Since ‘candid’ wedding photography has become the flavor of the season where does it leave the couple-shoot? Traditionally the couple-shoots were done in the studio. The photographer would shoot formal portraits of the bride and groom sitting looking into the camera or shyly at each other with a red carnation in their hands.
Today couples hunt for interesting locations within their city or if their budget permits they travel to exotic locations. Though the location is a set up , the emotions are genuine, unlike the staid nervous ones in the studio. The couples spontaneously do a variety of things for the camera from kissing each other unselfconsciously to cavorting on the streets to the amusement of onlookers.
On an uninhabited Island on the Brahmaputra- Assam.
Because of its intrinsically fun element, many couples are beginning to attach more importance to the couple- shoot than their actual wedding photography. The shoot is virtually their last date as unmarried couple and the photos are immensely important. It’s always a good idea to have a couple shoot before the wedding – ideally a week or so in advance. That time the couple is looking forward to their wedding and the excitement shows in the photos. After the wedding, the couple is wedding weary and the shoot becomes just another in line of wedding rituals to be done with.
Couple-Shoot at a `Rural-Urban' setting at the Maidan in Kolkata.
The couple-shoot presents the photographer a great opportunity to get some splendid photos in a great location. For me what makes a great couple-photograph is the way it uses the background in the photograph. However in most cases the couple is happy with just their close-ups and won’t bother about the location in the frame even if they have paid a fortune to get there. The challenge for the photographer is to balance the expectations of the client and his own creative instincts.
Alaskan Malamite Huskies draw a sledge in the Arctic forest.
(click on photos to go to gallery)
Northern Lights, Husky rides and a Nude Sauna: Adventures in the Arctic
Whenever I get an invitation to visit a cold place I am generally not too excited. I was born in the foothills of the Himalayas (Himachal Pradesh) therefore snow, mountains, and high altitudes generate feelings of home not wanderlust. But an invitation to visit the Arctic is different. I have never crossed the 66 degree latitude for one and the opportunity to relive your childhood storybook fantasies of reindeers-rides and huskies sledges is too hard to resist.
I am in Lapland, a province of Finland that falls entirely in the Arctic region. Visiting Lapland when it is still snowbound is an overwhelming high. Having been used to see snow only in the high mountain passes and peaks it is interesting to see flat snowfields all around. I am not sure if Santa Claus excites me, though I am standing in a queue with excited children for almost an hour waiting for one of Santa’s elves to show me in. The `official’ Santa Clause is remarkably the same rotund chubby- cheeked man from my childhood story books. He greets me a predictable namastay and asks my colleagues if they have been good girls in a manner he would ask any naughty school girls who meet him. I am happy to get a picture with him to reinforce the Santa Clause legend in my nieces and nephews.
Reindeer sledge ride. From the sledge all you can see is the narrow hump of the Reindeer and his flat hoofs. But the reindeers thankfully knows where they are going.
The husky sledge ride is the high-point of my travel to the Arctic. Husky along with the reindeer sledge rides I think denote the archetypal arctic adventure. I cannot believe that these ferocious looking dogs, who have a wolf ancestry can be so benign to humans.
Every home here has a sauna. The sauna experience is new to me and especially the fact that it’s a bad idea to go in a sauna in your underwear if you are sharing it with the Finns. Its perfectly natural to sit in the nude otherwise you with your jockey stick out like a sore thumb.
Getting the sledges ready for the Husky Ride.
Coming to Lapland and not witnessing the spectacle of the Northern Lights is just like coming to India and not seeing the Taj Mahal. Northern Lights is indeed a rare phenomenon for any photographer to capture and I am not so lucky. The cloudy weather does not let up but Jari our guide takes us to a Northern Light centre where a genial lady gives us a presentation on Northern lights on a projector.
The screen is on the ceiling and I lie looking up at the swishing and the swirling of the beautiful array of lights . Lying there I dream of clear skies and lights and suddenly it dawns on me that a photograph of Northern Lights has been my screensaver on my Mac at home all along.
