• Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia and Ann-Charlotte Von Schedvin’s remarkable love story is told in ‘The Cycle of Love’, a documentary produced by Priyanka Chopra Jonas
• The couple, who have now been married for nearly 50 years, tell the story of how they first met in India and ultimately reunited in Sweden
• Mahanandia, who goes by “PK,” rode his bike thousands of miles to reunite with the woman he felt was his destiny

More than 50 years after he first met his wife, Pradyumna Kumar Mahanandia seems to remember the moment like it was just yesterday.

The fateful meeting in Connaught Place in New Delhi, India, might have been written in the stars — or a palm leaf at least. Mahanandia, who goes by “PK”, says he received a prophecy as a baby that his future wife would have several of the qualities he found in a tourist named Ann-Charlotte Von Schedvin who sat down to have her portrait drawn by the young artist.

As serendipitous as their first meeting might appear to be, that was only the beginning of their continent-crossing, decade-spanning love story.

Their story is told in the new documentary The Cycle of Love, which features interviews with the couple as well as depictions of the early days of their romance portrayed by actors Chirag Benedict Lobo and Mina Dale. The film, which was directed by Orlando von Einsiedel and produced by Priyanka Chopra Jonas, had its New York City premiere on Aug. 20.

When they first met in 1975, PK, who had been born into the “untouchable” group of India’s caste system, was making ends meet by drawing portraits of tourists. Von Schedvin, who goes by “Lotta,” was traveling in India with a group of friends via the so-called “hippie trail.”

The pair had known each other for a total of 20 minutes — two 10-minute portrait sessions — when PK decided to confess that he felt as though he’d found his wife.

“That I never forget, more than 50 years ago,” he tells PEOPLE, recalling those first moments. “And I remember, I had broken English. I couldn’t speak [a] whole sentence in English.”

In accordance with the prophecy he’d been given, the first quality of being from somewhere far away was already checked off. Lotta was from Sweden. He then asked her if she was a Taurus. When she said yes, he asked if she was musical. She played the piano, recorder and sang. The last question was if she owned a jungle. While she wasn’t the owner of a jungle per se, her parents owned land in a forest.

“I said, ‘You will be my wife,’ ” PK remembers with a smile. “Clearly I said it.”

Lotta appeared a bit taken aback by the proclamation, PK recalls: “She stared at me and didn’t smile. She was smiling before. She was very serious. And then I got frightened. My fear was that now she would go, ‘Call the police!’ And I will lose my license to draw portraits on Connaught Place…. Oh my God.”

That didn’t happen. In fact, Lotta asked,  “What [will we] do now?” He then invited her on a three-day journey to meet his family. She agreed.

The two would spend several weeks together before it was time for Lotta to make her way back to Sweden, where her parents were expecting her. Before she left, she told PK she’d return in August. When she didn’t show up, because her parents wanted her to stay in Sweden and focus on her studies, PK took destiny into his own hands.

While he did not have enough money to buy a plane ticket, he did have enough to purchase a bike, and he decided to ride from India to Sweden — a journey that would ultimately take more than 120 days.

Along the way, through strokes of luck or otherwise, PK came across people who offered to help, as detailed in the documentary. After being turned away at the Pakistan border, PK met a man in Amritsar, India, whose portrait he drew. The guy offered to buy him a plane ticket to Kabul in Afghanistan.

He was able to obtain a visa for Afghanistan, but it would only last for two weeks, so he had to cycle fast. Just as he was about to hit the Iranian border, he says, he passed a car accident and stopped to help a woman who had been hurt. Not wanting to leave her alone, he rode back to Kabul with her and stayed there for a few days while she healed. In that time, his visa expired.

He was able to obtain another visa, but when he crossed the border into Iran, he was “exhausted and very, very lonely,” he recalls in the film.

While the trip was long and arduous, PK says he remembers telling himself there was no choice but to complete the journey. Even if he didn’t, he says, he knew it wouldn’t be the end of their story.

“I said, ‘Do or die.’ I told myself all the time that if I can’t meet her this life, then I’ll meet her next life,” he says. “I said, ‘If I die, I will die and then these wild animals will get food. My body, they will eat, and then my soul will take new birth and I’ll meet her again.’ ”

Along the way, he received mail from post offices that would hold on to mail sent to travelers. While in Turkey, he received a train ticket from Istanbul to Vienna from the woman he’d helped in Afghanistan.

“I realized my actions really helped this woman. I wasn’t ‘nothing,’ ” he says in the film. “It was beyond my imagination.”

He arrived in Boras, Sweden, on May 28, 1977 — 123 days after he first left Delhi.

“I couldn’t say, ‘Nice to meet you or glad to meet you.’ I didn’t say. I was just crying and she was crying also,” PK recalls of their reunion.

“No words could describe,” Lotta adds. “It was just, well, finally we unified again.”

They married at city hall in Boras on the same date two years later.

The pair now live in Sweden, though they visit India often. PK says his wife has actually visited more of his homeland than he has at this point. They are also parents to two children, who are producers on the film.

“Working very closely with PK and Lotta, but also Emelie and Karl, I think that really helps us to get to… Well, I don’t want to speak for PK and Lotta, but to get the story,” von Einsiedel says. “To tell the story right, and try and tell the emotional truth of their story.”

The Cycle of Love is now playing at the Angelika Film Center in New York City. It will start screening at Laemmle Royal in L.A. on Sept. 4 before expanding nationally on Sept. 11.

https://people.com/man-biked-thousands-of-miles-to-be-with-woman-who-met-him-on-vacation-exclusive-12074137