The Dalai Lama in Dharamsala
At the request of a Taiwanese Buddhist group, the Dalai Lama just gave a 4-day teaching in Dharamsala. Photography was not permitted at the teachings. (These photos are from Zanskar last year.) I bought a cheap FM radio to hear the English translation, and when it was even audible it was overlapped by a Taiwanese [...]
A Room With a View
This is the view from my room at eight o’clock Sunday morning. My guesthouse is in the north part of Leh, which is rural and wealthy compared to other parts of town and wasn’t affected by the floods. It’s perfectly quiet and lovely here. The fields have been harvested and fall is in the air. [...]
10 Things I Love About Ladakh
The Sounds — Waking up to the sounds of silence, nature, animals and people working quietly has a way of setting me straight. The Friendliness — There are few places in the world where you can approach a house and ask whomever is there for a cup of tea or a meal or give you [...]
Sumda Chun
Yesterday I hired a car/driver and traveled with a Ladakhi friend/guide to visit two remote monasteries west of Leh: Sumda Chun and Mangyu. Along with Alchi, they form a trilogy of early Tibetan Buddhist temples dating from the 11th century. The artwork of these temples is totally unlike the other Buddhist temples in the region [...]
Thank you, India
For various reasons — mainly health, work and visa — it’s time to go home for awhile. I have no idea where this labor of love will lead me or exactly when I’ll return to India, but one thing’s certain: I have no regrets. India is rough and exhausting, my body has suffered wear and [...]
Kumbha Mela
Unfortunately I was at the end of my rope in India by the time I arrived in Haridwar for Kumbha Mela. Nevertheless, here are a few pictures. It’s not my best work, but still something to be seen. The naga baba with the two European babes is Shiv Raj Giri. I found a video of [...]
Rishikesh
The last few months in India my health and productivity were waning from exhaustion. By the time I reached Rishikesh I was in very low gear and not engaging with people so much, except for with a few friends I was grateful to have around. Focus was going too… Definitely time to go home and [...]
Humayun’s Tomb
On the way to Humayun’s Tomb in Delhi I was “attacked” by a group of school boys under the pretext of Holi, although it was days before the actual celebration. An egg was smashed on my face from the backside of the auto rickshaw and powdered color bombs thrown on me and my friend. Certainly [...]
Modern Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad, the commercial capital of Gujarat, has a handful of interesting modern buildings by Louis Kahn, Le Corbusier, Buckminster Fuller, B.V. Doshi and Charles Correa. It also has the amazing Calico Museum of Textiles, the Gandhi Ashram, and some of India’s best schools for architecture and design. Unfortunately, many of these buildings are not open [...]
Morning Stroll in Bhuj
I was feeling oddly energetic my last morning in Bhuj, the main city of the Kutch region, and went for a walk to see what I would find. Not much happens in Bhuj before 10am, so I ended up photographing architecture, which was glowing in the morning light. The city’s buildings were badly damaged by [...]
Shivratri Festival
Shivratri symbolizes the wedding day of Lord Shiva and Parvati and is an auspicious days for Hindus. In Kutch there was a Shivratri festival at a small village north of Bhuj. I took the bus, always an adventure in itself, and spent the day there. (The only other foreigners there were a guy from Japan [...]
Tea with the Rabaris
The Rabaris are a Hindu tribe found in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Punjab, and other northwest Indian states, as well as in Pakistan. Their traditional occupation is raising and herding animals like goats, camels and cattle. They were once nomadic but have almost completely settled into villages. The women are famous for their textile embroidery, and in [...]
Oh, Calcutta…
Calcutta is a unique city to India and the world. True to its reputation, it’s insanely crowded and chaotic, sidewalks full of all kinds of human activity, and the contrast between the old and new, poor and rich, is more acute than anyplace else I’ve seen in India. The city has amazing colonial architecture, thousands [...]
Hampi
The ruins of the Vijayanagara Empire at Hampi are just spectacular. India at its best. Hampi on Wikipedia Hampi on UNESCO
Cochin, Kerala
Cochin (Kochi) is made up of a handful of islands and peninsulas including the main hub of Ernakulum and the historic areas of Fort Kochi and Mattancherry. Most of these images are from Fort Kochi, where you can still see and feel the Portuguese influence. Sometimes it feels like Cuba or Latin America too—the same [...]
Jew Town
The Jews first arrived in Kerala in the 1st century BC at a time when Kerala traded with the Greeks, Romans and Arabs. The Jews in Kerala mainly lived in Cochin (Kochi) in an area now called Jew Town. They were an important part of Kerala’s spice trade and maintained huge warehouses of black pepper, [...]
Varkala Puja
Hindu puja (prayer) ceremonies led by priests are held every morning at Varkala beach on the Kerala coast. Families come to do this together. I don’t understand the significance of the rituals, but it was fascinating to watch. And the beach is gorgeous.
Tropical Color
Kerala presents a whole new color palette for me. Purples and oranges. Blues and yellows. Greens and reds. It’s fabulous.
Decayed Color
Once I started with these images it became a little obsessive for awhile. The humidity of south India creates some fantastic displays of decay on the walls here. Nothing too special, just a little diversion!
Debates at Sera Monastery, Bylakuppe
Bylakuppe is a small town in southern Karnataka that’s home to the largest Tibetan refugee settlement in India. Roughly 3,000 acres of jungle forest land was given to the Tibetans by the Indian government in 1959, and from that they’ve created a pretty nice settlement. Today approximately 14,000 Tibetans live in about 15 “camps” where [...]
Old Goa
This is my only good picture from Goa. It’s a baptismal font in one of the Portuguese churches of Old Goa.
On Photography
Picture editing is an extremely tedious but good process. It forces you look at all your pictures—the good, the bad and the ugly—and really think about if you’re really doing the kind of work you want, both technically and creatively. People think that photography is all about clicking away, but I think most photographers would [...]
Free Community Kitchen
The Langar at The Golden Temple is simply amazing. It serves free, delicious food to tens (or hundreds) of thousands of people a day, 24-hours a day. And the whole operation is run by volunteer labor. The free kitchen is a feature of all Sikh temples (gurdwaras), and doing volunteer work in the kitchens is [...]
Diwali Crowds
An estimated million or more people visited The Golden Temple at Amritsar on Diwali. I’d never photographed crowds like this before and really enjoyed the energy and the new visual challenges/opportunities it presented. At some point the masses just became an abstraction of movement and colors. The photo above was outside the ladies room.
