ZOOM INTERVIEW WITH ASH BHARDWAJ; FILMMAKER, WRITER, ADVENTURER

Ash Bhardwaj is best known for his work as a travel writer and filmmaker, along with being a dedicated storyteller. He has travelled to and recorded parts from the most far-flung countries, undertaking projects such as travelling 8500km through 11 countries along Russia’s European border, walking 1100km through Uganda and Sudan with Levison Wood on Walking The Nile, trekking to Mt Everest Base Camp with wounded soldiers, and working on earthquake recovery procedures in the Philippines.

A true adventurer at heart, I was super excited to finally talk to him and learn more about his experiences.

 

First of all, could you tell me a little about how your story began?

I grew up in Windsor in a very middling town, where we had really good access to the outdoors. I wasn’t really outdoorsy in any way, I just really enjoyed being outside.

When I was in sixth form I worked at the local stables in exchange for being taught how to ride horses, and that was a very enjoyable experience that I wanted to do more of. After university, I did three things that I loved – I worked as a ‘jackaroo’ in Australia, I did a season as a ski instructor, and I played rugby in rural communities in New Zealand, which taught me about their cultures and was incredible.

You don’t fit the typical explorer typecast of white skinned ex-army man – would you say that your race or gender hindered or helped you?

I actually recently joined the RAF! But growing up I was told things like ‘I don’t like Asians but you’re alright,’ so I’d always had conflicting feelings about what it meant to be British. There’s a lot of English nationalism, which I think is different to Welsh and Scottish nationalism. 

I didn’t join the army earlier because of the war in Iraq which I thought was an unjust war, but I did decide to be in the reserves as it’s a really great place to learn loads of practical and outdoor skills which are useful. I’m not of that British colonial mindset – I’m Indian, after all – and until recently, it was accepted that the British empire was a benign empire. But then you go to India and you get the real, unpleasant, story.

So, travel to me was not about going to places for physical ardour or for proving how tough I was, to me it was a way of engaging with a local culture with empathy. I went to New Zealand to get an insight into the indigenous Maori, but travel and exploration is all about cultural exploration. I actually don’t like the word ‘explorer’ as really, it’s just a pre-cursor to coloniser, conquest, disposition, conquest, and used to describe people like Burton and Speke, whose explorations led to the dis-placement of the local people.

What would you say is one of the hardest things you’ve faced across all of your journeys across the world?

They are all hard in their own way, but some of the hardest things were from me putting too much pressure on myself and not seeing that the travel is valuable regardless. You get tired, you have to walk long distances, you have to carry heavy things, but no one cares about that stuff and it’s not that interesting. 

You mentioned that you studied philosophy – has this helped you in many situations, such as meeting with the Dalai Lama?

Philosophy teaches you a skill, critical thinking. What I do now is write articles and columns, so this was really useful. Like obligations to war, justice, these are very important things, and the way that different nations approach these ideas distinguish one nation from another, when they believe in one value system to another.

But when it comes to meeting the Dalai Lama, you don’t really ask him a question, he just tells you stuff. He was great, a very charismatic person. He has a remarkable ability to make you feel important, and I’m sure he’s probably met more people of different levels of society than anyone else on earth. I also learnt compassion from him.  He was talking about having to sneak out of Tibet, and he said that he had learnt that from the Chinese communists, who tried their best to culturally cleanse Tibet. For someone to be able to know that a nation and a group had done that to his people and still have the wisdom and compassion was very inspiring.

You’ve written for big publications such as the Telegraph, so I was wondering how you broke into the industry?

I think there are two approaches – nepotism or by writing blogs, with the latter being how I did it. And then I started to do free pieces for magazines and newspapers, and eventually this became paid. I got my first by-line in a paper from CityAM, and I was attending loads of travel shows and watching people I admired.

Nicholas Crane was doing a talk at the Adventure Travel Show and I told him I loved his work and he asked what I wanted to do, and when I told him I was going to take my dad’s ashes to India he said that he loved India and then introduced me to Michael Kerr, the deputy editor of the Telegraph Travel section, so that was being in the right place and asking questions.

Can I ask with all of your filming experience what you would consider to be one of the best documentary cameras?

It depends on what you’re shooting for. For example, I used the Sony Ax53, it’s not flash, it’s the updated version of the one we used on Walking the Nile, and its robust. You don’t want to have to think about your camera in the middle of doing something, you just want your camera to work. You can hear people, you can film stuff, and it is fairly indestructible. If you’re going to have another camera on top, probably go for the Sony Alpha 7S3.

For the Walking Wales Expedition we will be using the Canon Eos 700D, and I don’t know if you’ve used it or recommend it or..?

The main thing is that your kit should not hinder you. The big things that mess people up in filmmaking is ability to use a camera, ability to plan and write a story, and audio. Whether or not you have good film will not depend on your camera.

Who was your inspiration when you grew up? Was there someone you looked up to?

I just watched the new Michael Palin documentary, Travels of a Lifetime, which is currently on BBC iPlayer. Palin’s documentaries were the first time that an audience followed someone through their journey, and when he started, he was the first one to do it. I like him because he’s so curious about everyone that he meets and is just such a nice, authentic, and funny guy. His humour comes from warmth and that ability to connect to people.

The other stuff that really inspired me was Star Trek, I loved the Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, and I think this tolerance and interest of other cultures and the fact it was all built and framed in a very warm approach again, drew me to it.

Can I ask what your dream project is?

I’m currently working on a couple of ideas in India, but I don’t like the idea of a dream project per-say, as I’ve been lucky enough to go to all of the places I wanted to go to. But I really want to go for a journey in India following the path of my dad’s side of the family and some history that intersects with British history. I’ve walked 3,000 miles with Lev and I’ve done all sorts of things. I think that with the dream project, you’ve got to ask yourself, ‘are you doing it for you or for success?’ Lev said he wanted to walk the Nile to write a book to finally break through into the travel writing world, but I don’t think that he had always dreamed of walking the Nile for nine months.

So I have one last question, and that is, what’s next?

Who knows? With Coronavirus right now it is really hard to plan anything. But I definitely want to spend some time in India, and it is such an interesting, diverse place. You have more diversity in India than you do in Europe, but you tend to think of them as more homogenous. The more likely next one is I want to do some journeys in Britain, I will probably wait till spring and do the east side of Britain, go through the Fens and Yorkshire rather than through Cumbria.

But mainly, I’m doing a podcast called The First Mile with my friend Pip Stewart. What underpinned it was the saying that ‘the hardest part of any journey is the first mile’, so we wanted to really delve into what is the first mile of everybody’s journey. Podcasts don’t really do travel narratives and telling the story in a creative way, so we wanted to do that, framed around the first mile of getting through a journey.

And so, that pretty much sums up the Wandering Everywhere interview with one of the coolest adventurers in the game. Do any of y’all follow Ash on his adventures, or plan on doing so now that you know who exactly he is? Let me know in the comments below!

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