www.jasonelias.com
email: jason@jasonelias.com

How I Learned More Than Just Hindi in India
Or Travels in Rajasthan with Steve McCurry

by Jason Elias

Early in 2001, my friend good Tom Niccum and I had been talking. Tom and I were both aspiring photographers, we had both been reading Robert Young Pelton’s “World’s Most Dangerous Places” and we had got it in our minds to take an adventure-photography trip to some crazy part of the world where we’d never been.

Somehow we had become fixated on hitting the legendary Pushkar Camel Fair. The Pushkar Camel Fair happens once a year in Rajasthan, India (a few hundred miles west of New Delhi) and is exactly that – a huge, wild, teetering camel trading fair. Over 50,000 camels travel from all over India to the sand dunes surrounding the tiny holy town of Pushkar where traders haggle, buying and selling camels for over a week. Tiny Pushkar Lake, around which the city is built, also happens to be one of the most holy spots in Hinduism (so holy that Ghandi’s ashes were scattered there) and late November - the same time as the Fair - also happens to be the exact date that it is most auspicious to bathe in Lake Pushkar’s waters. So during the Fair, gurus, Sadhus and all-around holy people from all over India take pilgrimage to tiny Pushkar to dip in its waters. And since the city elders of Pushkar ain’t stupid they figured they’d turn the entire week into a festival and so they throw an Arts and Crafts Festival where every craftsman for hundreds of miles comes and sets up shop to sell baubles and bangles, saris and slippers. And finally, as the ice cream in that root beer, five or six of the loudest wandering circuses in all of India show up to parade their freaks and geeks for the week (and American Circuses don’t have anything on these…).

Since Tom had knew Steve McCurry, the famous National Geographic photographer, we somehow convinced Steve to come as a photographic leader for our trip. For Steve the idea of returning to the country he loves so much with a couple of experienced and ready to learn students really appealed to him (and also said quite a bit about what a great guy he is).

And so on November 17th of 2001 I packed my sturdy camera bag, locked the door to my place at 4am and met Tom at the Northwest lounge LAX (he was in L.A. at the time). Our journey would be from LAX to Minneapolis and from there to Amsterdam and then on to Delhi  where we would meet up with Steve . The trip was long and brutal and both Tom and I had anxiety attacks aboard our flights (28 hours of travel can lead to that) for different reasons – Tom stressing because of the fact we two who had never done anything like this, were flying halfway around the world to a place we had never been before right after September 11th, while I hyper-ventilated because on our flight from Amsterdam to Delhi (we had transferred to KLM Airlines) I sat amongst a group of well-meaning Dutch who tried to convince me it was WAY too dangerous for Americans to be traveling to this part of the world right now - part of our itinerary would take us to Jodhpur, roughly 70 miles from the Pakistani border and we would be traveling a portion of the trip on the Grand Trunk Road, which ran from Delhi to Kabul. But on the other side of cool, our KLM flight path that night at one point had Afghanistan on the left side of the plane, Iraq on the right and I could look down on the night-lights of Tehran.

Arriving in Delhi late at night, we were met at the airport by an in-country guide. There I received my first schooling in Indian rupees when I tipped well over 10 bucks for a guy to take my bags from a cart and put them in the back of the van. Driving from the airport, and being amazed by the smog levels in Delhi, we also had our first taste of Indian driving. I thought at that time I had seen the worst driving in the world in Mexico, but it didn’t hold a candle to India. The swerving, the accelerating and the huge holes in the road plus the constant use of what is referred to as the Indian brake pedal – the horn – were just an aperitif to the near-death, adrenalin-surging driving we would have later in the trip. That night though, thankfully, we made it to the Siddarth Hotel in Delhi and proceeded to crash hard.

