Heya…here comes the next tid-bits of my bollywood experience. From Bandra we then began our journey to Karjat to Asia’s largest bollywood studio – BIG ND Studio. It was earlier called ND Studios i.e. Nitin Desai Studio’s but recently Reliance bought a share in it and now it’s called BIG ND. For those of you who haven’t heard of him before, he’s one of the most renowned art directors in India – creator of Devdas, Jodha Akbar, The Legend of Bhagat Singh to name a few.

The journey to Karjat was long but I spent my time reading this lovely little booklet that had been provided to us. The guide kept referring to this booklet to show us photographs of the stars while showing us their homes. And coming to think of it, this made a lot of sense to the foreigners since it helped them correlate. Before we could approach Karjat, they also showed us an Audio visual on BIG ND studios. I hardly realized how time passed.

BIG ND is definitely a sight worth seeing. It’s so huge, you can actually spend an entire day inside it. Right at the entrance there were these life size elephants embellished with gold painting and beautiful lush green gardens. Must say they spend a fortune on maintaining this place.

We were then taken to their admin office where scenes of the movie Lage Raho Munnabhai were shot. Remember that scene where Sanjay Dutt is furious and enters Boman Irani’s office – that office was actually ND’s admin office!!

Then we saw something called ‘Bombay Street’ – what a beauty!! Mumbai 50 years ago has been captured so beautifully – every single nuance so minutely designed. The Nike Ad where you have these boys playing cricket over BST Buses and the movie Traffic Signal were shot here.

ND also has something called chalets. That’s where the stars stay while they shoot at ND. It’s beautifully designed and equipped with all the latest amenities our glamour icons are used to. Almost every star from Amitabh Bachan to Hrithik Roshan to Danny Boyle have stayed here. In one chalet they had these small frames put up on one wall, each one signed by some big wig who had ever stayed at ND.

If you are thinking how we managed with our empty tummies all this while…well as soon as we entered ND, a sumptuous breakfast awaited us and guess what, we actually ate at one of their sets called the Haveli. We Indian’s are used to living in such unhygienic conditions that I felt like a princess while on this tour. The amount of detailing we had gone into while designing this tour was just crazy, luxury coaches, hand sanitizers, wet tissues, clean restrooms, multi-cuisine buffet…the likes…

I can actually go on and on describing ND but I’ll give you a peek-a-boo of one last set…my favorite…sets of the movie Jodha Akbar. This was closest to my heart, the reason being just last month I visited Rajashtan where I saw the Amer fort – Jodha’s palace. Being a fan of Ashutosh, I have watched this movie a zillion times. It was so fresh in my head that the moment I saw the set, I just couldn’t believe my eyes. How could a set be so real and so perfect?? Hats off to ND!!

I was so excited that I probably ticked off the guide. Before he could open his mouth I kept rattling off all the details. This happened so many times that he finally let me take over the mantle for that particular set. I relished every bit of the attention watching my co-tourists listen to me attentively. But good old Johnny took it in his stride…

Details on my next stop over comes soon guys.. I feel like am writing Motorcycle diaries part II ..only thing I’ll name this ‘Rendezvous with Glam Land’