Melting Girls and Serpent Women
Notes from my visit to the annual, weeklong Pushkar camel fair that attracts over 250,000 visitors from India and abroad.

James Nachtwey
Among the most affecting and iconic works of photojournalism are those that capture the human experience at its extremities: war, famine, disease, torture, genocide. The best of these photographs reflect back to us our starkest human material, and.....

On Shooting People
Shooting with a camera, that is. Most regular readers of this blog are probably aware of my large collection of travel photos on shunya.net. About a month ago, a man from Germany sent me this note:May I just politely ask ...

Dholavira: A Harappan Metropolis
The road to Dholavira goes through a dazzling white landscape of salty mudflats. It is close to noon in early April and the mercury is already past 100F.

Anandpur Sahib
Anandpur Sahib is a holy city in Punjab. Its historical significance to the Sikhs is second only to Amritsar. Hundreds of Sikhs once embraced martyrdom here. Sikh history is deeply marked by their struggle for survival in a volatile land....

Land of Asiatic Lion
The only lions in the wild outside Africa are in the Western Indian state of Gujarat in the Sasan Gir Forest Reserve, created in 1913 and accorded sanctuary status in 1965. Hundreds of Asiatic lions have been bred here and now number close to 350......

The Burning Ghats of Varanasi
Varanasi, on the left bank of the Ganga, is one of the seven sacred cities of the Hindus and among the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world.

The Dilwara Temples
Many Indians claim that the Dilwara Jain temples of Mt. Abu are a more magnificient achievement than the Taj Mahal - both were stunningly ambitious, state-sponsored, multi-year, monumental, marble-work projects.

Land of Two Rivers
"Punjab" comes from two Persian words, panj ("five") and ab ("water"), thus signifying the land of five rivers (the Beas, Chenab, Jhelum, Ravi, and Sutlej).

Le Corbusier's Chandigarh
Chandigarh may well be India's greatest achievement in urban town planning. But despite Nehru's enthusiasm, and the evident success of the experiment, the Indian political establishment seems to have learned nothing from it.

Nagarjunakonda
About 1,700 years ago, Nagarjunakonda ("Hill of Nagarjuna") flourished as a city and a great religious and educational center of Brahmanism and Buddhism in the modern state of Andhra Pradesh, south India.

Potala-in-Exile
The seat of the Tibetan government-in-exile is in McLeod Ganj, a picturesque town below the snowy peaks of the Dhaula Dhar range.

The Rann of Kutch
The Rann of Kutch, an area of 18,000 sq km, lies almost entirely within Gujarat along the border with Pakistan. The Little Rann of Kutch extends northeast from the Gulf of Kutch over 5,100 sq km.

On Photography: Truth, Lies, and Photos
Many urban middleclass Indians I know are peeved by what they see as a staple of photography on India: squalor, poverty, lepers, fakirs, the deformed.

On Photography: Which Thousand Words?
If a picture says a thousand words, which thousand words does it say to whom? If we all wrote down what we hear, no two accounts would be the same.

The Birthplace of Ganesh
Dodi Tal, considered the birthplace of Lord Ganesh, is a lake in Garhwal, western Uttaranchal. We hiked 44 km in 3 days, going up and down from about 5,000 ft to 11,000 ft, where we camped near the lake.