From West to East

South of its more famous neighbour, Rajasthan, lies the Indian State of Gujarat, which forms the country’s Western-most extremity. Its capital, Ahmedabad, houses a mix of many religious groups, but its architecture is dominated by that of its medieval Muslim rulers, whose blend of Hindu and Muslim techniques and styles gave rise to the Indo-Saracenic style. Sadly, the city is today most remembered as the scene of bitter inter-religious riots in 2002 which claimed the lives of well over a 1,000 people.

East of Gujarat is Madhya Pradesh, a land-locked state known as the ’Heart of India’. Its largest river is the Narmada, considered the boundary between North and South India. The river has great religious significance and is one of the five sacred rivers of India. Its water is particularly clean and it is believed that the polluted Ganges visits the Narmada every year, in the form of a black cow, to bathe and cleanse itself.

Madhya Pradesh is also home to Gwalior, with is famous fort, and to the Hindu Temples of Khajuraho, whose remote location saved them from the iconoclastic Muslim invasions that destroyed many of North India’s ancient Hindu temples. By contrast, Hyderabad, in Andhra Pradesh was founded by a Muslim dynasty and now has a large population, where Hindu and Muslim live side by side, and Urdu and Telegu continue to be spoken on the same street despite growing pressure for an independent state of Telengana.

Moving East and North along the coast brings one through the State of Orissa, known for its Sun Temple and the annual pilgrimage of Lord Jagannath, into the State of West Bengal where its capital is Kolkata, or Kali’s City. One-time capital of the British Raj, Kolkata has kept its colonial monuments, but today they are crumbling, and house some of the city’s poorest inhabitants. Nearby, in the rural backwaters of the Sundarbans, the world’s largest mangrove forest, a slow, tranquil life continues much as it always has done, and the Royal Bengal Tiger still makes its home.

These photographs were taken between October 2008 and July 2011.