Most African Safari junkies round off their African bush adventures by dipping their feet in the waters of one of the white-sand beaches of the Zanzibar Archipelago. But I headed straight for Zanzibar even before I saw my first thomson’s gazelle. I had just completed an exhausting shoot in Tanzania and there is nothing like the Islands of the Zanzibar Archipelago to rest your body and soul. It was meant to be a quite holiday but I just could not resist picking up my camera again to photograph the quaint islands, the placid beaches, and its warm people.
Prison island is called so as it was originally ment to house convicts. Much like the famed `Alctraz Prison' this was going to be the perfect island for hardened criminals. The jail was constructed but it was never used as one. Rather it came to be used by the British as a quarintine station for those who came from Asia or other parts of the world to Zanziba and were infected with diseases. The visitors would be housed here until they were treated for their diseases.
Zanzibar since centuries was on the direct trading route to African from both the Middle-East and India. Its no wonder then that its culture today has strong Asian and Arabic influences. Many Indian traders settled on the island and Zanzibar till today has a sizable population of Gujrati businessmen . The archipelago with its main islands of Pemba, Prison and Zanzibar is still known for its spices and `spice tours’ are a must for any visitor to this semi-autonomous Tanzanian country. But today its mainly the beach lovers who throng here. The white sand beaches have the finest of sands and the most placid of waters on the Indian Ocean. Some images from a visit:
Football is what every Tanzanian boy gets to kick at a very early age.
Thankfully the editors picked this image as the lead photo for the Ladakh Photoessay. It was my choice too.
Celebrated Indian Photographer Raghu Rai has often said that newspaper and magazine editors are visually illiterate. He should know. Rai spent much of his photography career working for newspapers and magazines. I started my career as a journalist too and never understood the importance of photography in a paper. I especially did not understand why my newspaper would spend so much money sending a photographer with me on travel assignments. He just has to press the button I thought.
Actually the photographer they sent with me did just that, ‘he just pressed the button’. He most definitely did not help dispel my indifference and contempt for photography. We would reach our location and he would hurriedly take a few pictures and head to the nearest booze-shop and nag me to hurry up so we could return home.
But had I continued my journey as a print journalist and reached a position of authority in a newspaper or magazine, you can imagine what a disaster I would be in terms of selecting images for printing. Unfortunately most editors reach their high offices this way and as Raghu Rai put it ,are ’visually illiterate’.
But I do not understand why this image deserved a two page spread?
The trouble is that the decision on what image goes for publication is not taken by photo-editors but by the ‘visually illiterate’ editors or increasingly now by the design team. The photograph is often selected not on its merit but because of how it fits in the layout. So if you have a great vertical image it won’t be used if the layout demands a landscape image and vice versa. . Some great images never make it to print just because the newspaper designer thought it did not have empty space in it to fill in the description. So mediocre images are regularly pulled up and published.
More often there is a preconceived idea hatched up in office of what image they would use even before the photographer has taken his first image out there in the streets. So when he submits his photographs only the image which fits with their idea makes it to print. More often than not the image has to conform to the text than the other way around.
Some years ago I was hired by a prestigious publication that specializes in illustrated books to photograph books of Indian Monuments for them. I realized to my horror that the publication did not have any photo-editor. All my images were to be selected by a team of sub-editors who knew as much about photography as I knew about sub-editing.
During my stint as a full time journo I remember our Managing Editor goading the photo-department to emulate Outlook Magazine’s photography. Looking back, its easy to see why Outlook held the standard for media houses in India. Those days photographer Prashant Panjiar worked with Outlook and was high up on the pecking order just after editor Vinod Mehta and managing editor Tarun Tejpal. The photographer’s opinion was clearly valued in the magazine and it certainly showed.
Get a lot of queries for my Aging Sex-Workers essay but newspapers eventually pick my `life-style' or travel stories.
I think what’s worse is when editors continually pick out the obvious or the ‘easy’ images from your submissions rather than the nuanced and layered photographs which may not be ‘beautiful’ but may be powerful in what they convey. This practice only encourages photographers to shoot ’safe’ pictures which they know will certainly make it to the print. Avoiding risks and going for the the conventional, I feel, only blunts the photographer’s vision in the long run.
