Other titles:AMATEUR FILM BY MAJOR RONALD SINCLAIR [Alternative Title]
Summary:Travelogue films showing indigenous life in the interwar period, filmed by the British traveller, linguist, spy and author Reginald Teague Jones OBE, who changed his name to Sinclair after his alleged involvement in the massacre of Bolshevik commissars from Baku in the Caucasus in September 1918.
Description:The film documents a trip between Bombay and London in a Morris Oxford, undertaken between February 13th 1928 and early May of that year. Teague Jones as 'Major Ronald Sinclair' was accompanied on this journey by 'Captain Coleman'. Both appear throughout the film. The itinerary was as follows:
Bombay, western Ghats, Indore, Gwalior, Agra, Dehli, Ludhiana, Jullundur, Amritsar, Lahore, Gujranwala, Jhelum, Rawalpindi, Attock, Nowshera, NWFP/Peshawar, Khyber Pass. At this point they turned back to Peshawar, and from there they entered Afghanistan through Kohat Pass, Bannu, Pezu Pass into the Derajat, to Dera Ismael Khan. From here, there are no more roads: across desert to Multan (car was stuck twice, even using 'balloon tyres'; stuck at 'banked up irrigation channel'). Thence to Dera Ghazi Khan. Car railed to Duzdab. The large tower crumbling tower standing in desert is outside Duzdab (the Mil-i-Nadir, built by Nadir Shah?). Across more Persian desert, before joining and following the Indo-European Telegraph line, in order to stay with a Mr. May of the Indo-European Telegraph dept., then to the Gulabek Pass. Sipi. Outside Sipi, a stony plain then to the 'Afghan Pass' ('to complicate matter still further, at two of the narrowest parts we found the passage blocked by the carcasses of recently deceased camels' which they had to move; this scene appears in the film, car is forced up bank of pass and bounces over carcass). Crossing the Shurgaz river bed (sandy), and then into a desert with a treacherous surface, where the car got stuck several times ('we spread the tarpaulin under the rear wheels': a scene captured in the film). Bam, Kirman (white burqas), Yezd, Nain, Ispahan, Tehran, Hamadan road to Baghdad. Syrian desert crossed in convoy to Damascus. Baalbek. Beirut. Steamer to Naples. Pompeii. Up through Italy to the French Riviera, then onwards to London.
Alternative Title:AMATEUR FILM BY MAJOR RONALD SINCLAIR [Alternative Title]
