There is no good reason for modern humans, especially those of us who live in cities, to travel. Most of what we need to survive — food, water, medicine — are usually within reach, and increasingly available at our doorstep with the rising popularity of instant delivery apps in India. And yet, we travel because it is an essential part of what means to be human. We are, after all, migratory animals. If you look at the history of humankind, from when our ancient ancestors travelled from Africa to the rest of the world, often following arduous paths which led to certain death for some of them, it becomes obvious why we feel an irresistible urge to step outside the comfort of our home and go elsewhere — to find ourselves in strange places, amidst strange peoples.

To find ourselves. The best travellers, travel writers, vloggers, and filmmakers understand that this is the true purpose of modern travel: to meet others so that we might meet ourselves in them. Some of my favourite travel books, shows, and films, including Anthony Bourdain’s wonderful food and travel shows ‘A Cook’s Tour’ (2002–2003), ‘No Reservations’ (2005–2012), ‘Parts Unknown’ (2013–2018) and Ewan McGregor and his long-time friend Charley Boorman’s ‘Long Way’ series are about founding oneself through travel.

Megha Ramaswamy (Lalanna’s Song) and Adarsh Gourav’s ‘Voices of the Land: Tales of Northeast’ joined this list earlier this month. The 6-episode documentary series follows Adarsh as he travels through India’s remote northeastern states, meeting indigenous tribes, and learning from community leaders, elders, and the youth about their culture in their own voices.

As I watched the series, what stood out to me was how it eschews the usual extractive gaze of travel documentaries. Megha frames Adarsh not so much as a host in the conventional sense, introducing and explaining to us these tribes as he is a stand-in for the audience, learning about these communities through talking and listening to them. Each episode focuses on a specific tribe — the Angami of Nagaland, the Mising of Assam, the Sherdukpen of Arunachal Pradesh, the Biate of Dima Hasao, and the Khasi of Meghalaya — and positions them as custodians of their own heritage. I knew I had to get on a call with Megha and Adarsh when she told me about the series on WhatsApp. The interview took place last Saturday, with Adarsh joining from London, where he is currently filming the next season of the science fiction horror series ‘Alien: Earth’.

“When we were developing the series, we were very deliberate about representation. Our initial conversations with the tribes were formal, but they gradually became very friendly. We researched the tribes extensively, but they were equally careful in researching us: Adarsh, me, where we come from, how we represent people, and the values we stand for,” Megha said when we spoke.

The team shot on location across Assam, Nagaland, Arunachal Pradesh, and Meghalaya for around twenty days. “I got to really interact with the communities in a very personal way,” Adarsh said.

“It was a privilege. As a tourist, you don’t necessarily get to sit with people for hours, ask questions, and have your curiosity answered. But as an actor on a show, you’re given the space to ask those questions and spend much more time with them,” he said. “The footage you see for half an hour is shot across three days, and those three days are spent entirely with them, asking questions. You get to know a lot about their history, their subculture, their food, their personal stories — a lot of it doesn’t make the episode, but it’s what you experience and learn. It becomes a completely different experience.”

“Our local producers from the Northeast helped us build genuine relationships which became part of the story,” Megha said. “A particularly moving moment was when Adarsh was given a whistling name by the Khasi. We knew it would happen, but we had no idea how emotionally powerful it would be. Experiences like that only happen when people trust your intentions. Every episode was vetted by the community itself. It wasn’t about convincing one person; entire villages discussed who we were, why we wanted to make the series, and whether they wanted to participate.”

“If you watch the episode about the Sherdukpen tribe, Adarsh is not talking almost at all for the first fifteen minutes,” Megha said. “He is listening to community leaders like Dr. Lobsang Tashi Thungon and Mr. Dorjee K Thungon. It’s a very silent episode, and we decided to keep it that way because that was natural.”

"Was that something that you realized you wanted to do when you reached Shergaon? Or was it already decided that you were going to do it that way?" I asked Adarsh.

“Honestly? A lot of it was handed to me on a platter,” Adarsh answered. “It was Megha and Nitin’s writing — they wrote it wonderfully. I had very little to add to it.”

“I simply surrendered to the place,” Adarsh said. “It’s easy to do that in a place where there’s no noise and chaos. There’s so much silence and you feel very connected to everything that’s around you. Also, there’s no network, so you can’t really be distracted on your phone, like most times. I mostly relied on the script and the lines I was given. Every now and then I’d go off-script when I felt it was necessary to draw something specific out. But mostly, I just gave myself over to the project. And I think Megha made me look really nice in the show.”

