Destination MIRZYA...

Have neither the time nor the money for a holiday? A ticket to MIRZYA might just give you a vacation in the span of 2-odd hours. Filmmaker Rakeysh Omprakash Mehra has indeed explored the offbeat track to give a fresh essence to his upcoming poignant love story, MIRZYA. The whole of the film has been shot at unexplored locations amidst the desolate terrain of Ladakh and the vibrancy of colourful Rajasthan.

We learn that Mehra shot just 17 kilometres away from the India-Pakistan border in Thulia. In order to do this, they had to seek permission from the Border Security Force (BSF) and Intelligence Bureau. The difficult part was still to come as the entire cast and crew had to travel 90 kilometres every day to reach the locations!

Mehra was evidently keen on exploring virgin locations which hadn’t been captured in any Bollywood film so far. In order to accomplish this, the director

and his team conducted an extensive recce before short-listing their locations in Ladakh and Rajasthan, namely Nubra valley and Pahelgaum lake in Ladhak, Shiv Niwas Palace and Fatehgarh Palace in Udaipur, and Thulia and Ranau in Jaisalmer. Rakeysh shares that he wanted to picturise the legendary folklore of Mirza Sahiban in an imaginative fashion. For this, they travelled to Ladakh and went to the remote corners, beyond Pangong Tso lake and Nyoma. “There I found these absolute virgin locations which were on the border of China, so the army helped us a lot,” he adds.

Filming the climax of the present day story in Rajasthan, took them to the remote desert areas which are beyond Jaisalmer, Phulia and on the border areas of Barmer. Once again, the local tourism board and the army were very helpful because these are restricted areas for any normal person to go, the 53-year-old filmmaker revealed.