10 January 2017

Early morning in Mandvi, northern Gujarat

In the early morning, the streets of Mandvi, the small coastal town in Kuchchh, northern Gujarat, where wooden ships are still built by hand, are populated mostly by cattle, birds, and dogs, and few humans.



All content © 2016 Pete McGregor
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3 comments:

Lisa said...

I felt so captured by this scene - I think it's the totally alien quality of it. I simply cannot imagine what it feels like - is it warm, hot, humid, dry? What are the scents? Is it as quiet as it looks? It looks so quiet,so....anticipatory is perhaps the right word. As if something was about to unexpectedly burst onto the scene.

12 January 2017 at 08:56
Zhoen said...

In this house, we are the tenants, it's our cats' house. This is what this photo reminds me of. Belongs to them, humans tolerated.

12 January 2017 at 09:56
pohanginapete said...

Lisa, the nights are cold but the days hot, and everything about Gujarat is dry. Mandvi at that time of the morning smelt of dust and age and dung, and in some places urine and in others foetid water. You get used to the less pleasant smells, and they're by no means unique to Mandvi. At that time of the morning, it was mostly quiet, but a couple of hours later the streets were filled with the usual screeching and blaring of horns, mostly from the motorbikes and scooters (particularly and painfully shrill) and rickshaws.

Zhoen, that's a good way to describe the apparent attitude of the cattle. The dogs are usually a little more circumspect, but even they will sometimes sleep in the middle of the road, confident the traffic will avoid them.

13 January 2017 at 02:58

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