How Ronnie & Barty made their way to the top (quite literally)
It’s one thing to say that you want to move to the Himalayas and it’s another to actually do it and do it right… Here’s the story of a mountain film co(uple) and how their journey led them to become one of the top content creators in the country.
Quick request: Listen to Just Going by Rohan Thakur as you read this.
Finding the right collaborator, in some ways, is like finding the right life partner. While pop culture, for the longest time portrayed a fairy-tale-like world where things just fell into place, it is now ubiquitous that none of that works in reality. Similarly, with collaborations, there’s never a right or a wrong way of going about them. What matters is how you vibe with each other and how invested you are to contribute to this partnership.
Rohan Thakur and Bharti Bahrani, who go by the moniker “Ronnie and Barty”, are two stellar content creators who got together as partners in work and in life. The only fairy-tale-like chapter of their story is that they met on a movie set and now live in the mountains.
The filmmaking duo lives in Manali, documenting their frequent mountainous escapades and their slow-paced lifestyle. Stacking up over 2 lakh Youtube subscribers in the past couple of years have made them quite well-known in the creative community. If you love good cinematography and storytelling, it is pretty likely you may have seen their work.
By doing what they do best, making gorgeous content, they paint quite a picture in our heads of how dreamy their life would be. With their own organic farm, a dog and probably the best weather in the country (barring the freezing winter months), there’s not a single soul who wouldn’t want to live their life.
One of their highly recognized projects — “Way Back Home” helped them see that bigger dreams of living and creating content out of the mountains are achievable. Before this project, they were both living the typical city life: juggling work with passion projects.
The Soul Trail series was another marquee work of theirs, where 5 adventure seekers set out on road from Manali to Leh, driving rough terrains, camping in the wilderness and singing together. This journey played such an important role in mapping the untouched lands and cultures of the region and putting the offroad path in the spotlight. Adding more to this film series, Rohan also composed an instrumental album called “Chapter One” that skillfully mixed traditional Himalayan culture along with electronic beats.
As artists, it is so inspiring to see the same experience bringing out art in various mediums, speaking the same language!
In 2019, the two of them did a series of Q&A’s on Youtube talking about their life, how it all started and what their creative processes are like. Ronnie mentioned that Bharti and he had “met on a film” and it all started from there; she got him jobs on films and soon their friendship snowballed into a long-lasting collaboration. Besides working full-time in Mumbai, both of them made it a point to travel out of the city and work on film projects together.
Creators from India and the rest of the world look up to the duo for work and life goals, and we’re here just to do that. Additionally, it’s also vital to notice how their collaboration can help us become better at collaborating with other talented creators.
In the Q&A series, Ronnie and Barty expressed their undying admiration for Ian Wright from Lonely Planet and they had always been wanting to live that life. When you vibe with your partner on so many different levels, in terms of ideologies, way of life and career goals, it just confirms one thing: no matter how different each of you may be, it’s a sign that you’re meant to be.
Their story is living proof that for any collaboration to work out well, it’s great to start on smaller projects before working on bigger projects. In that way, time allows you to get to know the other person better and in a way predicts how well the larger project would fare.
If you’re a creative person doing multiple things, you’d know how important it is to balance work with passion projects, because that’s what keeps you going. Bharti, who was working with Anurag Kashyap in Mumbai for a while worked side by side with Ronnie and would keep making travel films as well. That was before the couple took the final plunge and moved to Manali to do it full-time.
When they started off with that, they had very little idea about how they were going to go about it, but that leap of faith played a big role in their creative journey.
We live in a world where making bold moves like these seem daunting and unrealistic, but the onus is on us to believe in ourselves and to surround ourselves with the right people who will push us to follow through. This ideology resonates so much with Ronnie and Barty’s work and life and they’re deeply admired for that among many things.