Dominik Hernler: Turning God’s Own Country into Dom's Own Playground

Kerala is a beautiful place. When I first got here, I was very surprised by it’s beauty. I also saw many spots that I could make my playground. That’s why I decided to come here; to hit the beautiful spots and ride in this beautiful place.

It started when I got a call from Red Bull India, asking me if I could ride behind one of these snake boats. So I came down to have a look; I attended some races of the Nehru Trophy Boat Race to get a good look at it. It’s amazing; it blew my mind. I’d never seen so many people in one boat, rowing this fast. So I thought I’d come over and let’s see what we can do with this project.

After our initial conversations about being pulled by a snake boat, Red Bull India asked me if I’d be interested in the idea of jumping over multiple snake boats. After I’d seen it up close and personal, I realised we could pull it off. The plan was always to stack two boats and jump over them, and then I could keep adding boats to see how far I could go. I was always positive that I would be able to jump over at least five boats.

Usually, I look at all the locations on Google Maps, just to see if there’s something happening in the water that I can jump over or do any tricks on. But for this particular project, we took a boat around the canals to scout for locations; that helped because I could see all the locations in person.I feel like I’ve done a lot of projects, and this location – the whole state and region – it is all very different. The jumps, the wind, the water – all that stuff is the same to me. But being in a beautiful place like this and taking wakeboarding to the backwaters in India means a lot for me.