Two years ago I photographed Cricketer Virat Kohli for a lifestyle magazine. I had seen millions of studio photos of Kohli. Naturally I did not want to rehash the same stuff. So I shot Virat in his home in West Delhi doing the regular things any 22 year old would do when the guard is down. I took a picture of him fixing his gelled hair. Playing with his dog. Laughing and doodling with his mom in the kitchen. However the editor called and said do I have some more photos please. The editor was being polite. He actually meant these photos are crap so can you send me the regular photos of Virat?
I posted Virat’s photos on my blog with a small write up on the shoot. The post titled `Virat Kohli in his Den‘ gets an average of 300 visitors each day. Has over 230 comments and growing. (I am not counting the personal calls and e-mails I get from Virat’s fans each day). The pictures are often refereed to in countless Virat Kohli interviews and TV shows where Kohli is quizzed on his dog and his cooking skills.
What’s even more worse and alarming is when the editors choose photo-stories that are ‘glamorous’ over those that have a point to make. I get regularly contacted by the media for two of my photo-essays. One on the plight of the Aging Sex-workers in India and other on the Second Generation 1984 anti-Sikh riot victims. The journalists contacting me are usually young and idealistic who still believe that media is an agent of change and is supposed to reflect the realities of the world. But often they get back to me saying that while they personally liked these two essays their editors think they were ‘too stark’ for their sunday readers and could I rather given them something on life-style or travel please?
This is indeed an era of life-style journalism and serious stories seem to find no place in it. The new Press Council of India Justice Markandey Katju’s recent utterances on the media may seem harsh but he does have a point. The media has indeed pathetically dumbed down but thats not just an Indian problem. I think its a global phenomenon. Remember Naked News where female anchors read the news while delicately removing their cloths until they were fully nude? But that’s another story for another time.
Photo-essay on Majuli. ( Text excerpted from the magazine)
If you are photographing in Assam for the first time like I was, you would do well not to carry a heavy long-angled zoom. Everything is so vast here that it wont fit your frame unless you carry a wide-angled lens in your camera bag. In Kaziranga National Park the rhinos often breach that invisible man- animal line and come close enough to ram your gypsy turtle. From that close proximity the zoom is useless.
The Brahmaputra is so vast that it is virtually an ocean where islands appear and disappear at the river’s whim. Islands so large that for years the Assam Government has been parading Majuli as the world’s largest river island and no one doubts the claim though the largest is Bananal island far away in Brazil. Driving in the countryside you see sprawling tea gardens and paddy fields that end only at the horizon. The people here don’t run away or ask for money when you point your camera at them but settle down quietly for you to make the picture.
Majuli is also a bird lovers paradise. Rare birds like the Pelican, Siberian Crane, Adjutant Stroke flock to Majuli to gambol and fish in the wetlands here. These are few snap shots from a journey across the state.
As a travel photographer I had become accustomed to being the first one to arrive at any landmark at any place I visited. I would have taken the best shots with the early morning sun much before the first tourists began to troop in. But when I stepped out of my hotel in Kanyakumari at six in the morning, I was shocked to find a sea of humanity already there at the beach. Groggy-eyed I tried to look for a vantage position to photograph the rising sun. But every nook and cranny was taken and every tourist was smugly poised with his camera.
Nowhere else in India is the fervour for the sunrise so great or as spectacular as in Kanyakumari making for every traveler’s essential travel photograph. Here in India’s southernmost tip you can witness both the sunset and sunrise on the same beach (between October and March.)
The confluence of the three water bodies here- the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, and the Arabian sea -lends not only aesthetic but also a great spiritual dimension to the town. Due to this unique geographical phenomenon, on a full moon evenings you can witness the sunset and the moonrise at different ends of the same horizon.
Bollywood poses on the beach at Kanyakumari
The sunrise and sunset beauty of Kanyakumari has not gone unnoticed by the tourism industry. Almost all hotels are crowded around the beach. Every tourist wants a window opening into the ocean. The most expensive hotels face the ocean and have the best views. The rooms with view of the sunrise have a higher tariff plan.
