A Mindful Photography Walk
Foggy evenings, pouring rain and monsoons in the mountains
Other than the days when I wake up exactly when the kids in the neighbourhood are getting ready for school, I wake up to a quiet morning. With the occasional songs of Himalayan birds, faint sounds of household chores of neighbouring houses and the typing of keys on my keyboard, all I can hear throughout the day is silence.
There is a sound to silence. I first noticed it when my friend and poet, R, shared one evening in a small village in Maharashtra how the silence to him felt loud. 6 years later, I still use that sentence, sometimes with credit, other times well…
These past few days, I have been waking up to a new kind of silence. The pre monsoon showers have been bathing the trees and the rice fields and my tin roof as a sound drum has been dancing to the tune of the rain.
Even before I moved to this house, the sound of the rain on the tin roof would ring in my ears. I wondered if the two months of monsoons would be too loud an affair for my ears that have gladly befriended silence.
However, having spent a few nights under the tin roof, I have discovered a new kind of silence. Quoting my friend again, it is loud for sure, and this time not just romantically or metaphorically but literally loud; it is also the kind of loud that is constant and rhythmic. I have found myself being happily enveloped in this sound. It’s the kind of silence that is loud but not empty.
The gentleman in my neighbouring house, who is a paragliding pilot and perhaps can predict weather better than AccuWeather, claimed that he is free from work for the next two months, which when translated from Bir language to English translates to two months of rain.
Yesterday, I woke up to the view below (in the photo) and for a minute I wondered whether the clouds had eaten the village up or had we paraglided to the clouds above? Had I learnt basic geography, I would have known that it was a foggy morning.
My beloved and I couldn’t see each other. Parked right outside my house, just 50 metres away and yet it was impossible to catch a glimpse of my bike. From one of the windows in the house, I faintly saw her getting drenched in the rain, and it was enough of a sign that she was okay.
S and I could see each other all day and periodically shared the excitement of waking up to such weather.
Before my eyes were properly open, I took out my camera, removed the lens cap and exposed its eye wide and bright to the foggy morning. Within a couple of photos, the camera started to catch some fog itself and being foggy asleep-eyed myself, I wondered if there was any point to taking any more photos after all.
Till early evening, I worked really really hard for whatever seconds I could actually look at the screen and not get distracted by the view in front of me. If there were a Strava to calculate the amount of work done, it would have surely been a little more than 14.29 minutes.
It was 5:30 already, and since I had a call at 7, I thought that the weather was surely worth an hour’s walk. I wore my hiking boots, pulled my socks till my knees (hello leeches) and with a camera hanging from my left shoulder and the umbrella from my right, went for a mindful photography walk.
Mindful photography walk is a creative practice that uses the principle of Constraints create creativity by limiting the number of photographs one can take during the photowalk. This allows the photographer to spend more quality time in the setting they’re in instead of worrying about getting the right photo back with them. Also, limiting the number of photos helps to create an analogue-like experience.
The best is to keep the number under 10; however, since the weather was so inviting and I knew I would click at least 5 photos of the Old Gunehar tree, I decided on 20.
I usually walk from the fields outside my home towards the narrow stream, follow it upstream towards the market, and then follow the paved path back to my home.
Yesterday, in the excitement of quickly reaching the old gunehar tree to click the photo that I had imagined in my head, I took the opposite route.
I prefer taking the narrow trails to walk here in the mountains instead of the well-paved paths. You don’t find traffic on these trails, but also just by having to carefully walk on the trails to avoid slipping and hurting myself, I never use my phone and walk mindfully. On the usual route, I would get done with the trail part too early in the beginning of the walk itself, only to return home taking the less sexy road. Yesterday, I was quickly pacing down the road, passing greetings to all familiar faces along the way. When the trail finally started, I pulled up my socks again to save myself from the leeches, I had been warned enough in the past few minutes not to feel superstitious about it.
When the trail started, suddenly everything felt unfamiliar and unknown. I had hiked this route several times, and yet my memory seemed to fail me. In my defence, I could barely see anything. With my camera lens and the spectacles catching fog every few minutes, all 5 sets of eyes were working at half their capacity. I could clean them until my t-shirt and my handkerchief were dry enough, and soon that too became a luxury.
