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LITTLE TIBET:  An Exhibition of Photographs from Ladakh and Zanskar. View these and more in our Travel Photographs section. Ladakh and Zanskar are Buddhist enclaves in the high Himalayas of Northern India, between Kashmir and Tibet. Buddhism arrived over 1000 years ago and the cultural similarity with neighbouring Tibet earned it the name Little Tibet. Until China annexed Tibet in 1950, Silk Road caravans came with salt and wool to be traded in Leh, Ladakh’s main town. The remoteness of Ladakh - the name means Land of High Passes - has isolated it from the rest of India and preserved its...

These are a few of my favourite things One of my favourite objects in the gallery is the Pot Bellied Ganesh. I can’t remember when my love of elephants began but they are something of a life long passion, so when I first visited India 40 years ago not only was I thrilled to see so many elephants in the flesh, I was immediately and inevitably drawn to the elephant headed Hindu god Ganesh. Carved statues of Ganesh are often seen in the lintel over a door frame at the entrance to a house or by the side of the...

A return visit to Rajasthan in search of the subterranean architecture of stepwells. the first two days of a 10 day trip: from Delhi to Jaipur, Neemrana, Abhaneri, and beyond.

Buddhist Ruins in Rajasthan In March 2018 I resumed my search for the subterranean architectures of western India known as stepwells. This took me near a village called Viratnagar, just a few miles from the main Delhi to Jaipur highway and close to the location of an old Buddhist site called Bhairat.Some of my 2017 stepwell photographs are on display at the Silk Road Gallery showroom in Sheffield until Easter 2018, you can see the images here.A newly painted Viratnagar stepwell.We don't tend to think of Buddhism having been practised in Rajasthan, the semi desert state in the west of India, but there are a few...

The old village of Kanji is one of the reasons for planning this trek. We came here in 2012 at the end of a long trek from Zanskar and always wanted to return. It's a delight to explore the old lanes; the village is quiet, most people are in the fields gathering the harvest. 
The old gompa is very small but it was carefully restored a few years ago and has interesting statues of Avalokiteshvara and Tara and a couple of decent mandalas painted on the walls.