“It’s the female gaze!” Megha chimed in.

“Yes, it is!” Adarsh replied.

Soon our conversation veered towards the collectivist nature of tribal communities, how their way of life is rooted to the landscapes and ecologies they live within and how tribal custodianship of natural resources come from a sense of ownership which is sorely missing from India’s urban centres.

“I don’t think what they’re practicing is hard for us to adopt in the city — especially around being more respectful toward the environment. It’s a civic-sense issue: we’ve let our privilege exploit the availability of resources without learning to give back,” Megha said. “These aren’t things that require some huge recalibration — it’s that cities have pushed us into a corner where we’re just told to survive. It takes a collective effort to get to a more sustainable future.”

“I agree with Megha,” Adarsh said. “One thing — being respectful and aware of your surroundings. What struck me across every village and tribe was how clean they kept their spaces, how respectful they were of the nature around them, how they maintained balance. I think we have either forgotten that or grown lazy, treating it as someone else’s responsibility — throwing things out of the car because we don’t feel it’s on us. That lack of ownership stands out starkly against these tribes, who have real ownership of their world.”

“The other thing,” he continued, “is carrying your heritage and history with you. There’s a strong sense of individuality among these tribes; they’re all very different, and genuinely knowledgeable and proud of their heritage. In cities, a homogeneity has set in — every city in India has started to look the same; take a photo in the main market of almost any city and, if you ignore the signboards, it could be anywhere. We need to reverse that a little, understand what each city stands for and how different they really are, so that going to a different state feels like an experience rather than arriving somewhere that looks just like where you left. Food’s heading that way too. You get momos in Mumbai and in Jharkhand. Dosa and aloo paratha everywhere. I miss that sense of individuality in cities.”

Yet both of them were careful not to romanticise these communities and their way of life. They do not exist outside of mainstream politics. Their futures, Megha pointed out, remain inseparable from state policy.

“I do wish our governments were more invested in preserving these spaces,” Megha said. “I’ve worked a lot in Jharkhand, researched around Dhanbad and elsewhere. The natural resources there are extraordinary, and also badly plundered because things aren’t planned well. India is such a beautiful country, and it frightens me how little people in positions of power seem to care about organizing it in a way that empowers its citizens.”

As our conversation neared it’s end, a question kept swirling on my mind. The experience had clearly affected both Megha and Adarsh in profound ways, but how did it change them? At its heart, ‘Voices of the Land’ is about people rooted to place. But how did the experience alter Adarsh and Megha’s own understanding of home? As actors and filmmakers, I imagine you have to travel quite often for work, I told them. “But then you met these people who have lived their entire lives within their communities, or people like Ajavi, Tashi, and Dorje who studied elsewhere and returned to their communities. How did that experience alter your idea of home?” I asked.

“I’d give a fairly emotional answer to that,” Megha replied. “India is the country that inspires my stories as a storyteller. I may get funding for projects from outside India, but the stories live here. My relationship with this country is umbilical, partly because I was born here. I understand Ajavi’s decision to come home rather than chase an opportunity in the city, and choose instead to represent her own cultural identity.”

“The sense of individuality Adarsh was talking about earlier, I feel that way about the country as a whole, not just about Maharashtra or South India,” she said. “The country has so many stories to offer, and there’s an urgency to telling them, because cultures are vanishing — the way food, meat, and language are perceived is vanishing. That relationship lies within the soil of this country, if I can say that without sounding dramatic.”

Adarsh paused for a moment. “I don’t really have a fixed concept of home,” he said quietly. “I’ve moved around too much in my life to have one. The concept of home itself is pretty warped in my head. In Mumbai alone I’ve lived in something like 12 or 13 houses over the last 19 years, and in Jamshedpur I moved between 3 or 4 houses, so there’s no real sense of permanency in that way. But wherever I’ve been, I’ve always felt grateful for the people I’ve met, whether in Mumbai or all over the world — so that has something to say for itself. I suppose home ends up being less about the people — though I do love my country — so I have many homes.”

And in the end, that is what travelling is about. Isn’t it?

‘Voices of the Land: Tales of Northeast’ is now streaming exclusively on JioHotstar.

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