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12 Min Read Motorcyclist Rohith Subramanian doesn't want to ride in Antarctica. All of 26, he may have taken his bike across 50-odd countries in the past five years, but ask him what's next, and Rohith will tell you it is not Antarctica. He may have been born to motorcycle, but he isn’t keen on increasing the carbon footprint on Earth’s southernmost desert of ice that is most adventurers’ holy grail.
But wait a minute—he’s been to the final frontier where one arrives before leaving for the inhabitable White Continent. In December 2019, Subramanian, completing a year of his ambitious motorcycle ride through South America, reached Ushuaia, the city at the end of the world, and named like that too. If your anxiety levels are already shooting up from having not been able to travel for months now, relax. Subramanian and his pal, filmmaker Sukesh Viswanath, filmed their epic motorcycle diary for six months for everyone to see.
Named Lost and Found in the Americas, the soon-to-be-released documentary captures Viswanath and Subramaniam’s discoveries in the Andean countries of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, as they went about collecting stories and sweeping the captivating landscapes that they rode through.
The duo saw that travel is having your notions challenged right from the moment they landed in Medellin, Colombia, in December 2018. “We had seen Narcos and we said wow this guy (Pablo Escobar) is such a cool guy. To us, he was almost like Batman, in the way Batman is cool. But once I landed in South America, it changed. We were talking to someone and we told them that the only knowledge we had of Colombia was that of Escobar. That was like telling a German that the only thing I know about Germany is Hitler. Or telling a Jew that the only thing I know about you guys is that there are a lot of you in Auschwitz.”
“The guy told us that his uncle was shot because of Escobar. There were families all over with at least one member who had died because of Escobar. That hit us hard. We realised how we were being absolute dumbf**ks. The reality is always different,” Rohith recalls.
Read: Notes from Around the World: South America Series
Rohith was gifted a copy of Che Guevara’s cult memoir The Motorcycle Diaries on his tenth birthday, an event that triggered the peripatetic gene in him. During a college break, he worked at an auto repair-cum-bike-rental shop in Leh, winning over his employer, who handed him his own motorcycle with a full tank and 4,000 rupees to boot. And he flew. But as he took the first hairpin bend out of Leh on his way to Nubra Valley, he fell. “That was the most beautiful fall of my life. And I said to myself that if there was something that I wanted to and fall, or fail, it was this,” Rohith recalls his origin story, jubilation evident in his voice.
Read: A Chat with Adventurer Lois Pryce
Jaded with the monotony of life, Rohith, as a 21-year-old, gave up his share of investment in his crowdfunding start-up to just ride. Before long, brand associations and an eight-month tour of Europe happened. As he shot for a commercial, Rohith met his Alberto Granado Jiménez—Sukesh Viswanath, who was also on the verge of quitting his job. The two hit it off right away, and their camaraderie and shared vibe soon translated into an epic journey.
While a lot of us may have only heard of the much-exoticised and romanticised Latin America in the books of Jorge Luis Borges, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isabel Allende, Roberto Bolaño and Bruce Chatwin, this duo rode right into the heart of the stories and lives in the interiors of the countries they travelled to.
They then also went on to carry out their share of research into the ugly trend of narco-tourism where guided trips to Escobar’s haciendas and 'was-heres' are known to be organised. There were the usual exceptions too—like a woman in Medellin who pictured Escobar as having shifted his shape and turned into Osama bin Laden.
Then, walking the streets of Bogota, they saw people playing chess in the streets, including the very special Enrique Herrera. “Over a game of chess with an old man in a wheelchair, we found out that eight years ago, the man had been stabbed on his spine by a mugger who stole his wallet. Ever since, the gentleman had been confined to a wheelchair. But one day he stumbled upon the beautiful game of chess which made him forget the pain. He has been playing at the same spot for years come rain or shine. His philosophy in life is based on the game of chess,” he says.
Read: Easy, Rider: A Guide to First-Time Motorcycle Travel
The documentary also captures the ongoing tussle between the mural artists and the administration in Bogota, which famous for its world-famous graffiti district. They met a Spanish baker who left Madrid a decade ago with a box of yeast given to him by his grandmother. The fact that this gent works just two days a week, spending the rest of his time gazing at the sun come up and go down, is expectedly calming at a time like this.
For those wondering where Rohith does want to ride now, if not Antarctica—we prised it out of him with much effort for you: “It is one of those places that should never be ridden in… I instead want to do the Road of Bones (the Kolyma Highway) in Russia. It’s something that Sukesh and I have been thinking about. The temperature in the last town that we would hit goes down to -47 degrees in the winter… and we’ll do it in the winter. It was our plan for this December, but maybe next year, we’ll be there, doing it,” he signs off.
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