My exhibition in collaboration with Margi Blewett is happening at Cape Town in The Marque Theatre from 20th Nov to 30th Dec 2009. It's called 'Synchronicity' and is a combination of water colours by Margi and photographs by me.

Stairway to Heaven

It was the quickest decision I had ever taken. Sanjeev and Sangita had dropped in one evening and they said they were going to Leh the coming Easter weekend. I try as far as possible not to waste long weekends, time is running out, there’s so much to see and so little time. I said I am joining them and that was that, ten minutes later my ticket was booked on Kingfisher Blue and the next day my accommodation was confirmed.

It was an all found package tour and the best thing about packages are the airport transfers. The last thing you want to do after a long flight, or even a short one, is to haggle with taxi drivers in another language, or for that matter in your own language. It also turned out that all meals were vegetarian, which meant a huge sacrifice for me. But I survived. Just about.

We kept a low profile on Day1 to acclimatise to the rarefied high altitude air. Even after that we suffered mild headaches the next day. The Vodka and Tang in the evening didn’t help either, we should never have had the Tang. Anyway, we headed out to see some Buddhist monasteries the next day and they were quite awesome. They are built on the slopes of mountains and the ancient red brick structures added to the majesty of the landscape, which in itself was one of raw beauty. Somehow it was not surprising that a peaceful people like the Ladhakis lived in such a barren and harsh terrain. You have to be humbled by the place. I can’t help wondering why, on the other hand, the desert regions of the world have historically spawned more aggressive, militant races of people.

We were at the Thiksey Monastery in the afternoon and saw several young monks, or lamas, having a simple gruel for lunch from a stainless steel bowl. They seemed quite happy and cheerful, laughing and running down the steps carved into the steep mountainside. I stopped complaining about the bland vegetarian meals I’d been having. This was their meal and their life. Some part of me actually envied them.

Returning from Pangong Lake

Here's a useful account of what you can expect when you do Delhi - Leh by road: http://tinyurl.com/6xfs9x. More and more people are heading to Leh and it's surrounding areas. On bikes, cars and four wheel drives. I've met people who did the 1100 kms from Delhi to Leh. They are changed people. One guy I met said it's the next best thing to climbing the Mount Everest (not that he had ever climbed it.) Though I'd have loved to have done the overland trip, we were on the clock and had to be back in four days, so we took the easy way out and flew.

I wondered with all those people heading for Leh, is there any danger of Leh getting crowded with tourists from Delhi? Probably not. What I think puts people off Leh is not the distance but the need to stay still, in bed preferably, for a whole day to acclimatise to the high altitude. People from Delhi don't have the patience for it. They can barely sit still for a traffic light. Also, you don't get good butter chicken in Leh. That's a big turnoff for the average Delhite. Thank God.

Like taxi drivers anywhere in the world Leh's taxi drivers are great raconteurs. And the most exciting subject is, you guessed it, Bollywood of course. They can rattle off in great detail the names of movies, actors and scenes shot in the various places in and around Leh. None of which is of any interest to me. The last memorable couple of Hindi movies I saw were Sholay and Bobby. But I listened patiently. You don't want to upset a guy driving a vehicle on a narrow strip of what passes for a road where one side drops off several hundred feet into a valley.

This picture is an example of what film makers are drawn to Leh for. The dots at the bottom left are actually houses in a village we had driven through ten minutes earlier. The soaring mountains, overcast skies and sound of distant thunder would have made the old Charlton Heston movie sets look like something from a toy story. I shot it through the window of the Sumo, because we were exhausted, on our drive back from Pangong Lake.

Pangong Lake, Leh.

