Donkey Sunrise
A motorcycle travellers’ oasis and motorcycle tours in Colombia
Challenge
Donkey Sunrise is a motorcycle travellers’ oasis tucked into a valley in the mountains of southern Colombia: rooms nestled in greenery, home-cooked meals, a workshop and an off-road course, built around overlanders passing through. Tim wanted to pivot the business towards guided tours and had just bought a fleet of Royal Enfield Himalayan 450s to run them on. What he did not have was a single frame of those bikes in the Colombian landscape they were bought for.
Selling a tour is a different job from selling a bed. A rider is committing days of their trip, and often a flight, to roads they cannot preview, on a bike they have never sat on, in a country that still carries a reputation it has long outgrown. Photographs of a guesthouse answer none of that, and the thing that actually sells the tour, volcanic Andean peaks, carving the twisties above the valley, powering across jungle waterways where the road ends, only exists as motion.
Approach
I arrived on my own bike, Colombia being the first stop in South America on a ride that had already crossed the US and Central America, and booked in as a guest. I had written ahead about volunteering, and Tim took me up on it: room and board in exchange for film and photography, alongside the ordinary volunteer work around the place. I stayed three weeks, over Christmas and New Year.
Living there is what made the work possible. Tim and I built a shot list together and set aside dedicated filming days with guests, volunteers and staff. The rest came from the days themselves: day trips with the other riders, carving through mist-shrouded Andean peaks, powering across jungle streams, wandering a lush family-run coffee finca and eating bananas and tropical fruit straight off the trees.
The shoot covered the ride and the stay in equal measure: riding footage from the road and from the air, the rooms in their greenery, the home-cooked meals and the long table, and the evenings that run from dinner through the bonfire to dancing under the thatch. The other half of what Donkey Sunrise sells is the company, riders from all walks of life and from all over the world sharing stories from the road, so the people are in the frame throughout rather than staged out of it.
The film was cut vertically for Instagram alongside the widescreen version. Around it sits a library of stills covering every part of the hub, and a set of short takes holding the moments that only work in motion: a bike leaning through a corner, cloud filling the valley at dawn, the fire catching.
The interviews were Tim’s idea, and a good one. Seat height and fit are the practical questions a rider asks before booking days on a bike they have never sat on, so we put the new Himalayan 450 under riders who were already staying at the hub, including Raimund, a Pan-American traveller volunteering there alongside me.
Outcome
The films and the photography went out through the Donkey Sunrise newsletter, YouTube channel and Instagram, and give Tim and Isa something to send a rider deciding whether Colombia is worth the flight. The tall-rider interview, aimed squarely at a question riders were already searching for, has travelled furthest of anything on the channel.
I wrote and recorded the narration for my own edit for my YouTube and Instagram channels.
We had the pleasure of having Ben volunteering at Donkey Sunrise. He made a lot of great content for us, that we are super happy with!