Kanyakumari has more cosmopolitan visitors than other Tamil Nadu towns. This is evident in the signboards around Kanyakumari. For the first time since my travels across Tamil Nadu, I come across shops signs in Hindi. This was also the only place where I found a North Indian restaurant and its passable fare of butter chicken and tandoori roti.
If you travel like me starting your journey from Chennai and down the length of the coromandel coast passing Mahaballpuram , Kumbakonam, Madurai and Thanjavur along the way , you will realize that Kanyakumari has nothing of heritage and culture to boast off in comparison.
There is ofcoure the Vivekananda Rock memorial on an islet just off the shore but it was built only in 1970. Legend has it that Swami Vivekananda meditated here for three days. For this purpose there is a spot of meditation called the Dhayana mandapa and if one has the inclination one can meditate in the peace here. There is also a tall statue of Vivekananda at the spot. However the most impressive if recent addition to the Kanyakumari horizon is the 133feet gigantic statue of Thiruvalluvar a Tamil poet revered as a saint. The statue was commissioned by the DMK leader M. Karunanidhi and made by well know South Indian sculptor V. Ganapati Sthapati . The statue was installed in 2000. Every feet of this 133 feet statue corresponds to the 133 chapters of Tamil epic Thirukkural.
Boys throw stones into the oceans at Kanyakumari
A ferry leaves from the shore to the islet everyday from 7 am till 4 pm and one can visit both the Vivekananda Rock Memorial and the Thiruvalluvar statue. One can climb upto the feet of the statue and get a sense of the statue’s true immensity. From this height you are also rewarded with great view of the oceans and beyond. On the islet there is another hall that belongs to the Holy Foot. Legend has it that Goddess Kumari stood on one leg here to perform penance. There is a foot-shaped carving on the rock to show for it.
The peace of Kanyakumari also attracted Mahatama Gandhi who came here thrice in his lifetime. There is a memorial to him here built at a spot where the sun’s first rays fall. The memorial housed Gandhi’s ashes and is designed in a manner that on Gandhi’s birthday – October 2nd- the sun’s rays fall directly on the spot where his ashes were once kept.
Kanyakumari’s shore is overrun by all sorts of stalls selling anything from hair-clips to astrological charms. The beach front remains crowded throughout the day but gets particularly crowded during early morning and evenings. Its advisable to reach the beach a bit early in the afternoon on a full moon day when you can see the moon rising and the sun setting at the same time.
Young ascetic at sundown in Kanyakumari
Tourists cannot get enough of photographing themselves at the beach. The local photographers urge their clients to pose in elaborate Bollywood poses on the beach. Kanyakumari not only marks the end of the Indian Peninsula but it also culminates the Indian trip for most tourists. They are therefore in a relaxed and boisterous spirit and are more than ready to oblige.
How to get here:
The nearest airport is in Kerela in Thiruvananthapuram . It is barely 87 kilometers away but it can take more than two hours to reach since the road is not so good and the traffic and slow you down.
One can also take the bus or car journey from Chennai visiting other towns like Madurai and Thanjuvar on the way.
If you visit Wadi Rum in Jordan, a night’s halt is a must . Not just for the stars that shine so lustrously in the desert sky but for the exotic and authentic Arabian experience it accords. Thankfully there are no hotels in this desert so the only way you can have a lay over here is in bedouin-like camps. From the food to the interiors, the camps compete with each other in giving the best bedouin experience.
The sofas in the lounges and rooms are all upholstered maroon and black , the two tent colours used by the beduoins themselves- though the bedouins tents are made of goat hair. The staff is dressed in the traditional bedouin regalia often more meticulously than the bedouins , who themselves who can be seen sporting a denim sometimes.
There were not many tourists in this tent but the Bedouins sang and played some very soulful music, Wadi Rum, Jordan
The food is a fine spread of a variety of Arabic cuisines mainly Lebanese and is cooked in large open kitchen in front of you . In the middle of the camp sit bedouin musicians playing on their simsimiya and singling soulful desert ballads. There is no alcohol of course in this Middle-Eastern country but it does not take too much time before one is intoxicated by this Arabian Night experience.
Weather beaten escarpments look down at you from all sides. Wadi Rum is indeed great for rock-climbing activities.
