Photography holiday in Southern India

Environment

Both our company and our location guides are keen environmentalists. For example we are privileged to have worked alongside our guides in Munnar for many years; Their knowledge of and respect for the local environment is unsurpassed and his local company comprises of nature lovers who hail from Idukki district in Kerala. They belong to traditional families engaged in farming and have spent almost all of their lives in Munnar. That’s why they have an immense knowledge of the indigenous flora and fauna. Their objective is to, “help people understand the nature better and to conserve it so that the future generation can benefit and admire the it’s beauty.” Our photography reflects the special access we have to some less explored locations that local people have shown us. Walking through locations is key to our trips, wherever possible we avoid any sort of transport at all allowing total immersion in the areas we visit.

We consider it a huge privilege to be able to visit the world’s wild places and at all times we endeavour to respect local cultures, the natural beauty and fragile environments. At the beginning of the trip we advise and discuss issues such as appropriate dress, local religious and cultural beliefs, disposal and re-cycling of litter in wild place and local environmental issues. This information is also available on our web site.

Community

We consider it a huge privilege to be able to visit the world’s wild places and at all times we endeavour to respect local cultures, the natural beauty and fragile environments. At the beginning of the trip we advise and discuss issues such as appropriate dress, local religious and cultural beliefs, disposal and re-cycling of litter in wild place and local environmental issues. This information is also available on our web site.

Throughout our holiday we will be working alongside an Indian English speaking guide and local location experts. We travel in small groups often splitting into smaller groups of two or three persons in order to reduce intrusion on local communities while photographing. With a few exceptions when we visit iconic locations, we tend to avoid main tourist areas, concentrating instead on the less visited communities thus economically supporting these local communities. In the Western Ghats our accommodation is ex colonial club, steeped in history now run by Indians, for Indians, we will be their special guests and all food here is from local sources.

In Tiruvanamalai we have known and worked with our location experts for many years and as such we get to visit places often unseen by other visitors to the area and we are often treated to insights of cultural tradition and ways of life that would have passed us by without this connection. We avoid in country air travel by choosing local trains for two of our longer journeys, allowing more interaction with local people and services that they provide. We travel in small groups often splitting into smaller groups of two or three persons in order to reduce intrusion on local communities while photographing. In Madurai we support bicycle rickshaws by using them to explore the old part of the city; this form of transport is exciting, vastly reduces pollution it directly puts money into the pockets of some of the cities low income workers and we get some great action pictures to boot!