Hyphen India

In the spring of 2007, photographer Max Nabati arrived in Bombay with a backpack and a professional camera, intending to document India from the top down. What followed was a transformative loop down the Konkan coast to the continent's southern tip, then inland through ancient temple towns and misty hill stations, before returning north along the shimmering Arabian Sea. This is not a guidebook, but a visceral, sensory memoir of a journey lived through the viewfinder. Traveling solely by local buses, trains, and ferries, staying in anonymous guesthouses and coastal homestays, Max navigates a world of magnificent contradictions—where deafening Bollywood films play on rattling buses, where ticket checkers impose cryptic fines, and where sacred rituals unfold beside scenes of raw, daily survival. He becomes at turns an observer, a collaborator, and even a commodity, bargaining for seafood at Chinese fishing nets, paying Gypsy women to pose, and being hired as a "contemplative foreigner" for a coffee advertisement. With vivid prose that mirrors the sharp focus of his camera, this book captures the relentless assault on the senses, the profound beauty in the mundane, and the unexpected grace found in transit. It is the story behind the photographs—a raw and honest account of how India, in all its overwhelming, chaotic glory, can sand down a traveler's edges and reveal the quiet artistry of simply being there.