SENSORY OVERLOAD: (From left) Chris Clarke, Stuart Sutton and Dave Chadwick. Picture by Aranya Sen

Inspirational and devastating. The sum total of a British trio’s experience while shooting a documentary on India’s Grand Trunk Road.

On the final leg of an epic 2,000-km odyssey, an exhilarated, if drained, Stuart Sutton, Chris Clarke, and Toby Melunsky drove into the city last week after cutting a vast swathe through the subcontinent. From the Wagah border to the Bengal capital, along a route that is currently the focus of one of the world’s biggest highway projects.

“This is the realisation of a long-time dream,” said Sutton. “It was both a pilgrimage through some of India’s holiest sites, and a historical, cultural road-trip through a slice of India. What we saw was both inspirational and devastating… Trying to do justice to the major sensory overload that India provides, the overwhelming colour, smell and sound has been the greatest challenge.”

With the footage (“some of the images we captured were simply spectacular”) now on the editing table, the group is in talks with the BBC and National Geographic TV networks to screen the mammoth journey.

Setting off in early November from the Wagah border, which Clarke described as “something like a football match”, the trip took in Amritsar, Chandigarh, Delhi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Varanasi and Barrackpore before journey’s end in Calcutta, and led them through some of India’s holiest sights.

“We arrived in Amritsar unaware that it was Guru Nanak’s birthday, and were completely taken by surprise by the explosions of fireworks at the Golden Temple,” recounted Clarke.

The group also filmed “holy men at Krishna’s birthplace of Mathura, Jain pilgrims on the winding paths of the Parasnath hills and performed their own puja in the holy waters of the Sangam in Uttar Pradesh — an experience Clarke attested prompted him to quit smoking.

In Bodh Gaya, the group had a run-in with a snake charmer, an encounter none would want to repeat. “The snake charmer took us into the fields, followed by dozens of jubilant children. He made an elaborate pantomime of chanting and wailing. Then, he ploughed into the long grass and pulled out three cobras,” recounted American stand-in Dave Chadwick, a replacement for cameraman Marcus Van Nierop, who failed to make the distance.

“He promptly handed all three snakes directly over to Chris, who was busy filming. I took the camera to capture an outrageous scene. Chris froze in fear, reeling back with the cobras rearing towards him, with the charmer clubbing them around the head as they tried to bite.”

One experience no one will miss is the peril of Indian driving. “At night, it was utterly frightening, with sheer carnage visible all along the route,” said Sutton. “We were warned of kidnappers and dacoities in Bihar, so you can imagine our fear when we punctured a tyre in the middle of nowhere. But we managed to pull through.” The documentary is to be released in a month.