Discover 4 Incredible Local Tales Through This Duo’s Motorcycle Journey Across South America!

Here, a few nights later, they would climb one of South America’s active snow-covered volcanoes with a complete stranger, just a minute before it shuts at 3:45 pm. The otherwise cloudy view which had earlier made them abandon the $100-visit, would oblige at their sheer spontaneity and clear up to reveal the Cotopaxi mountain in all its glory; the golden light falling over the top of the ice-capped mountain and the freezing wind against their faces was one of the many unforgettable experiences that were a part of this South American adventure.

Cut back to the highway – the duo had continued to ride into the country in a state of trance that only the road and the engines below them could award. They had conveniently made past the Colombia-Ecuador border without getting their passports stamped.

After all, when you’re thousands of miles and hundreds of border crossings away from where you first started, the lines marking the earth by mankind are likely to get blurry.

When it hit them though, they retraced a few miles to the crossing where the immigration officer had a tough deal for them to crack. They were only going to get their visas-on-arrival when Rohith promised to take a shower! Sukesh couldn’t help but laugh in agreement with the officer.

That's it. That’s how “rough” things got on the road for this team of two: Rohith, a ‘lone wanderer’ as he describes himself, who has travelled to around 50 countries across four continents in the last five years, and Sukesh, a former full-time creative producer from Mumbai who was hustling hard with hectic shoots all around the world before he finally decided to quit his job and accompany Rohith on a journey across South America to create a documentary.

Journey of a thousand miles

Inspired by the BAFTA-winning film, The Motorcycle Diaries, Rohith had always wanted to travel across South America on a motorcycle with a friend. It was after he met Sukesh during an ad shoot for Castrol that his dream trip finally began to materialise.

Interestingly, this yin-yang duo met only thrice before they teamed up for their adventure trip to South America.

“We knew we wanted to make a documentary but that was the extent of it. Neither of us understood what it would actually be like. There was no research, no planning and I didn’t fathom this was happening till we landed in New York. That’s when I had to pinch myself to realise that we were in another country!,” recalls Sukesh.

Together, Rohith and Sukesh managed to complete a journey of over 7,000 km on their motorcycles from January 2019 to May 2019, in one piece without so much of a proper itinerary in hand!

Their journey started at Medellin on their motorcycles in January of 2019, went along the west coast of Colombia via Necocli, Santa Marta, Bucaramanga, Cartagena and went on to Punta Gallinas, the northernmost point of South America.

They travelled via the east coast of Colombia to south covering Salento, Cali, Popayán all the way to Ecuador, Quito, Cotopaxi, Chimborazo, Baños, Amazons In Ecuador and Quilotoa.

They entered Peru and rode from south to north along the coast via Trujillo - Huaraz - Lima - Nazca and finally to Cusco, where they finished the trip together in May 2019.

Traversing through places, the safety of which can be deemed quite questionable, scary stories involving shootings and muggings constantly kept the two company on the road. Yet, luckily they were always a step ahead or behind these unwanted situations. Luck, as we can cautiously call it, was on their side.

How else would you describe finding cops who’d carry them and their bikes in a pickup truck from the middle of nowhere to a place of comfort or suspicious-looking locals returning their misplaced cell phone at a place known for its violent crimes or brands agreeing to transfer the sponsorship amount the moment their bank balance turned into a big round zero?

Maybe it was complete and utter denial or their trust in each other that got them through – the two Indian men who had chanced upon each to fulfill one common dream: Chasing stories.

Camera rolling and action!

What followed was sourcing motorcycles locally and riding through South America’s variety of terrains for days and nights. A biker’s paradise, the continent offers everything from coastal routes to curvy mountain loops including some extremely tough offroads and deserts. The routes were difficult to navigate and often tested both Sukesh and Rohith’s riding abilities.

“We chose a route that included 60% off road trails and 40% tarmac, as both of us enjoy riding off roads. In terms of different places, while Colombia is a little more populated, Peru was stranded and we would sometimes ride for 3 days straight without seeing a single human being,” informed Rohith while describing the route.

“We also rode through portions of the Amazon forest which were accessible by road and camped in a haunted desert in Colombia, all in search of stories,” added Sukesh.

The little bit of planning that they did was based on how they would find these stories.

“Our documentary features four stories, all of which just happened. They just came to us.”

To create their ambitious documentary, Rohith and Sukesh met and interviewed locals wherever they went and came across four stories that stuck with them long after the trip was over.

Check out what these stories are and how the two came across them while riding across the continent.

Decoding Escobar

On a walking tour in Medellin in Colombia, Rohith and Sukesh met Juliana Marin, who apart from being their tour guide happened to be a Spanish to English translator.

“The first rule of wandering through South America is learning the languages. Something we didn’t take that seriously before the trip. Luckily we met Juliana right at the beginning of our trip, who also led us to our first story,” admitted Rohith.

Over dinner that night, addressing the big elephant in the room, Pablo Escobar, the infamous Colombian drug lord, Juliana told Rohith and Sukesh about a game she used to play with her friends while walking to school during her childhood. She said the game was to count the number of dead bodies they’d find on the way.

