Marta Tomkiw 001Location Scouts are by nature very curious individuals. It is this quality that fuels us in our search for the perfect location. So we wondered what do location scouts do on their vacations?

Location Pro and documentary filmmaker Marta Tomkiw recently traveled to the Himalayas and shares an excerpt from her journal. 

“I first heard the faint call of the Himalayas when my father brought home a calendar featuring those majestic peaks when I was 7 years old.  One look at that calendar and I was spellbound.  I started to dream – one day I shall go there I promised myself.  Someday.

Throughout the years, decades later, that first faint call turned into an inner roar that I could no longer ignore.  The Himalayas were calling me and I had to go.  So I bought airline tickets to New Delhi and then to Kathmandu, the least expensive way  to travel to Nepal,  home of Mt Everest, the world’s highest mountain and the Himalayas.

I was drawn to the mystic land of the gods where legends hold truth and heaven meets earth.  Where yogis abound in solitary meditation in caves for many years, where monks in remote monasteries practice and carry out secret Tibetan Buddhist practices and rituals centuries old and some dissolve their bodies upon death into rainbow bodies, where locals in the mountains claim they often see Yetis and where enlightenment is considered a top priority.  I wanted to meet the yogis, the monks to learn and understand some of their secrets and to try my best to becoming closer to enlightenment in this lifetime.

Marta Tomkiw 033 I packed my bags and set out on a mission for two and a half months – totally utterly  alone.  No tour guides for me – I wanted to be completely free to explore as I wished.  I wanted to get lost to find new horizons, to explore the ancient lands and mysteries, to cleanse my perspective and to expand and enrich my soul and being.  Finally my childhood dream was turning into a reality.  Someday was here and now.

Marta recently completed a  feature length documentary,  Holodomor: Ukraine’s Genocide   and it is now available online.


[av_gallery ids=’19834,19806,19818,19820,19825,19808,19809,19824,19835,19833,19832,19831,19830,19829,19828,19827,19826,19823,19822,19821,’ style=’thumbnails’ preview_size=’portfolio’ crop_big_preview_thumbnail=’avia-gallery-big-crop-thumb’ thumb_size=’no scaling’ columns=’4′ imagelink=’lightbox’ lazyload=’deactivate_avia_lazyload’]