Short Film About 1,300 miles by (folding) bike, bus and train

“Vahana: (Sanskrit: “mount,” or “vehicle”), denotes the being, typically an animal or mythical entity, a particular Hindu god is said to use as a vehicle. The vahana and deity to which they support are in a reciprocal relationship. Vahana serve and are served in turn by those who engage them.  It is said that the Vahana can “make even malevolent events bring hope.”

We rode, bused, and trained for one month, and now after working on the video for three months intermittently, Vahana is complete.  It’s about 27 minutes in length, and shows our trials and tribulations on the road, as well as the beauty and the adventure.

Steve Casimiro was doing a bicycle touring series on his Adventure Journal web site, and had invited us to be a part of it by doing a post about our journey.  I was on a tight deadline to get the video done so we could be featured since he was wrapping up the series, and that pretty much became my focus for the last weeks of September.

Read the Adventure Journal Article Here

The animations were done in a few days, and we had to focus on getting the project completed for the last week in September.  I used a Blendswap model to help with the animation side, which worked great, thanks to the original Boeing 747 model from Patrizio Melis, with credits to Boeing Industries.

As luck would have it, a good friend of mine knew a fantastic Tabla player named William Rossel from the renowned Ali Akbar College of Music who was willing to be a part of the project.  Despite having very little time to produce the score, really only a few days, he and his friend Arjun Verma playing Sitar created some incredible original music for the film.  This really brought the feeling of the journey to life, from the movement of being on the road to the spirit of meeting people for the first time – to the closing and bittersweet departure back to the US.

Vahana has been a challenging project, from the moment we started planning our route to the last cuts of the film….but it has been very rewarding to see it come together.  Having the opportunity to even take the trip was an incredible opportunity and experience, and having this document of our trip to share is the perfect way to wrap it up.