Over the next two days, while acclimatizing ourselves and sleeping off our jet-lag, we traveled around Delhi, seeing the sights, waiting for Steve. Delhi was a caterwauling, coughing, cacophonous city where there seemed to be no traffic regulations and was crowded to the point of being completely overwhelming. There was no spot of land that didn’t have someone sitting, sleeping or standing in it and as far as I could tell, the only point of the entire day was to somehow dodge the constantly honking scooters, bicycle rickshaws and little Suzuki cars jostling through the city. It was loud, stinking and completely off the charts in what we were used to. And still the city amazed us. We climbed the towers at the Jama Masjid, an ancient mosque built by Shah Jahan, the same cat who built the Taj Mahal. We crawled the dark back alleys of the sprawling bazaar, the Chandni Chowk. We visited ancient monuments and extravagant Hindu temple where Tom got his head dabbed like a true follower and where one of my trusty Nikons bounced off the marble steps like some sort of superball but kept right on working.

And we waited in anticipation for Steve McCurry.  He finally arrived late the last night in Delhi and we had an intro dinner with him. Tom knew him well but I had never met him. I don’t know if I was expecting him to dispense some sort of pearly wisdom on the history of photography or to immediately transmogrify my vision of the world but neither happened because that wasn’t Steve. Under the khaki Yankees cap he was just a cool cat who ordered Kingfishers with dinner. Little did I know that was one of the first lessons.

Traveling with other photographers on other trips, I had noticed the assumption that we as photographers all fall prey to every so often - the idea of the more expensive the equipment, the better the shot, the more techno-film-jabber spoken, the more knowledge you have. But over the course of the trip that was one of the biggest lessons to be learned from Steve. To be sure, you had to know the technical stuff - aperture, film stock, exposure and shutter speed - but it was about much more. In all of the shooting Steve has ever done, he only carries two old Nikon bodies over his shoulder and a couple of lenses. Not even a camera bag. For Steve, it was about seeing what was really there and becoming part of it. About enjoying what you were doing. It was about the vision, not the photo. We were nervous and expectant waiting for an answer to some sort of unspoken photographic question that would change the way we shot, but little did we know we were being fed the answer that first night along with the Chicken Tikka Makhani.

So after two days of Delhi with its horrendous smog and excellent Chai, we headed off to the airport. I didn’t know it was possible for snoring to overpower the sound of a jet-engine, but on the flight from Delhi to Jodhpur there was 300-pound Indian businessman who snored so loud that the entire plane shuddered and I began to wonder about the tensile strength of the old 737’s wings.

We landed in the arid desert region of Jodhpur, a mere 70 miles from the Pakistani border (yup, the same country India’s gone to war with twice in the last 50 years and the same one they have been rattling sabers with recently). The desert around Jodhpur was a dry and sun-blasted place but as I was raised in Arizona I knew that deserts had their own beauty that sometimes only came on you after a few days. The city itself stood in sharp contrast to the desert as its crowded alleyways and backstreets climbed the steep walls of the butte the Old Fort of Jodhpur was built upon (those old-time Indians loved to conquer each other). And it was to those steep, meandering streets of the cliffs that Steve led us.

Steve had been to Jodhpur many times before and he immediately took us to the famous “blue city” where many of the small stone houses were painted a powder blue (the reasons why varied with the teller, but the one that seemed the most plausible was that malarial mosquitoes tended to avoid the color). Crawling through the narrow alleys you couldn’t fumble your lens cap off without snapping a shot with these amazing powder-blue backgrounds. It was an amazing place and as Steve himself said, it’s hard enough to take a good photo, why not go somewhere where at least the backgrounds are cool (yeah, it’s a bit of a paraphrase).

 So for the next few days we went back again and again, morning and evening, walking and watching, looking and shooting. Just watching Steve work was a lesson in itself. The way he approached his subject was a bit of a revelation to us all. He seemed to have a sort of calm about him that he translated to whomever or whatever he shot. He would walk up to a total stranger, nod slightly to them and start shooting. And instead of smiling or objecting, Steve’s subjects sat for him as if they had been invited to a sculpture class. Steve would shoot, sometimes reaching out, tilting their head, moving them a foot to the left. And they stayed. Then after 2 or 5 or 10 minutes of shooting he would lower his camera, nod to them and move on. It was remarkable. And every day, back at the hotel Tom and I would talk about watching him work. We puzzled and theorized and tried to understand it, trying to evaluate how each encounter was played-out and how Steve got what he did. But I think we were all analyzing too deeply, not seeing the simple answer right before our eyes. What we were seeing with Steve was a deep and profound respect for the human condition. He had no fear at all in that he approached each and every person he shot with open eyes and a simple vision of what he wanted to shoot. Steve had a compassion and respect for what he was doing and that translated in the way he approached the people he shot.