Known as `Valley of the Moon’ Wadi Rum in Jordan is not just a nature lover’s moonscape. Its also a great place for sport aficionadas. The sheer cliffs and escarpments of Wadi Rum desert offer enough challenge to the hardiest of climbers. No wonder serious mountaineers, rock-climbers and trekkers flock to these huge sandstone mountains all the year around.
However sports activity in Wadi Rum are not done without a measure of caution. Wadi Rum has cultural and historical significance. The sandstone mountains have etched on their surface painting, etching, going back to thousands of years. Recognising its hertage value it was granted World Heritage Status by UNESCO only this year (2011) in June.
The sands in Wadi Rum reached high up till these craggy mountains.
So if you want to do some rock-climbing in Wadi Rum there are some mountaineering tools you must leave behind. Because of the archaeological treasure on the mountains climbers cannot use `Fixed protection’ while climbing. This includes drilling placements, blots, pitons and in-situ threads. Route of both treks and climbs cannot be marked with any paint or structure. If you hope to summit some of the peaks here the best bet are the bedouin guides.
I met Serdar on this small craggy mountain. He was from Turkey and came with his wife and friends. We climbed up from a very narrow and difficult route but as you can see found a fun way to descend .
Some years ago I attended a Raghu Rai Photography Workshop. It was organized by SPIC MACAY under their beautiful ‘Meet the Artist’ initiative where every month or so college campuses are introduced to a famous artist. It is usually a music luminary and big names from shehnai maestro Bismilla Khan to vocalist Shubha Mudgal have played and sang to largely disinterested audiences. It was perhaps for the first time that a photographer was invited. And it sure was a huge draw.
The IIT Delhi campus where the workshop was held began to swarm with a wide smorgasbord of people- students, photographers, hobbyists, parents of students, housewives, few foreigners and general hanger ons like yours truly. By the time the ace photographer arrived the classroom was bursting at the seams..
Raghu Rai was bang on time. He breezed in with his trademark henna dyed- hair, pathani suit and wide brimming smile. “What a lovely weather outside”, he began, taking his seat. It is beautiful springtime and there is a freshness in the air. There are such colourful new flowers . The birds are upbeat and chirping all around us. You can feel a great new sexual energy in the atmosphere. It is really wonderful he exulted. The guy next to me who had been scribbling furiously , realized what he was writing and he looked up from his notepad with a `What’s this crap’ expression.
But Raghu Rai was in full flow. For good fifteen minutes he talked about the weather and the beautiful things he saw on the way to the campus. He next talked about classical Indian musicians and music. He was shooting the musicians for his book at that time. He revealed he always wanted to become a musician. ( It certainly showed). He talked about the quirks of some of the musicians he was shooting. He went into some detail about his numerous interactions with them.
A small boy takes pictures of Naga tribes at the Hornbill festival, Nagaland
By now many people in the room had stopped writing in their notepads and had begun to exchange glances with one another. What the hell was Raghu Rai going on about ? When was he going to share the secrets of how he takes those great photos? They had not come for a talk on music and weather!
Half and hour had gone by and Raghu Rai had only made passing references to photography. He was now talking about Satyajit Ray films. The people in the room were now restless. And then someone piped up. `Sir what are your views on the digital versus the film debate’? And then from somewhere around the room the familiar query , `Sir I am a beginner what camera should I buy’? And then a budding photographer with mother in tow came forward to show his photographs. No he had not brought any prints but proceeded to show the photos at the back of his swanky DSLR.
Isn’t that the general symptom in the photography world today? Everyone is interested in the techniques and the quick know-how’s. Are we not merely breeding an army of technicians? I hope photography is something more. I don’t think photography is only about making beautiful photographs. (Unless of course you are a commercial photographer and that’s your job). I think photography is also a kind of philosophy. A way of life where you are somewhat more aware, more sensitive and generally more interested in the world around you. But most of us are happy to cut to the quick and just figure out HOW the damn photograph was shot. The crucial question really is WHY was the photograph shot. This question is however seldom asked.
Raghu Rai politely saw the boy’s photographs on the LCD and asked him the WHY question. The boy had no answer. The photographs were beautiful of course. Nice light, great angles, neat compositions and all the elements that make a good photo were there. Everyone who saw those photos in the room had wowed them. But Raghu Rai said there were “too easy’’.
