In 2021, I started cycling across India with a Nikon D850 camera and a loose plan to photograph whatever I found along the way — people, places, small routines of everyday life. I wanted to step away from a fixed routine and spend more time on the road, and cycling, with its slower pace, seemed the best way to do it.
It wasn’t meant to be a long project. And yet five years passed as I got to know the people of my country, and the journey turned into nearly 21,000 kilometres across 28 states and more than 180 villages.
Bishnupur in West Bengal is famous for its exquisite terracotta temples. But while there, I was drawn to the vanishing cultural tradition of Rabankata, a 400-year-old folk dance drama rooted in the Ramayana. The performers wear heavy handcrafted wooden masks and vibrant costumes made from dyed jute fibres. The masks here are of Vibhishana, Jambavan, Hanuman and Sugriva.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
Baala, a 70-year old salt worker, at Sanikatta Salt Works near Gokarna. “This is what my grandfather was good at too,” he told me with a smile. He lives in a nearby village, and his wife works in the pans when more hands are needed.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
From curiosity to conversations
On the road, my days were simple, with no set itinerary. I cycled in the cooler morning hours, covering anywhere between 60 and 100 kilometres depending on the terrain and weather. Afternoons were for resting, finding shade under toll gates and roadside shelters.
Navin Paul, an engineer-turned-photographer
The chaos of big cities had me peddling on (Kolkata was an exception, with the contrast between the old and the new) while I paused for days in smaller towns and villages. Most evenings, one question would come up: where would I sleep? I got used to asking strangers for a place to stay, though it never became easy. In the beginning, people said “no” more often than “yes”. Some were polite, some direct. A few simply walked away. It made sense; I was an outsider, asking for trust without offering much in return.
A sturdy willow stands strong in a dust storm in Ladakh.
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Navin Paul
But there were always exceptions. Someone would ask a question, then another. Where are you coming from? How long have you been on the road? Those small conversations shifted something. In Murudeshwara, Karnataka, I had planned to sleep by the beach after a long ride. I had already picked a spot when I met a fisherman. We spoke for a few minutes, then he asked if I had eaten. I hadn’t. He took me home, and that night I sat with his family and ate a simple meal of freshly caught fish and rice.
In Kohima, Nagaland, I arrived during the rice planting season and ended up staying with a farming family for a few days. The work in the fields began early. The men prepared the land, while the women followed planting saplings in steady lines.
Navin Paul in Nagaland
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Navin Paul | The Hindu
At some point, their rhythm turned to song. I remember trying to keep up for a while, then giving up. Our conversations tried to find parallels between food and farming in Nagaland and Kerala. It felt less like something I was documenting and more like something I had briefly become a part of.
I photographed this woman walking through newly planted terraced paddy fields in Kigwema, Nagaland. The quiet rhythm of their work and the beauty of the landscape made me appreciate the simplicity of life in the villages.
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Navin Paul
Even birthdays were celebrated on the road. I remember my 28th; I was in Pokhran, Rajasthan, staying at a gurdwara. The head saw my ID and asked me what I’d like as a present. I joked I’d like to drive a tractor. “That’s easy,” he said, and showed me how to handle one before letting me take the wheel.
‘India’s diversity works like a family’
There are connections everywhere, if you only look for them. The mundu I knew from Kerala appeared in different forms across India as veshtis and dhotis. The matta rice I grew up eating gave way to sticky rice in Assam and across the Northeast — different in texture and taste, yet central to daily life in much the same way. Even festivals such as Onam in Kerala, Pongal in Tamil Nadu, Magh Bihu in Assam, and Nuakhai in Odisha, while celebrated with different customs, were rooted in the same sense of gratitude. India’s diversity, I believe, works like a family: distinct in expression, yet connected at the core.
The boat race at Thazhathangady, Kottayam, Kerala
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
Fragments of stories
Travelling by cycle changed the way I arrived in places. It slowed everything down. I stayed longer, and it often made it easier for people to approach me. They wanted to know what was the best place I’d visited so far; did people elsewhere live lives just like theirs. I remember the people in Ladakh being curious about the South, and how it was to live beside beaches!
