Journey 01 · India
Blue Walls, Old Stone
A fortnight in Rajasthan
Published 2 May 2025 · Travelled 29 Mar – 12 Apr 2025
- 8 moments
- 15 days
- 809 km
- Spring
- India
- 77mm · f/8 · 2s · tripod
- 26.2977° N, 73.0184° E
- Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur
- 18:55
- 31°C, dry, haze
The fort does not sit on the cliff so much as continue it — Kipling called it the work of angels and giants, and from the dusk side you see his problem. I set the tripod on a rooftop across the valley and waited while the sandstone went from brown to amber to ember. The city below turned its lights on one lane at a time, like a switchboard.
- 28mm · f/5.6 · 1/250
- 26.2967° N, 73.0169° E
- Navchokiya, Jodhpur
- 08:30
- 27°C, clear
The old quarter is painted a blue somewhere between plaster and sky, renewed every few years with indigo in the limewash. A man walked ahead of me through a lane of it, unbothered, while I metered like an accountant. The blue holds shadow detail beautifully; whoever chose it centuries ago was a photographer waiting for the invention.
- 50mm · f/4 · 1/320
- 26.2952° N, 73.0191° E
- Old city, Jodhpur
- 09:10
- 29°C
Every second doorway in the old city is a still life somebody arranged and forgot: two bicycles, one door, forty years of paint doing archaeology in layers. I photographed this one and the owner came out to ask if the bicycles were in the way. Sir, the bicycles are the subject.
he moved them anyway. i waited and put them back with my eyes.
- 28mm · f/5.6 · 1/500
- 26.2937° N, 73.0243° E
- 28mm · f/5.6 · 1/500
- 26.2937° N, 73.0243° E
- Ghanta Ghar, Jodhpur
- 10:40
- 34°C, hot
Ghanta Ghar keeps ceremonial time; the market around it keeps the real kind. Under the tower, Sardar Market sells vegetables in pyramids graded by a geometry no engineer taught anyone. I shot the tower for the record and the chilli-and-lime stall for the pleasure.
Overheard · Mehrangarh ramparts · 11:20
"Madam, the fort has stood five hundred years. It can wait two seconds for your focus."
- 28mm · f/8 · 1/400
- 27.0074° N, 76.6066° E
- Chand Baori, Abhaneri
- 12:30
- 36°C, hard sun
A stepwell is a building excavated instead of raised — thirteen storeys of perfect geometry going the wrong direction. Three and a half thousand steps in double-flight zigzags, tenth century, and the shade at the waterline is ten degrees kinder than the rim. I have photographed towers all my life; this is the first time I photographed a tower's negative.
- 77mm · f/4 · 1/640
- 26.4897° N, 74.5511° E
- Pushkar
- 09:45
- 33°C, dry heat
A camel cart came through the bazaar road loaded with the morning's business, the camel wearing the expression of middle management everywhere. Traffic reorganised itself around him without comment. In Mumbai this would be a news item; in Pushkar it is infrastructure.
- Lake Pichola, Udaipur
- 19:30
- 30°C, still, warm
- Last frame
By day the Lake Palace sits on Pichola like a moored cloud; by night the City Palace doubles itself in the water with the patience of a rehearsal. My brother-in-law narrated both, extensively. On the last evening I let the tripod do the listening and made the frame I had come four hundred kilometres for.
- 50mm · f/8 · 6s · tripod
- 24.5754° N, 73.6802° E
The route
8 stops
Journey completed
Fifteen days, eight stories
- Distance walked
- 124 km
- Frames exposed
- 2100
- Forts
- 4
- Steps, Chand Baori, counted by sign not by me
- 3,500
- Cups of chai that were 'the last one'
- 22
- Favourite moment
- Mehrangarh going amber at dusk while the blue city switched its lights on underneath
- Best food
- Mirchi vada from a Jodhpur cart, eaten in the shade of the clock tower
