On The Holy Detour 2017 with Mykel Kumar
Mykel Kumar aka Inkpatch on the Holy Detour 2017!
This multi-dimensional human being who’s always willing to explore possibilities and discover a state of flow - from tattooing, to art, to skateboarding, to jiu jitsu, to yoyo, to poi, and a long list of many aspects he dabbles in.
We wanted to pick his brain a little and take him down memory lane, where he got onto the bus for the Holy Detour in 2017, with his skateboard and tattooing equipment!.
Here’s a little interview we did to gain perspective and get a little snippet of his experience with Holystoked and the Detour.
1. What drew you to get on the detour and experience it?
Mykel: “I got on the Detour because of Holystoked and I had been going to the skatepark and meeting the skaters there. They suggested the Detour and I said yes!
Because I had never gone on something like that before. My love for skateboarding and trying things that come my way drew me to get on the Detour, I’m always looking for new experiences and it happened at the right time, and it was a possibility, so I did it!”
“Plus, the people at the skatepark and Holystoked are amazing, and they were all going, so I thought, this is going to be fun and joined in for the ride!”
2. What were your first thoughts when you got on the bus?
Mykel: “Hmm..(laughing) When i went on the detour, there were two buses, one was called the party bus, and the regular sleeping bus. Initially, I was like, What the fuck is going on?! (haha)
This is insane!. But in a good way and my mind was boggled with (Is this even possible?. Can you travel like this? Is this what it’s like to travel in a party bus?) I mean c’mon, at one point, there were three parties happening on the party bus, with three different genres of music and you could hear the music sort of shift as you moved in the bus.
Some people were in the luggage compartment. At one point someone wanted to put a rail in the aisle of the bus and board slide it when the bus would come to a stop. It was really insane!
3. What did tattooing while travelling feel like?
Mykel: “It was a very surreal experience, I had only ever tattooed within a studio, and with the setup that comes with a studio, and suddenly I’m here, in the midst of people who’re like, “Bro, we want tattoos man, we can get tattoos while we’re on the bus!” And I’m like, “But this is a moving bus.” and they’re like, “Yeaahhh!!”
Haha, anyway I suggested that we’d do it once the bus stopped moving maybe, and I’m glad we did that. Although, maybe on another Detour I might
tattoo on the moving bus, cos of the people you’re with, and the hype is real y’know?”
4. Can you take us through your experience tattooing a bunch of crazy skaters, bmxers and everyone in between?
Mykel: “So one of the things that happened while we were on the tour was, when we were at Cirrus in Goa. Sagar Wagela, who’s one of the skaters decided to get a shark tattoo that I had drawn up for him and we were ready to start. I’m using another tattoo artist’s equipment, his name was Stu he was also a skater from England. It was a really really amazing experience, because this was the first time I was tattooing under trees and outdoors, where we were all chilling.
We setup a pretty hygienic spot and with some jugaad, we managed to create a pretty good setup and while we were tattooing, the power goes off. It wasn’t alarming because there are random power cuts in that area, however, when the electricity did come back, there was a surge and it shot out the power supply that was running the machine.
So now, we have a half done tattoo with no power to run the machine and we’re just kinda figuring out what to do… and then Stu says, ‘Yo I think this machine can also run on a 9 volt battery.’ Then we get on a bike and went for a run, and happened to get the last two 9 volt batteries from the store and I didn’t think it was gonna work, we had no other option so we got it anyway.
And we got back to Cirrus, two hours later, a half done tattoo, we hooked up the 9 volt battery to the machine, and it worked! So, we had this really going with the theme ‘an ultra jugaad’ set up for the whole tattoo session, from the space to the equipment! With that we finished the tattoo, it was awesome, and I don’t think I’d ever have an experience like that again, it was definitely life changing. The entire trip, the entire experience was mind blowing.”
5. Overall, what have you taken back from the Holy Detour experience?
“Let me put it this way, I was 30 years old at that point, and let me just say that the kind of experience i got on those five days of the Detour, with all of the stuff that happened, all of the crazy ways of travelling and fun and skating, of movement, of people and different types of people.
And everything that encompasses that whole trip on those five days was something that I hadn't experienced in 28 years of my life. It was amazing, it broke alot of barriers for me, a lot of inhibitions, a lot of hang ups I might have had about travel, and all of that was gone right out the window.
On one of the days, I had to sleep in a sleeping bag, on the sand at the beach,
underneath a coconut tree, which I had never done before, and it was one of the best mornings, I woke up to. It was insane, yeah, I really loved it!”
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