A woman gets the picture shot in the Dead Sea, Jordan.
Anyone who has taken a few photos will tell you it’s not too hard to learn how to take beautiful photographs. There are many bozos on the youtube or at the photography workshops in your city teaching you just that. Photography clubs and forums, on and offline, mushroom by the day. But almost all discussions are centered around technique. If at all there is a serious debate it tends to be pedantic. Hairs are split over photographs that are more gimmickry than works of art. There are regular photo-walks where a battery of photography enthusiasts from posh colonies descend on the squalid or exotic corners of their city to shoot street- vendors, sleeping rickshaw-pullers, beggars and the general hullabaloo missing in their own sanitized neighborhoods.
I think the WHY is the most crucial question especially in today’s world where anyone with a cell-phone camera is a photographer and wants to `capture’ everything around him or her. We surely need to evolve new idioms esp. for street photography in this shutter crazy age. Idioms of all art forms evolve with passing time. William Wordsworth and John Keats were perhaps two of the greatest poets of the 19th century. But if you write like them today your publisher will think you are somewhat looney. Today if you must write poetry it must be more like Dylan Thomas or Philip Larkings. Similarly with photography where so much has changed in just one last decade that we can’t exactly mimic Henri Cartier Bresson as he went about shooting in the streets.
Today almost everyone has a camera and we need to ask ourselves should ever moment of our lives be captured and preserved? Should everything we see be photographed and documented? Worst of all we often do it with a sense of alarming detachment and sometimes crass insensitivity. I think as photographers when you take a picture of anyone it essentially means,`Hey I am glad to meet you and I am interested in you and your life’. But more often one is thinking- `Hey I like this light falling on the top of this guy’s head’. Its very seldom that we even care to say a hello to the people on the street we shoot let alone care about them. I feel, in our visually saturated world we need to pause before we take a photograph and ask ourselves WHY are we shooting what we are shooting. I seriously think we need some photography schools that teach us how NOT to shoot.
I had met Raghu Rai almost 10 years before I attended this workshop. I was interviewing him about Raghubir Singh , Rai’s contemporary and one of the pioneers of colour photography in the world. Raghubir Singh had just died and a newspaper asked me to talk to Rai about him. At that time I was only interested in Rai’s quotes on Raghubir. Today I don’t remember the quotes but I still remember Rai’s energy, enthusiasm and infinite curiosity about life.
A lot of photography enthusiasts came away disappointed from the workshop. They were perhaps looking for a quick formula. But I think what Raghu Rai taught in that photography workshop that day was invaluable. He was talking about life itself and how to appreciate it. That is the first and perhaps the only good photography lesson that will stand the test of time.
The boys loved to jump into the oceans from the shore. There was a competition on who would jump the highest and the furtherest. It seemed it was an impromptu game as all of them jumped with their clothes on.
(click on photos to go to gallery)
( You usually round off your African Safari with a relaxing beach destination. But I did quite the opposite. Tired from a hectic six-day shoot in Dar es Salem, I headed for this beautiful island first and then booked myself on the wild-life safaris. Travelogue published in July 2011)
As soon as I land on Zanzibar Island I am assailed by a battery of taxi drivers. `Jambo’ shouts one in their midst and I quickly signal him out. Jambo is hello in Swahili but I assumed he is from hotel Jambo- the hotel I had called for reservations. But before I can get into his taxi another taxi driver tries to wean me away saying. “Don’t go with him. I will take you to a better place ‘’. It took some jostling before I am allowed to get into the car and drive off . In India the taxi-drivers are competitive but thankfully not so cut-throat I thought.
There are more pleasant ways of arriving on Zanzibar island- a semi autonomous part of Tanzania. The best one and favored by most tourists is flying in direct and not sail in like me from across the African mainland.
If you fly into Zanzibar you will be rewarded with fantastic aerial views of turquoise and blue waters and views of the emerald eden-like islands of the Zanzibar archipelago. Zanzibar is indeed quite an African oasis. Who would imagine white sand beaches on the African continent? But every year this beautiful island attracts thousands of tourists from around the world- chiefly from the Middle-East , Europe and Asia. Most tourists visiting the mainland for its wildlife round off their trip by cooling their heels in the cool , calm waters of Zanzibar.
