Janapar – Love, on a bicycle, actually…

Reading the headlines about cycling recently you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s all drugs(Lance Armstrong and other revelations), death(over 100 cyclists killed on UK roads so far this year) and doom(cyclist abuse is “almost like racial discrimination” according to AA president Edmund King).

But a new film serves to remind us of the simplicity, pleasure and adventure offered by the humble bicycle.

There are no deaths or drugs in Janapar, but there is plenty of beauty and romance as 23-year-old Tom Allen sets off from a sleepy English village on his overladen touring bike without a map or guidebook.  By the end of his journey, he has not only conquered mountain ranges and thousands of miles, but has fallen in love with a beautiful Armenian-Iranian girl and persuaded her to get on a bike and join him in his adventure.

Tom and Tenny are now happily married and living in the UK, already planning another epic two-wheeled journey, this time to deepest Iran.

The resulting film – Janapar is an Armenian word for ‘journey’ – is a reminder of how a bicycle can be a means of escape.  Beautifully shot by Tom and sensitively-edited by his friend and former BBC producer/director James Newton, it’s an inspiring love story as much as a rip-roaring adventure yarn.

Yes, Tom suffers his fair share of physical pain and discomfort – particularly during a stretch across the Nubian desert, not to mention the number of times he must have had to cycle up and down several mountains to set up his camera, tripod and self-timer for those all-important climbing shots – but it’s the emotional burden that seems to weigh on him most heavily.

This is particularly true when he and Tenny arrive on their bikes for a surprise visit to her parents in Tehran.   It doesn’t go well.  Suffice to say, they aren’t enamoured at the prospect of this strange, unshaven Englishman pedaling off into the sunset with their daughter……

But neither our hero nor his faithful editor Newton are shy to wring some humour from all that physical suffering and mental angst.  The scene where Tom cycles all the way back from the Armenian-Iran border to be reunited with Tenny packs an unexpected and – for us – highly amusing punchline.

Speaking from a yurt in a friend’s back garden near the shores of Coniston Water in England’s Lake District – where he is putting the finishing touches to a book about his adventure – Tom says:

“The film tells the story of a fairly typical Westerner in his twenties who decides to jack it all in and hit the road. That was me, five years ago. Since then I’ve been travelling the world with little more than a bicycle, a tent and a video camera. The core of Janapar’s story, however, is not in the traveller’s tales but in the unexpected relationship I found which fundamentally changed the way I look at life. The resulting film is highly personal, but I’m comfortable sharing it now because of the universal messages in the story.”

Editor and producer Newton had to sift through more than 300 hours of footage filmed in 32 countries over four years. He said:

“Far beyond a simple journey, it depicted entire chapters of its subject’s life.  It soon became clear that the story was theatrical in scope. It possessed the power to inspire and to change the way people thought about life.

“Janapar has universal themes. It was beautifully filmed by Tom with an unusual level of honesty. He invested a great deal of trust in the lens, and we hope that this is reflected in the finished film.”

The film was premièred in September at the Raindance Festival in London and will be screened at venues around the UK in the New Year, including the Telegraph Adventure Travel Show at Olympia in London on 27 January(which will also include a Q&A with its makers).

• Janapar is released on DVD from Tuesday, 27 November, and is available exclusively from:  http://janapar.com