India: Missing in Kullu
Duration: 29'47"
Reporters: Elizabeth Jones and Jonathan Miller
Executive Producer: Ron McCullagh
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"There is an underlying mystery to all these disappearances. People need to
be warned. There is something not quite right."
Moira Wedge, Foreign Missing Persons' Bureau, Delhi
Over the past three years at least 14 foreign backpackers have vanished without trace in the Kullu Valley, in India's western Himalayas. Nobody knows how or why. This Insight News investigation uncovers the sinister realities behind the disturbing pattern of unexplained disappearances.
Were the missing foreigners simply intoxicated by Kullu's mystical charms or could they have been sucked into its most lucrative business? Armed with a hidden camera, we go undercover to expose an international drugs-trafficking racket, run by a western mafia. We also reveal how a powerful hallucinogen is used to drug and sometimes kill unwitting victims. We track down a survivor, a man who was a missing person and who is now convinced that many of Kullu's "disappeared" are still out there, half-alive, in a drug-induced daze.
Woven into this investigation is the compelling story of a mother's search for her missing son. Back home in Canada, Homa Boustani is a quality inspector for an electronics firm. In Kullu, she embarks on a gruelling journey in the footsteps of her adventurous son, Ardavan, who last called home in May 1997. Homa's search takes her from ashrams to remote mountain villages and into New Age communities of young western travellers. She explores a wild land of many obvious dangers and some hidden, but fatal, attractions. Homa Boustani is a living testimony to why it's every mother's right to worry.
This is a road-movie. A parable for the rave-culture travellers of the late 90s. It is a story about the seductive dangers of drugs and the perils of travelling in ignorance. Set against an exotic Himalayan backdrop, this investigative documentary penetrates the hardcore world of the spiritual tourist. It presents a unique insiders' view of a traveller's paradise where all is not as it appears.
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