In 2021, photographer Navin Paul set off across India on a bicycle with a Nikon D850 and no fixed itinerary. What was meant to be a short project stretched into five years, nearly 21,000 kilometres, 28 states and more than 180 villages — all photographed along the way and now being assembled into a photobook.
The routine was simple. He rode in the cooler mornings, covering 60 to 100 kilometres a day depending on terrain and weather, then rested through the afternoons wherever shade could be found, including under toll gates and roadside shelters. Big cities mostly had him pedalling straight through — Kolkata was the exception, with its striking mix of old and new — while small towns and villages earned multi-day stops.
The hardest part was accommodation. Asking strangers for a place to sleep never got easy, and early on the nos outweighed the yeses. But conversations broke the ice: where are you from, how long have you been riding? A fisherman in Murudeshwara, Karnataka, invited him home for freshly caught fish and rice. A farming family in Kohima, Nagaland, hosted him during rice-planting season, where field work turned into singing he couldn't keep up with. In Srinagar, after heavy rains delayed his ride towards Sonamarg, a shopkeeper put him up for days — and the man's wife knitted him a Kashmiri cap before he left. They're still in touch. His 28th birthday in Pokhran, Rajasthan, was spent at a gurdwara, where the head, on hearing his birthday wish, taught him to drive a tractor.
Language gaps were bridged with gestures and a handful of shared words. People he met were intensely curious about other parts of their own country — Ladakhis wanted to know what life near a beach in the South was like. Meals became the connective tissue: red rice and black sesame pork with an elderly man outside Shillong, street-side gatherings around his bicycle in Kashmir, family dinners on the Karnataka coast.
His conclusion after five years: India's landscapes, languages and customs change constantly, but its people don't. Generosity, hospitality and a love of sharing food show up everywhere, whatever the region. For travellers, the lesson is a refreshing one — slow down, ask questions, and let conversations, not itineraries, shape the trip. The places on his route, from coastal Maharashtra's Kunkeshwar to the hills of Nagaland, are well worth plotting onto any slow-travel map of India. Follow the project at @navinpaulphotography.
