For more than 4000 years Indian vessels have been sailing the seas, known as the Indian Ocean. Seamen from Arabia, China and Europe have landed in India's harbours. Where spices and precious stones, silk and cotton cloth were traded, merchants and rajas were benefiting mutually. The profits from these enterprises were invested in the hinterland and contributed to wealth, architecture and the advanced civilisation of various empires.

Even in India this ancient maritime history is not at all well known and hardly researched. However, in the last few years the country has opened up again and India is rediscovering her coasts and the importance of ports and sea trade.

The tree films discover

3 x 43’30 or 3 x 52’’, Digital Beta, 16:9,
produced by Bayerischer Rundfunk and Along Mekong Productions, with support of the Medien- und Filmgesellschaft Baden-Württemberg, MFG.

part 1: From Gujarat to Bombay
part 2: To the Malabar Coast
part 3: From the Coromandel Coast to Calcutta

It stretches for 5.600 kilometres, passes different landscape and features varying cultures and religions: India’s coastline.

The three films follow the coastal territories from the Pakistan border all the way to the southern tip of India and then north again to the city of Calcutta. The films pass along the major coasts of the subcontinent: Gujarat in the Northwest, Malabar in the Southwest, Coromandel in the Southeast and finally the Bengal coast. They highlight Indian culture and history from a maritime angle. They search for traces of the glorious seafaring tradition, they explore the remnants of the old sea trade and they attempt to discover how maritime India presents herself today, in the age of globalisation.

Moving by sailing dhow, by bus or by train, the three films meet people of the Indian coasts, people that live with and of the sea and the sea trade. These people are the focal points of the series.