Almost all beaches in Zanzibar are beautiful but there are more secluded beaches to the North of the island. However if you want a cultural experience you must stay in the historical Stone Town which is right on the harbour. Stone Town is a quaint little town which lives upto its name. Everything seems to be built with stones here. The houses are built with it and the narrow lanes that run through it are paved beautifully with it. The town with its maze of lanes and alleyways has a feel of Chandni Chowk about it without of course the clutter , open drains and the cluster of electricity wires overhead. Its great to walk in these lanes hemmed in by tidy buildings on both sides. The doors of Zanzibar are famous for their elaborate and symbolic carvings. They have both Indian and Arabic influences .
This man was trying hard not to looking into the early morning sun. I thought it made for a good photograph. (sanjay austa austa)
Zanzibar was directly on the trading route to the African mainland from both the Indian sub-continent and the Arabian peninsula. No wonder you can see the influence of both the cultures in Zanzibar. There are not many old buildings here. Old Fort is a ruin of a huge fort built around the eightieth century by the Omani Arabs. Beit El- Ajaib or House of Wonders is a significant building on the island. It’s a high ceiling 3- story building near the port built as a ceremonial house for the Sultan in the 20th century. This building has the biggest and the most ornate doors in Zanzibar. It has a museum with a rich exhibit of tools of various trades, dresses, dhows, and other memorabilia depicting the history of settlers on the island.
Beit El- Ajaib looks over the Forodhani Gardens which has a great spread of sea-food cooked fresh by vendors. It’s a great hangout place for locals and tourists alike.
If you get up early you will find the long queues of people filling water from a community tap. The island has its water shortage issues. But electricity is the main problem. There has been no power on the island for over a fortnight. The underground cable coming in from the mainland snapped underseas and it would be many weeks before it is restored again. All the hotels on the island run on generators. There are no streetlights and it can get very spooky getting to your hotel in pitch dark through the narrow lanes. The locals light candles or sit outside their houses on benches in the dark drinking soup or chatting.
Zanzibar archipelago has beautiful islands among which Pempa island and Prison islands are the most famous. I visit Prison island which is a convenient one hour boat’s journey from Zanzibar. It was used to house convicts but later used as a quarantine for traders coming with illnesses from Asia and Arabia.
Today Prison islands main attraction besides the soft white sandy beaches is the population of giant turtles . They are painfully slow and lazy and prefer to eat out of your hands than make pickings on their own.
Prison island is called so as it was originally ment to house convicts. Much like the famed `Alctraz Prison' this was going to be the perfect island for hardened criminals. The jail was constructed but it was never used as one. Rather it came to be used by the British as a quarintine station for those who came from Asia or other parts of the world to Zanziba and were infected with diseases. The visitors would be housed here until they were treated for their diseases. (sanjay austa austa)
If you visit Zanzibar you cannot miss the `Spice Tours’. Spices have been growing on Zanzibar ever since the traders from Asia introduced it here. The tour is done on a `dhala – dhala’ or minibus that leave in the morning for a daylong excursion into the orchards deeper into the island.
It’s a 30USD tour ( including a lunch in a village ) and the guide takes you to the spice orchard where you are shown various spices on the island from the common ones like ginger, clove , turmeric etc to the exotic nutmeg which is a mild intoxicant and consumed mostly by women. The tour also includes a bit of history as you are taken to the Sultans Royal bath.
Most of beaches promise dolphin watching. Its mostly dolphin chasing what with the hapless dolphins being spotted and chased on boats for the tourists by tour operators. But thankfully for most people Zanzibar is an idyllic beach destination where one just sits back and relaxes.
How to get there:
There are no direct flights to Zanzibar island from India. To get there one has to get to Tanzania or Kenya first. There are no direct flights to Tanzania either. But Kenya airways has regular flights from Mumbai via Nairobi to Dar es Salam.
From Dar es Salam you could either take a two hour ferry to Zanzibar or fly in.
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