To get my ticket to the Rann Utsav festival, I had to present a passport and Visa in person at a checkpoint a few kilometers from the entrance. At the gate, I had to once again get out of the car and present my papers to armed guards before being granted admittance. Security is not taken lightly this close to the Indian border with Paskistan.
Once inside, however, we were free to roam, and we wasted no time getting away from the road and surrounding ourselves with Rann of Kutch—the vast salt desert that is home to the festival.
Shikha was dressed to match the desert, and the warm evening sunlight washed over the cool white sand to set a stunning background as we walked into what looked like the world’s largest sugar bowl.
Shikha took off her shoes, and I laid down in the salt to look up at her, the moon shining over her shoulder.
We followed light and sound emanating from a stage a few hundred meters away.
Along the way, we found a camel, draped in bright orange and blue and wrapped in spangled necklaces stood hitched to a cart garnished like a carnival, its driver resting after a day of ferrying festival goers. Venus shone bright overhead.
We hopped a short fence to wade into the back of the audience where a cameraman on a platform, seeing my camera, invited me to join him and two others documenting the event, offering me a hand to pull men up. The view from our perch was perfect, but even from my vantage, my equipment was inadequate to fully capture the joyous energy before me.
When the song ended, we danced our way back to my gear and I climbed back up with the other photographers as a group of local men danced onto the stage and surrounded the singer. As the drums picked back up, the men whirled and spun and the dancing audience fed on the energy on the stage—a flurry of swirling, smiling, happy humanity.
Venus and Orion watched over us as we raced back across the desert, our driver keeping close watch for wildlife, Shikha and I smiling happily in the back seat, both wishing there were more hours in the desert day.