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Living for nearly a year with the nomadic tribe Chang pas of Changthang, in the high altitude desert of the Himalayas where wind speed reaches 70kmph and the temperature plummets below -15º C, filmmaker and biker Gaurav Jani has done it all. He has documented the everyday lives of a nomadic tribe who live in the world’s most inhospitable abode and move from place to place in search of grasslands with their brood of yaks. Beginning with Riding Solo to the Top of the World, a road movie, which received the Golden Conch for the best documentary film/video at the Mumbai International Film Festival (MIFF) in 1997 and several others, Gaurav’s latest docu-drama is Motorcycle Chang Pa, depicting a year-long journey across the high altitude Changthang desert in the Himalayas. "I chose the Himalayas because it’s remote, adventurous, and I enjoy interacting with indigenous people," says Gaurav. "I found them full of compassion and despite living in such harsh conditions always willing to help. They accept nature with amazing grace. They don’t endure it but live that life." Jani had interacted with the Chang pas even for his first documentary film Riding Solo. Fascinated by them, he revisited and decided to live with them for a longer time and film their lives. The Chang pas are always on the move and follow the practice called Yakze, i. e. taking yaks, their livestocks, for grazing for months, 10 to 15 km away from the camp site. Groups of four to five members from the village take turns to stay with the herd of yaks for three nights and four days. They need to protect yaks from the marauding Tibetan wolf, locally known as Shangu. The next group always comes on time to relieve the previous group of their duties. "For Yakze, the Chang pas carry only food, utensils and sleeping bags. No tent, no heat furnace. After the day’s grazing, they sleep out in the open for three nights," says Jani, who lived with them following the routine of bringing ice from the frozen stream for the extra water one needed in the night, collecting yak dung and dry firewood for fire and consuming endless saucers of butter tea and remembers "I neither thought of it as an adventure nor something that was crazy and had to be experienced". A passionate biker and founder member of 60kph, Motorcycle Travel Club India, Jani roams the barren and harsh terrain of Leh-Ladakh mountain range on his 350cc Royal Enfield bike visiting places where even National Geographic channel has not been granted permission to shoot. He is the only outsider so far who has been allowed to shoot a film in Chemur monastery, 350 km from Leh which was the highlight of his first docu film, Riding Solo… He filmed extensively the Chemur village (barely 8 km short of Indo-China border), which had only 50 families. Jani started his filming career by working as an assistant director to Ram Gopal Varma for the film, Jungle (2000). "I assisted him but never learnt any camerawork. I learnt it on job while shooting my docu-film," says Gaurav. In between his two north Himalayan sojourns, he, along with another five biker friends, did One Crazy Ride, a film on Arunachal Pradesh. This film, too, has been showcased at several film festivals and has won awards like Best Film of the festival at the International Motor Cycle Film Festival, Slovakia, Certificate of Merit for Cinematography and Editing at IDPA film awards, India. He returned to Changthang after six years to make his latest film. Jani says, "Like other places, Changthang, too, is changing. A lot of families are no longer nomads. The tents are giving away to permanent houses. The dirt tracks, which were an integral part of the landscape, are being resurfaced with stones and tar, killing the wilderness and the ride which riders like us enjoyed. Hundreds of Indian Army camps have mushroomed all over Changthang to counter the Chinese build-up."
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