At the end of six gruelling hours on the road from Leh this the view that greets you (and the camera does not do it justice.). Your body is aching even though the roads are quite well maintained by the Boarder Roads Organisation, and your head is woozy but it's all worth it. I've seen the Alps from different countries and The Rockies in Canada but nothing quite prepares you for a sight like this. The lake is eerily  still, there are no waves like you'd expect in a water body so large, there's a thin layer of ice on it, and it extends to as far as the eye can see. And then the mountains begin and appear to go on forever into the distance. These are ancient mountains and stand like sentries along the border with China. At the furthest point the tops of the mountains disappear into the mist.

The lake is 83 miles long and most of it is in Chinese territory.There are frequent incursions from the Chinese side, the most recent about a month ago when a helicopter dropped canned food in an uninhabited area nearby (http://tinyurl.com/nh749v). No clue why they'd do that. We have our own Chinese food and we're quite happy with it. Do the Indians intrude into the Chinese area? I have no idea, you'd have to read the Chinese papers to find out. I feel it would go a long way if they set up meeting points along the border where troops could meet, say once a week. They could bring their tiffins along, put their guns aside, and have a pot luck meal. 

After an hour in the freezing cold, we headed back to Leh. The experience was worth it, almost spiritual. 

Solitude, Off Oban, Scotland

Landscapes captivate me. And it’s nothing short of a miracle for me that you can capture a limitless, sweeping panorama on 35 mm film (or digital sensor) and convey a bit of what you felt much later to someone viewing the same image on screen or framed in a gallery. It's satisfying when you 're able to move someone emotionally with your photographs. Why else would they stand a gaze at a picture like this for several minutes. Then you know you've probably made something special, something more than a pretty picture.

I shot this scene this year, from a ferry off the west coast of Scotland. I framed the scene, held my breath and gently squeezed off three shots. It was a moment of pure joy, like I was briefly in the realm of angels. Why does this picture appeal to me? It has a calming, almost hypnotic effect, the layers receding into the distance, ending in intimidating clouds. And of course, the stark solitude of the small, exposed boat in an open ocean speaks to me of adventure and survival.

Wanderlust - Fun while it lasted.

That was four exciting days at The Alliance Francaise, New Delhi. On Thursday and Friday visitors were relatively few but that was made up for on Saturday and Sunday. The listings in the Hindustan Times, Times or India and 'My Best Shot' in the TOI helped bring in the crowd. There was one lady who carried a cutting of the newspaper and asked the guard where the exhibition was on.

Feedback was very encouraging too. There was general surprise that these were photographs by an 'amateur' photographer who was otherwise an advertising 'client servicing person' and trainer. It was good to get the attention of a couple of senior photographers who had dropped in. The photograph that got the most attention was the door at Leh, which surprised me because although I knew it was interesting, I hadn't realised how much of a draw it would be. And for the life of me I still haven't figured out why I shoot so many doors and windows, although one visitor tried to give me some psychology based explanation which I didn't quite buy.

All in all it was satisfying and very tiring and I'm not sure I'll attempt this again next year. Maybe I'll do more group shows where my involvement in promoting the show will be less. A friend from Cape Town, Margi (who travelled all the way to see the exhibition while combining it with one of her visits to Daramshala) who is a painter herself, is helping me participate in a show or two in South Africa. How cool is that!

This is an interview that appeared in Asian Age. My pictures from the exhibition can be viewed here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/solitary/

Wanderlust - a feeling and an exhibition

I had my first solo exhibition, Serendipity, last year in August at The India Habitat Centre in Delhi. This year it's called Wanderlust and it's happening at:

The Romain Rolland Gallery,
Alliance Francaise,
Lodhi Estate, New Delhi;
July 30th - Aug 2nd (Thur- Sun)
10 am - 6 pm

I have always had the travel bug.

This year I was lucky to find myself in some interesting, and often strange, places. Leh. Helsinki, Porvoo and Savonlinna in Finland. Tallinn in Estonia. The islands off the west coast of Scotland. Windermere in England. They were the kind of places a landscape photographer dreams of.

Do come to my exhibition. I would be delighted to share with you a bit of the magic and beauty of what I saw.