Himalayan odyssey: One of the most beautifully shot documentaries on the Himalayas
Meet the Hyderabadi producer behind the popular TV travel series Way Back Home
By : samyuktha k
Update: 2014-12-13 00:41 GMT
Hyderabad: Not many in the city know that one of the most beautifully shot documentaries on the Himalayas, currently running on TV, was produced by a Hyderabadi.
Asad Abid, the executive producer of Way Back Home, says that this is just the beginning and many more quality, youth-centric films will be coming up from his Hyderabad-based Shoelace Films. Way Back Home is one of the most recent documentaries on the great mountain range. “The last few documentaries on the Himalayas were shot in the 1990s,” says Asad.
The series was shot with a small, but extremely talented crew. “It’s a first of its kind show domestically. There aren’t many series with each episode having its own background score,” he adds. The series has 50 originally scored sound beds.
Asad, a native of Anantapur, had “knocked on several doors” before he decided to do the series himself. Currently, the film has been licenced to Viacom 18. “I figured that there is not even a single personalised travelogue in India. There are food trails and other travel shows, but nothing this personal. That’s where I found potential,” he says.
Having lived all over the country for studies and work, Asad started working in films with Dibakar Banerjee. “It was, in fact, Dibakar who told me to go find something that calls out to me as I wasn’t the filmy type, you know,” he says, adding, “I worked with him on LSD Love Sex Aur Dhoka, which was one of the first feature films to be shot in digital format. So that was a great starting point for me.”
The docu-series follows the travels of protagonist Rohan Thakur, a native of Manali, and the episodes trace his re-connection with his birth place. The documentary was shot during the harsh winter a season that travellers are warned against and ends with the dawn of summer.
Asad says, “I wasn’t there throughout the shoot because I also had a business to run. I was there for two-and-a-half-weeks. And for me the biggest challenge of adjusting to the temperature itself. It was my first experience of snow. I was completely alien to the environment.”
Besides the cold, the format of travelogue also requires the crew to be extremely fluid. The very first episode itself showcases the frantic crew running from a landslide.
The producer adds, “Fortunately, we did not have any major injuries because Rohan is from the place and he was familiar with the terrain.”
Hyderabad, however, will remain his base. “I moved here in 2011 because my parents, who are in Anantapur, wanted me closer home. And I fell in love with the place,” he says.