang bowl today, 40 kms of land stretched out greenish purple in between the watching, immovable,.. almost merciless mountains.
Aditya and I walked far into the open.
There was a strange vacuous feeling in my throat.
I felt like running.
In the middle of these unnamed, opaque entities.
You know those parallel streams of consciousness running at the back of your head? They lurk around in your head a lot here, this land seems to invoke them. Siddhartha and I have developed a method to deal with them..we let them out into the mountains for some air, then we take them back in when we’ve had enough time on our own.
It works.
The mountains seem to be able to take a lot.It was my grandfather’s death anniversary today,We’re in the middle of the clouds.
I can feel him around.

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We reached Surajtal late in the morning
the air was getting chillier,
lighters find no combustible air to combust, the oxygen levels are very low..

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We stayed at Pachan at the Army transit camp, ten kilometers from Manali (Himachal Pradesh). Pachan is a village by the Beas,the river that strings all the people of this region together.
It has been only a day in the valley and Aditya and Siddhartha want to live here.Siddhartha imagines a studio and Aditya says all he’ll need is a net connection.
Distances seem large. We walk a short distance and are out of breath.After a brief spell of headaches,a little sleep and an ink pen breaking open in Siddhatha’s pen box again, order seems to be restored for the time being.We stopped at a little tea stall by the river, the little tin roofs are dripping from the rain and huge highway trucks thunder past,the diesel fumes seem unbearable for some reason in this aseptic air. We sat on wooden benches facing each other, Siddhartha got out his sketch book and I set to cleaning his stained pens.
That’s when I saw the carpet weaving looms inside the shop, and got talking to Khila, the lady who ran the tea shop.
Khila sells ski suits to tourists, has a running kitchen and teaches girls from surrounding areas weaving in the evenings. She says it doesn’t earn her much, and there’s no use for rich people to learn how to weave a carpet, but it does become useful for young girls from the surrounding areas who are from struggling families. We spoke to her about why she wove carpets,and she said it was a way to remember where she is from.She said her sons studied in English medium schools,because it was needed to survive today,to be taken seriously, but culture was ‘something like child birth’. When a child is born, she is attached to the mother by the umbilical cord. It must be cut, … but the memory of it will pull the child back. It must.
If it doesn’t, then no mother can do anything.
The child must remember to remember.I’ll upload our conversation through a short clip soon.

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please check my blog http://www.stompingintheyard.blogspot.com
for updates!!!

Aditya, the analyst on board for this trip reached Mumbai on the 19th in the afternoon.
He and I had a strange means of communicating with each other when we met at engineering college 8 years ago. He was quiet then, didn’t speak to anyone. I remember catching him in the library once to get someone’s hand writing analysed(I’d heard he was into reading a person’s character from their handwriting!).
It’s the first time we spoke,and we have been ever since. He has been witness to my moving from engineering to film,.. I remember frantically calling him out to the football field once,there was a slight drizzle and I’d just got my hands on some pieces of charcoal. The results were a surprise, and I just had to share it with someone. I ended up calling Aditya. I ran, clutching the sheet. We peered at what I’d made.
We have a strange way of communicating.

Aditya, the analyst on board for this trip reached Mumbai on the 19th in the afternoon.
He managed to pick a still camera from a friend from engineering,Vipin.
Thank you,Vipin!

We had been communicating for so many days about this journey that it felt slightly impossible to believe that it was actually happening.
My body might have sensed what was coming,I had a slight fever, an upset stomach, a curious body ache.Curious.
Aditya and I stared at the sea for awhile before leaving, the city sounds were louder than usual.
We met Abhishek,an animation film maker from NID,you can se his sketches up on the Kickstarter project page.
He’ll be joining us soon. He sings. He sang.

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Reaching the National Institute of Design (NID),in Ahmedabad, Aditya got an insight into what my life had been for the last 3 years, learning film there.
I guess he enjoyed it thoroughly, he was beaming all through.
.
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This will be a record of our interactions.
We are not into classification.
We follow no canon, and we draw no grand judgements on half baked assumptions.
We will film,write and draw and lay it open for all of similar heart..
In Sanskrit,we call this ‘sahridaya’, meaning ‘of one soul’…
This is for the people who are of one soul .

