The road was the room.
RTX, the Roadtrip Experience Project, was the first version of a question that still runs through my work: what might happen if people from different creative worlds spent enough time together to stop introducing themselves by their job titles?
The first journey took thirty photographers, musicians, filmmakers and entrepreneurs through Spiti and Lahaul in 2014. Later chapters travelled through other landscapes, with the group, the route and local collaborators shaping what happened along the way.
The question
What changes when the conversation has a road to travel?
We planned the route and the practical contingencies, but left room for people to respond to a place and to one another. A road trip gave those conversations time. It also gave people a reason to make something together: a photograph, a piece of music, an artwork, or simply the beginning of a collaboration.
In Meghalaya, an artist asked a fisherman if the group could paint his boat. He said yes. By morning, a shared idea had become something visible on the riverbank. It is one small example of the kind of exchange RTX made possible.
What stayed with me
The creative work did not come from a tightly scripted schedule. It came from making the group, the journey and the local encounter matter, while doing enough production work for spontaneity to be possible.
RTX became part of the foundation for Experience Co. and the formats that followed. The road was never just a way to get somewhere.