PIX: Inside the GRAND Sets of Mahabharat

Like the serial itself, the sets of Siddharth Kumar Tewary's television show, Mahabharat are VERY grand and lavish.

The sets are spread over 10 acres of land in Umargaon in Valsad, Gujarat, and have been designed by art director Omung Kumar, who incidentally is also working on his directorial debut, the Mary Kom biopic, starring Priyanka Chopra.

Click Next to see more pictures of the Mahabharat sets.

The epic serial has also been shot at exotic locations across India like Kashmir, Jaisalmer and Jaipur in Rajasthan, Bedaghat in Madhya Pradesh, Ahmedabad in Gujarat and even Nepal and Sri Lanka.

Oscar-winning designer Bhanu Athaiya has worked on some of the elaborate outfits on the show.

Talking about his ambitious project, producer, creative head and director Siddharth Kumar Tewary says, “The beauty of storytelling is to justify a character and his actions without portraying him in black or white or a situation as right or wrong. Every story has different shades. We kept this in mind while creating characters, as this show is for today's audience and every aspect of the story is relevant in today's times."

"It was a task to get the right actors to fit into the characters,” Siddhartha says. “We had to look for actors who were well built, good looking, spoke good Hindi, were ready to get trained in sword fighting and give their best.”

“All the actors, who are playing important roles, have been working on their characters and bodies for one and a half years. Without us even telling them, most of them got their ears pierced. This is the kind of preparation they did before the shoot,” Siddhartha adds.  

How much money has gone into making of this grand show?

“This is the first premium production in this country,” he says. “It’s not a regular daily soap, it’s a high budgeted show. I read somewhere the budget was Rs 120 crores (smiles). Well, I don’t want to talk about numbers because the show is far more important than the money the company is making.”

The production and creative team consists of 400 people, with about 200 people working on the graphics. The show will have extensive use of visual effects and 3-D conversion.

Watch Mahabharat at 8:30 pmfrom Monday to Friday, on Star Plus.