As we walked with him, I felt like in a way we were in training. We would head to the walk next to him, ask a few questions, then peel off to try out what we had just talked about. And then when we had figured out that small bit, we would head back and wait for our next lesson. In one of my walking sessions with him I asked him how he kept from feeling, as I sometimes did, that when he took a photo of someone he wasn’t in a way stealing something from them. He almost couldn’t understand my question because the way he saw it, it was never about one person taking from another. Instead, he saw every photo as an interaction between two people. That photo would never have been without the involvement of two people and they shared that common bond. And that hit me like a bell being rung. There was never anything but a respect and understanding in every one of Steve’s photos. And on the subject’s part, that openness and compassion that you can see in many of Steve’s portraits is something that can never be just taken from someone but instead must be given willingly. That relationship between subject and photographer made all of us on the trip look at our own photography in a subtly but profoundly different way.

Under Steve’s leadership we worked the “blue city” for a few days, returning again and again playing into Steve’s idea of understanding what you are shooting, because only after a few days did we really begin to get a feel for the place and its people. And it led to better and better photography. Tom remarked on it saying that most amateurs when traveling shot one photo of 50 different things while pro shooters always shot 50 photos of one thing.

While in Jodhpur, we also took a side trip to a Bishnoi Village. The Bishnoi are a people who follow a life based on conservation. Back in the 1700’s, the Maharajah (the prince) of the region wanted to cut down a grove of trees for firewood. A local woman protested and climbed a tree to prevent it from being cut down. What she forgot was that she was living in India in the 1700’s and the Maharajah simply had her killed. In protest, the rest of the village climbed trees and so of course over 360 people died that day (sounds a bit dramatic, but then again I could see chaining myself to the local Krispy Kreme in protest.) Since then, these villagers have followed a life of respect for all living things. After arriving in this village, we were told we were the first westerners ever to visit there. And by this time, under Steve’s tutelage, we were there to see and meet and experience the people on their own terms. We only took what they gave willingly, and in return we gave back. And the people in that village invited us into their homes. They made us tea. They fed us bread. We had an experience far outside anything having to do with photography, and yet that exact thing helped us get photography that is on a different level than anything we'd ever done before. It was amazing.

After leaving Jodhpur we headed on to Pushkar. This was what we had come to India for and we were excited. To get to Pushkar we had to drive over a narrow winding road that curved and doubled-back and dipsy-doodled its way through rocky, craggy cliffs that eventually dumped us off right on top of the small holy lake. As soon as we got into town you could feel the change in the air – that open-air festival feeling where the sun seems to be a bit brighter, the music a bit crisper, the food a bit sweeter. Holy men, or Sadhus, dressed all in orange wandered the bustling narrow streets. Camels and dogs dodged the buses and mopeds that criss-crossed the narrow streets in complex patterns that chaos theorists would have a difficult time explaining. And on the sand dunes just on the other side of town, filling the air with their collective lowing, were tens of thousands of camels. And just above it all was the constant shrieking of Hindi music from the six Indian circuses camped just by the entrance to the festival.

We made our way to our home away from home, the Royal Maharajah tents, the din of the festival only slightly receding into the distance. The tents were amazing, the kind you would expect to see on Abercrombie and Kent expeditions to the savannahs of Kenya. But as soon as we threw our bags down we were back to the festival. Again we followed Steve’s lead and watched and learned.  Again just watching him work was the greatest learning experience. He never seemed to be looking for a shot, but instead he was just looking. And there was many a time where we would walk for an hour and he wouldn’t shoot one thing. It was again, about the experience. And only by that, by really experiencing it, could you really translate that into a photo that would have understanding and story and texture and depthAnd as we walked, every one on the trip became quieter and quieter, the knowledge of our photography growing with every shot we didn’t take, every scene we just looked at and walked by, everything we might once have shot but didn’t now. It was very powerful.

