Imperial Black, Lieutenant Twiss & a Darjeeling Hill Station

Shimla  Matheran  Darjeeling

smoke and dawn in the foothills of the Himalaya

Darjeeling & Kanchenjunga

a temple of monkeys

A British past

  
Hill stations and the lives lived there have more than fascinated us at Imperial Black. They have coloured our images of the English gentleman abroad. The gin drinking, tea sipping, and cricket play beneath a sweltering landscape are irresistible.

Coronation day 1937

As a boy I would hear talk of forebearers who took the air up high, walked the hills, and adventured onto the peaks.  Always fascinated I would beg more from assorted great Aunts and Uncles.  I have strong suspicions that as the paltry bits of information were mined over and over our own Lieutenant Twiss became a distorted sum of his parts.  I'm doubtful that any man could live up to a family's collective stories but nevertheless he persists and exists to this day in what we do.

In Darjeeling

a march with the men

Tiger print in river bed

We are drawn to the time in between days and the ethereal places in between journeys.  Hill stations existed in that idyllic place of being neither here (India) nor there (England).  Just as in a scrubby patch of land in the West Indies reinvention was commonplace for many a man.

As we look at shirting materials for this next selection The Raj and travel by train through the continent loom large.  The ashes of British Imperialism are ever present in our thoughts.  place names, historical events, injustices made, and a thirst for exploration offer fertile material for the imagination.

up and into the hills

  Quarters bound for the hills

An elegant spot to write in transit

just great words from Simon

Thursday, 14 Jan 2010

January 14 – San Juan - San Rafael

I am writing this under siege, in a service station, about 100km from San Rafael, Argentina. Although we are clearly not driving in the race – merely reporting on it, we were mobbed as we pulled up. I signed autograph after autograph before finally stumbling into this air-conditioned haven. Right now we are holed up with two confused looking American drivers from the Monster Hummer team. The crowd are banging on the windows, staring in, trying to attract the attention of the yanks (my ego would like to think that it’s all about me, but it’s definitely not).One of the many fine things about Argentine servos is the fact that they sell beer, long necks of beer. So as I write, I am supping cold Heineken and watching the mayhem unfold outside.

Last night I felt like I was filming something of a last supper, this morning as I pointed the camera at Christophe over the bivouac table, I was unable to shake the fear that by the end of today, it could all be over. Everything I shot was coloured with “last?”.
We hit the road at around 7.00am, heading to the end of today’s special. This latter part of the rally is attracting spectators in their tens/hundreds of thousands and we had to weave a torrid path through their cars to find a space to leave the car close to the village of San Martin.

It was hot as we walked towards the arrival checkpoint – very hot, definitely up in the high 30s with very little shade. The prospect of a long, hot, nervous wait for Christophe was not one that I relished. I have taken to carrying the hard drive that holds all the footage I have taken with me at all times. I was worried that the intense heat would somehow damage it, so I practically crawled under a thorn bush which offered some shade and prepared to wait.
I soon tired of this uncomfortable predicament and longingly eyed the shady awning under which the official Dakar TV crew were waiting. Earlier in the day, I had sent an SMS to one of the TV guys at the race organisers to have him tell people to expect me at the finish. I had little hope of this leading to anything, but it is at this point that the day started to become officially good. As I wandered over to the awning, a rough looking, Gauloises smoking TV guy was on the phone. I heard my name. “Am I hallucinating? Is it the heat? The exhaustion?” No. before I knew it, I had escaped the sweaty solipsism of the independent film maker and was sat in a camp chair, enjoying banter with the French guys.

The crowd at the finish were frenzied. In amongst the dust being kicked up by a hot wind, they mobbed every bike or car that arrived, chanting, shouting, touting T-shirts, flags, bags, stickers, underwear? To be signed. The French TV producer seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown, chain smoking like a madman as he attempted to “shoo” them away from the TV area. It made for great viewing from the luxury of my chair.
It was at least an hour and a half before I even thought about filming – expecting Christophe to come in 2 ½ hours or so behind the leaders. Eventually, I got up and captured some of the madness – a long lens bringing the action close up to me, quite literally in my face. Fifty or so bikes had come through. Rob Pollard among them. Another great performance, finishing in the thirties despite a broken elbow that is causing him serious discomfort.