Travelling by cycle changed the way I arrived in places: Navin Paul
| Video Credit:
Navin Paul | The Hindu
Sometimes, language became a barrier, but a way was always found. In Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, I stopped at a roadside shop and, as always, people gathered around. Conversations were held through gestures and the few words we each understood. In time, one of them offered me a place to stay for a few days after heavy rains delayed my plan to ride towards Sonamarg. Before I left, his wife knitted a Kashmiri cap and gifted it to me. I’m still in touch with them.
With Tsewang Namgyal, chasing the last light while he descends an ice wall 100 ft high
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
Facing challenges on Trooper
I named my road bicycle Trooper, and it carried everything I needed: my camera gear, tent and clothes. Selling photo prints (edited on Photoshop and Lightroom) and using my savings helped sustain my travels. Five years threw several challenges my way. Cycling in Ladakh through sub-zero temperatures pushed me to my limits, as did the desert temperatures of Rajasthan. In the Northeast, heavy monsoon rains and landslides left me stranded for almost 18 months. One vivid memory is being stuck in Tripura’s Jampui Hills after a landslide washed away part of the road behind me. A shopkeeper offered me space, and I pitched my tent under a partially broken roof till the road was cleared.
The project — which started on March 3, 2021, from my hometown of Kottayam in Kerala, and concluded on July 26, 2026 — wasn’t always easy to carry forward. But calls with family and close friends helped ground me. I returned home twice in those five years, and those breaks allowed me to rest and reset.
In Arunachal Pradesh’s West Kameng district, a Brokpa man stood in quiet awe before an ancient, colossal tree, carrying a weight of ancestral stories in its gnarled branches.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
If five years on the road has taught me anything, it is that while India’s landscapes, languages and traditions change constantly, its people don’t. Behind unfamiliar clothes and customs are familiar traits — generosity, hospitality, the ability to find joy in small things, a love of food and sharing it. I hold dear the memories of the old man on the outskirts of Shillong who shared a meal of red rice and black sesame pork with me; the people in Kunkeshwar in coastal Maharashtra and Bastar in Chhattisgarh who exclaimed, “Your parents must be very brave [because I was an only son on a long journey].”
Thongam, an 84-year-old woman from Nagaland’s Konyak tribe, is one of the last remaining individuals to have the traditional tattoos that are a defining feature of her people. The tattoos served as markers of identity and status.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
Looking back, what stands out isn’t the distance covered, but the number of times someone chose to trust me, welcome me into a small part of their lives when they didn’t have to. This work is now coming together as a photobook, not as a complete story but as fragments of many.
Cycling through Purulia district in West Bengal, I got a chance to photograph a group of Chhau artists rehearsing for a ‘nach’. Their movements fierce, their stories rooted in epics such as the Ramayana and The Mahabharata, while their masks transformed them into gods.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
I met two Rabari families — an indigenous tribe of nomadic shepherds — who had pitched their tents on the outskirts of Udaipur. There were six adults, eight children, and a flock of around 500 sheep and a few guard dogs. Every year, they moved between Indore in Madhya Pradesh (where their children go to school) and Sirohi in Rajasthan. Now, their younger generation is opting for permanent settlement by taking up government jobs.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
What caught my eye about sisters Puti and Jhoria from Bhognadih village in Jharkhand’s Santhal Pargana region were their matching gold nose rings. They were shy at first but later told me it was a gift from their father to symbolise their bond.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
This elderly man from the Apatani tribe was threshing paddy in a traditional basket. His weathered hands bore the marks of a lifetime of hard work. It was a moment that captured the enduring spirit of indigenous farming.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
Following a nine-year hiatus, buffalo fights made a return to festivals in Assam and the Northeast. A new state law ensured the safety of the animals, with veterinary teams on standby to address any medical emergencies.
| Photo Credit:
Navin Paul
The writer is a photographer and adventurer documenting people and cultures across India. Follow his journey on @navinpaulphotography.