“While our friends from India asked us to bring back Escobar T-shirts and souvenirs, here we were amidst people whose lives he had destroyed. That’s when we decided to capture the common man's perspective on Narco Tourism and bring to forefront how Pablo Escobar had disrupted everyone's lives there.”

Thanks to Juliana’s help with the translation, the duo interviewed a number of different people to uncover their perspective and concluded how insensitive it is for tourists to glorify Escobar, a drug mafia responsible for destroying tens of hundreds of lives.

A gentleman who had lost his dad, who was a cop, due to the drug trafficking told Rohith and Sukesh, “Imagine a nightmare you are trying to forget – someone who ruined your family but everyday while you walk in the city, you see someone or the other wearing a T-shirt or talking about it all because of a TV show. It pains and hurts deeply.”

“It's as bad as going to Germany and speaking highly of Hitler,” he added.

Art versus State

Another walking tour, this time in Bogota, led Rohith and Sukesh to their second story about the city’s graffiti scene and the tiff between the artists and the government.

“The tour guide was explaining how the current Mayor is against making art on the city’s walls. He told us that the government is painting all the walls white and arresting artists who paint on these walls. This seemed fascinating as a storyline.”

The tour guide’s friends soon joined the two and they began filming the artists painting the walls in the middle of the night while a few of them looked out for cops.

“It was very thrilling to just be there and shoot these relentless artists,” recalled Rohith.

Through the filming process, Rohith and Sukesh also learnt about the internal wars that these artists had about capturing a wall by tagging it. One of the artists told them, “Few of us are so deep into this tagging and capturing the walls, it’s like a dog taking a piss. We are just that”.

Life is a game of Chess

A lunch with a local friend at the center of Bogota helped Rohith and Sukesh to find their third story. There was a big crowd of people engrossed in the game of chess when they saw an elderly gentleman in his wheelchair playing two games at once. The intriguing sight got them curious and they decided to find out his story.

They found out that the man in the wheelchair had been stabbed in his spine due to a mugging incident and was confined to the wheelchair ever since. One day soon after the incident that wrote his life in pain, he’d come to the city center where he stumbled upon the game of chess. It was the first time he’d seen someone play chess and he was so engrossed in observing the game, that the whole day went by and he didn’t realise that he was in pain. He decided to learn the game and now eight years later, come rain or storm, he never misses a single day of playing the game. In fact, his philosophy of life is based on the game of chess.

“I asked him what’s his favorite piece on the board and he laughed and said it's the knight as it can jump above everyone and doesn’t have to walk, just like him,” recalled Rohith.

Earn your bread & eat it too

Rohith and Sukesh were near the Colombia border when they met someone at their hostel whose way of life became their fourth and final story for their South American documentary.

They met a Spanish baker who has been living on the road since he quit being a tennis coach in Madrid. Frustrated by the big city, he had packed his bags and left to travel around South America. Before his journey, his grandma gave him a jar of yeast for him to make sourdough bread. Ten years to the day, he is still wandering and sustaining himself by making and selling bread wherever he goes.

He works two days in a week and his full-time job on other days is to wake up, do yoga before sunrise and spend the rest of the day just gazing at the sun from rise to setting.

With his mouth watering from remembering the sourdough bread, Sukesh fondly recalled the baker as saying, “This life is to live. We need to enjoy and cherish breathing and listen to our heart beat. What's life when you can’t appreciate the small things?”

The behind-the-scenes

With a trip of a lifetime like this, there are plenty of lessons even for the most seasoned of travellers. While talking about how Rohith and Sukesh managed the basics of their trip like budget or stay, they revealed how the biggest challenge throughout the journey was money.

On an average, the duo spent around $1,200 (Rs 90,000) a month and most of the money went in fuel and the maintenance of the motorcycles apart from a small portion being spent on food. For accommodation, they mostly pitched their own tent wherever they went.

“We did a couple of random gigs on our way to save and earn money like Sukesh clicked pictures for a hostel in exchange for a free stay and food. I set up AirBnB accounts for homestay owners and taught them marketing on social media. I even wrote content for their pages in English in exchange for money,” informed Rohith.

Despite all the efforts there were days when Rohith and Sukesh would wake up to absolutely no money in their accounts and it would often be combined with extreme conditions like sub zero temperatures and staying in tents.

However, it seems like their compromises for each other and the sheer will to complete the trip, no matter what is what drove everything else to fall into place. They took on the challenges of the road as they came and were able to not only complete their dream trip across South America but realised their goal of filming a documentary.

Even now in the lockdown, both of them are embracing the uncertainty of life and the failures it brings. The four stories that they found miles away in different corners of South America now remain close to their hearts. While Sukesh is adopting yoga to build a slow, purposeful life, Rohith is playing chess every day and embracing the time that he has to spend away from travelling.

Their documentary with the four stories and their complete South American journey will be out on an OTT platform soon.

You can check out their social profiles for all the updates on its release and more about their travels:

Rohith Subramainam

Sukesh Viswanath

On what’s next for the duo, Rohith will be producing a documentary on South Indian filter coffee its origin, tradition, politics with Sukesh handling the camera for it.

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