The Volkswagen cars that are leading the race arrived in, and the crowd broke ranks and went wild. Monsieur Gauloises lit a whole pack at once and ran into the fray, looking ready to cause serious harm to anyone who’d interfere with his broadcast. An immaculately dusty long-haired French TV presenter complete with neck scarf flowing in the wind attempted to look composed as he reported from the heart of the madness.

I stood back, well away from the chaos – letting my long lens bring it all to me. It was out of the corner of this lens that I spied an orange helmet, forging a path through the throngs of passionate fans. I blinked, pulled my face away from the eye-piece, wanting to check this apparition for myself. The French TV presenter laughed a perfectly manicured laugh at a comment from one of the VW drivers. The TV crew’s camera captured the whole manufactured scene, and right out of their shot and into mine came Christophe.

There is, so I’m told a position you can find on a motorbike where riding becomes effortless. In the face of an injured back, a torn triceps and 13 days of hard riding, it is this Zen riding state that Christophe found today. He rode better, faster, more efficiently than he has on any day since the race began. How, I do not know, but somewhere amidst the sun scorched rocks and parched sierra earth between San Juan and San Raphael, Christophe found the something that maybe, just maybe could take him through to Buenos Aires.

 

Jan 7 - Antofagasta - Iquique - the day the dream almost died

I awoke late. About 7.00am. As I sat and stared at my bivouac breakfast, styrofoam coffee in hand, I was thinking about the film. One of the difficulties of making a documentary like this is that you really don’t know what will happen. I am very much aware of the elements required to build a compelling story, but this story is very much in the hands of the gods. So my concern this morning was around whether there is currently enough drama in the movie so far. Is there enough going on to keep an audience engaged?
I needn’t have worried. After a 370km drive to Iquique, we parked at the base of a mountain of sand 1000m high. Crowds of people were assembled at the bottom, staring up, as spectators at a ski race would do, gazing at the distant shimmering sandy summit.

As I set up my camera, a plume of dust way way above me marked the speeding descent of a motorbike. Straight down - a ski racer line, tearing across the sand, tracking across the mountainside, then down into a dip before roaring into the view of the crowd, hammering past us towards the end of the stage, just a kilometer or so away.
Confident that I had found a great viewpoint from which to capture Christophe’s descent, I readied myself for a wait that I imagined would be 30 to 40 minutes. Bikes came and went. Cars began to make their sense defying way down the dune. Then trucks. Spectators started to pack up and leave and still Christophe had not arrived. I shuffled uncomfortably, needing to pee but not wanting to miss the glory shot. Two and a half hours at least had past. In my mind, dark scenarios began to play out. Could this be where the dream ends? Here at the bottom of this infernal mountain of sand? Surely nothing bad could happen on such a beautiful day? I’ve spent too much time in the mountains to know that bad things do happen on beautiful days and that the world, beautiful in her insouciance just carries on.
A Chilean stood beside me handed me a beer. Jacob asked me whether I’d head home if Christophe was out. A helicopter past overhead, and there, right up there, from over the ridge came a motorbike. The first motorbike we had seen for 20 minutes. I tracked it with the long lens, hoping, hoping, unable at this stage to make out a number or color that would identify it. My bladder throbbed, my brain played through hospital bedside scenarios and flight re-arrangements to get home to Mel and the girls. And then I knew. Out of the dip, into the shot I’d been setting up all afternoon, hunched over the handle bars, heading home, it was him. “Es mi amigo” I shouted to the beer donor. “It’s Christophe, he’s in, the dream is still alive!”
But the dream was so very nearly not still alive. With no more than a third of the special still to go, Christophe had hit a hole, a big hole and taken a serious fall. In his words: “I’m lucky to still be walking, even luckier that the bike is still ok”. I’ve watched footage of the fall on the POV footage and believe you me, it hurt.


Christophe lives to ride another day. He has some bruising and a stiff back, but at 5am or so tomorrow, he’ll head out for the longest special of the rally - over 600km over the same terrain that nearly had the better of him today. 28 Luca Manca from Italy will not be so lucky. After crashing his motorbike on the stage, he was airlifted directly to a hospital in Santiago where he underwent brain surgery. At the time of writing, he is fighting for his life.
After something like this happens, how can you, more aware than ever of the risks involved in this endeavour, just get up tomorrow and keep going? When I asked him, Christophe didn’t really reply - I guess his answer is simply that he can, and he will.

Simon