I found myself alone, in the middle of the fields with all 5 sets of eyes working at 20% capacity and with the view outside reduced to 50% visibility, I leave it to the math geeks to calculate how much I was able to actually see.
I hope by no means I am painting the picture that I was stuck and in distress. Much like the white noise of rain enveloping my house and creating a new kind of silence, the partial blindness caused by the fog and my specs working at half capacity illuminated my eyes to a tender kind of beauty, the one that I had missed appreciating. With the sound of water down the stream guiding me and the big trees as milestones, I kept hiking, half in awe of the scenery around and the other half in reverence of the life I had built that allowed me to do that.
Much like the view, I had also lost sight of the number of photos that were left to click as part of the mindful photography practice, and since having to recount the number was coming in my way of being mindful, I slyly convinced myself that it would be alright to cheat a bit and shoot to my heart’s content.
I was humbled soon when I realised that I had already shot the kind of photos that my skills allowed, and after that, almost every photo looked like a copy and paste of the previous one.
I had not encountered a single soul since I had started walking in the fields, and I enjoyed the freedom of pointing my camera in any direction that called out. I passed a few women who were sowing rice. Since I knew one of them very well and even got an invitation for tea at her house sometime this week, I gathered the courage to ask if it would be okay to take a photograph from far. Came a resounding yes!
When S called me to check how far I was from home, I checked the time and realised that I had walked longer than I should have. It was almost 7, and I was late for my meeting, and I had still not caught the trail that would eventually take me home. That’s when I realised that this was the first time I was walking the trail opposite. I had no marker for when the trail turned right to my home. I was lost in my own backyard! I made a mental note on how it would make for a nice story.
After walking for several minutes, when I found a structure that looked familiar, I realised that I had reached the neighbouring village. I quickly paced up the trail while trying to retrieve past routes from Strava. Soon, I was on the trail that led home.
The mindful photography walk ended with 30+ photos, meeting with an old friend, being invited for tea, getting lost in my backyard and a good story worth sharing with all of you. Happy monsoons.
Thanks for reading.
This newsletter is ad-free, AI-free, and an anti-algorithm publication.
The Storytellers Collective’s first batch is half over. We’re a team of 8 creatives, and it has been a joy working with these lovely creative people.
I am excited to announce that I am opening registrations for July. If the invitation calls out to you, and if you want to spend time doing creative work in the presence of a community, sign up here. For any inquiries, reply to this email.
I invite you to reflect and write on the following prompt:
What is your relationship with monsoons? Do you enjoy rain?
As a feature of all my newsletters, I share a blackout poem, a quote, a song, a book,
plant-based meal, film/video that inspired me, and some photographs.
Blackout Poem: Tutorial to make your blackout poem
Quote: By Mark Haddon
“On the fifth day, which was a Sunday, it rained very hard. I like it when it rains hard. It sounds like white noise everywhere, which is like silence but not empty.”
Song: Found this beautiful playlist while looking for some good rap songs. Is this techno? Not sure. Am I into this now? YES.
Book/Newsletter/Article: Stunning writing advice by the writer of Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk
Meal: Priceless experience of having Uttapam at my mountain home with homemade peanut chutney. Loved every bit of it. Made by my dearest S.
Film/Video: I have been researching a lot about creativity these days to better prepare myself for The Storytellers Collective. Here is a lovely video I found about Creativity and Play.
Photograph(s):
Monsoons in the Mountains
Read my other newsletters :
Why I Ran From Vipassana
The story of moving to the mountains
My relationship with failure
Photography, my first love
Read my short stories :
Socratree
Quenched
Chetak
Coronaceptive
Compilation of all recommendations :
Video recommendations
Music recommendations
Books read
Free Journaling eBook:
Last year, I compiled a journaling ebook for myself for times when I feel I have nothing to write. I am offering it to you for free. Whether you’re starting your journaling journey or feeling stuck in a creative block, this guide will help you find your way.
Download your journaling eBook here.
Thank you for reading my work
Rishabh
I want to be in Bir right now 😭 😭 😭 😭
You are so lucky to be living in the mountains and seeing it through different seasons. And I'm so happy to see that you are fully enjoying it!
This was such a beautiful piece of work. Absolutely loved this. I am new here but the way it's organised and the way the article spoke was really mesmerizing. This was soo good. Loved it!!