The festival came to be the highlight of the entire trip. For me, it was the time when my understanding of my photography met up with my excitement about that understanding. It was also the time when we were experiencing a part of the world that was well outside any of our experience. We were seeing a people who had lived their entire lives, a culture that had existed, well outside the boundaries of anything that we knew. But I also began to understand, in a large part because of Steve’s tutelage, that I was just seeing the human condition, the same hopes, fears and thoughts that affected the entirety of the human Diaspora. Slowly the idea steeped into me that what made Steve’s photos so engaging, so relevant, so important was that no matter when they were taken, no matter where in the world it was, there was a connection to that base assumption, that primal sense that we are all of the same. And so for me, Pushkar was a holy lake, a place where visions and ideas became real.

Unfortunately, except for Sadhus and gurus, those revelatory moments are sometimes fleeting and it was only a matter of days before we all started seeing the busloads of tourist showing up. The hiss of airbrakes filled the air and we knew it was time to get the hell out of there (as we were checking out of the Royal Tents an Abercrombie and Kent bus pulled up). So we piled into our Ambassador taxi and our Toyota minivan and we sped off again into the desert headed for Jaipur, the capital of Rajasthan. By this time we knew well how horrific the drives were and up until this point I had refused to ride in the front seat and had kept my eyes closed listening to my cd’s. But this time, for some idiotic reason, I thought, I can’t leave here without having sat in the front seat for a leg. Stupid. As soon as we got onto the divided highway, one of the giant Indian trucks – a Tata – jumped the median and came barreling down the highway on our side, flashing its lights and blaring its horn. We all started screaming and our driver swerved the Ambassador into the dirt shoulder as we watched the Tata roar by. I turned to our Nepalese driver and asked why that had just happened. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders and replied, “India.” Once we finally made it to Jaipur, I for one was extremely relieved.

Jaipur was interesting, but I think for of us, it was a place to decompress from the excitement and experience of Pushkar. We spent two days there, the highlight of it being when we crashed a Hindu wedding next to the hotel and ended up becoming guests of honor and being pulled onstage with the married couple (I had a large bombastic Indian man regale me with talk such as, “India and America must stand together! The world’s largest democracy and the world’s strongest democracy!!”). In Jaipur we also parted with Steve who was headed to Kathmandu on assignment (right after that he left for Afghanistan for his now famous search for the Afghan Girl.)

After out two days in Jaipur, we again packed up and sped off towards Agra where the Taj Mahal sits. Admittedly, neither Tom nor I was really excited about this. In a way we were both pretty burnt. Plus personally, I was not sure I wanted to see yet another monument, even if it was the symbol of India. But was I wrong.

When we finally went to see the Taj Mahal, I was profoundly amazed. It was everything everyone said and more. And this is coming from a cynical bastard who lives in L.A., the shallowest town this side of, well, nowhere. The Taj Mahal was beautiful, powerful and affecting. You could sit and watch the light change on the Taj and see the color of the entire building change. We spent two nights and one morning shooting it and I we were both deeply moved.

And so finally we jumped in the cars one last time for our final drive back to Delhi and our flight home. And as I said, by this time we were feeling a bit overwhelmed by India and in a way we were ready to leave. A day later as I finally reclined my seat, shoved my camera bag into the overhead bin and fastened my seatbelt, I thought back about our trip. All of the guidebooks we had read and everyone we had spoken to before our trip had said that India would both attract and repel. It would be so overwhelming, so loud and stinking, so intense that we might find ourselves wanting to get the hell out. And we had. But they had all also said that India would grab hold. It would get its claws into you and not let go, would leave you wondering and wanting, it would not let you forget. And in a way, you would always want to return, you would need to get back. And already on the flight, even though I felt an enormous relief to be leaving, I already felt the beginnings of that pull. As I laid back further, I started to think of my photography and how it had changed on the trip, especially what I had learned from Steve. And I began to feel that something else had gotten its hooks into me. A new way of looking at the world, a new way of experiencing things and how that in a direct way affected the way I shoot. A new understanding of what I see and feel and what that means to what I shoot. And I knew that I would return to that as well. Again and again.

copyright 2003 jasonelias.com