We’ve reached Leh,and we're 4 days into the journey
The animation you see in the video was done on a wall in Ladakh,with Siddhartha sketching and me shooting.
We had insane journey in,thank you Rudro for the DSLR lent at the last moment,we're going to upload our photographs soon.
We’re going to Siachen tomorrow.
Stay tuned.

And we’re waiting for those pledges.

At 13% :) We're going to keep the steam! So people really know that if a couple of people really believe in something,it can happen!
Every 5$ counts.

Thank you for all the support!
A big thank you to all the people who've seen me through a lot already over the years and who have joined in here as well :)
and to all the people who don't know me but still believed in the idea,welcome aboard, we will make sure this is worth it!

I'm excited to announce a new addition to our team since this project kickstarted, Siddhartha Tripathi, an animation film maker and fluid illustrator, who has decided to collaborate with our explorations in Ladakh!

AND
with Siddhartha on board, we've decided to get all people interested in a little more detail on board as well.
So for a 100$ Pledge, Siddhartha will tinker to make caricatures of you,something to maybe catch the essence of the person you are! We plan to couple these sketches with the artwork we will produce in Ladakh, in a showcase event.
Bringing all the faces of the people who made it possible,together :)

Presenting the first set of caricatures in till now, of the team
I was hopping on a foot when I saw them :)
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I have been absolutely blown away by the number of people coming forward to support .
full blown 'offering of 'whatever-we-can-do' from people I've never spoken to
.
.

over the last couple of days we've gotten offering to play the guitar for children
from a potter
from film production workers who still wonder at the super lack of a purely 'entertaining' objective in this project and hence want all the more to be a part(!)
from a graphic artist
from an installation artist,a product designer and close accomplice
from an artist who became an animator
a textile artist who's worked with the Indian Army
a songwriter 350.org from a native who feels the organizations working in Ladakh, work only for themselves
from 2 people who have served in the Indian Army in the region
from a senior from engineering school who might bring forward the film projectors his company makes
from a loaned DSLR
from my favorite resident poet preparing to skip in whenever she wants
to my mother who is the most excited, about us reaching Zoji la Pass

I have no words to communicate my feelings for these who have given of themselves so selflessly.

I read this line today which I found fitting,
'

Everyone who is honest,is interesting

'
So it seems. :)

The problems seem to be how to get the foundations in top shop shape before letting people in or figuring a way of doing this inspite of all those of corporate origins craning their necks to look for the source of these thoughts.
:):)
Some people have not known how to react.
They've called me and have wanted to just talk.
I've been talking.
:)

Thank you all my backers for pitching in your support so soon,we're 3 % funded!

I'm super excited to let you know that we just got a confirmation from a master shadow artist, Radha Kumud Sharma (fondly called Dajo by people who know him), belonging to Bolpur near Vishwabharati Santiniketan, West Bengal. Priyanka Chhabra,one of the core members of our film collective had shot a documentary with him awhile ago,and his story is humbling.

So,Dajo says he'd love to be a part of our explorations through the region.:):) And if all goes well with the funding, we'll have some super magic coming your way as soon as we get started on our recce!

Dajo, has been touring for the last 40 years through Jammu and Kashmir across Himachal to Gujarat by foot, in India teaching science and narrating stories to the school students in villages and towns across the country. He uses the play of light and his finger movements to create different animals, birds and human beings.

In basic science, he covers subjects such as Geography, Biology, Chemistry and some favorite topics being the solar and lunar eclipse and cell division in plants and animal. And the kids love him :)
Have a look ...

Jaya, you will absolutely love his narrative on the 'Life of Buddha', shadow art with hand cut stencils, waiting for him to come into town so we can start working with him :)

     Below, a lama puts on a mask before performing at the
     Hemis Festival at Hemis Monastery, also called the 'Roof of the world'.

    Below, a cow grazes along the shore at Pangong Lake,near Spangmik,
    Ladakh, one third of this lake is India,the rest is in China. Borders are strange lines.