Novie Russkie
Gregory breathes heavily in his slick purple robe, panting through a haze of cognac and icons, while the snow drifts through the open doorway into …
12 Mar
Uspienski Sobor, Kreml
Uspienski Sobor, Kreml
Outside the Uspienski Sobor of the Kremlin, the group of women huddled together. “I didn’t notice the winter is almost over,” said one. “What are …
10 Mar
Moskva: sandpaper
Moskva: sandpaper
“Moscow in March is sandpaper,” said Tatyana. Like when the wind kicks up and your fingers go dead and your lips freeze till you can’t …
06 Mar
Clutching at Limqasil
Clutching at Limqasil
The furthest Khamis bin Rashid bin Khalfan al Nasibi has ever been is Rustaq, four hours of hiking and crawling and tiptoeing over rock away. …
25 Feb
October 2004
October 2004
My knees buckled when I first saw the path on the inside edge of Oman’s Grand Canyon that I had to walk and get a …
19 Feb
Pepper Fryberger
Pepper Fryberger
The Other Fryberger is up here. www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own & Nikon Muscat Photo Workshops | pinaki.info on Facebook | & if you really insist, …
15 Feb
6.10pm
6.10pm
The music’s so loud we can’t hear ourselves think. And as the sun sets behind the old house the dancer twirls through the last bit …
08 Feb
October 2007
October 2007
That last part, when you know you’re beyond ever stopping, happens in slow motion: the camel runs out from the trees and across the mountain …
02 Feb
6.54pm
6.54pm
A brother – a web designer – dances with his younger sister at a relative’s pre-wedding party in Muscat. Their father sings in the band …
31 Jan
9.51pm
9.51pm
Father and sons – one of whom is the groom – gather at the mosque their ancestor built, receiving well-wishers before the marriage. There is …
29 Jan
11.44pm
11.44pm
It is a quarter to midnight and the Balushi from Karachi is kick-starting the pre-wedding party, sashaying across the compound where the groom’s family is …
27 Jan
the Chronicle of Planets
the Chronicle of Planets
Manama, Bahrain. 2004. I was there to shoot the first F1 race in the Gulf, which was quite unbearable. I’d rather have spent more time sitting …
19 Jan
Howling over Yasab
Howling over Yasab
“The old people say that since we didn’t have any utensils in the old days we used to drop the flour for the bread right …
06 Jan
Shidyt
Shidyt
October 18, 2008 I’m sitting 1,300m up the northern slopes of the Jebel Kawr, squeezing limes into my bottles of water, licking the juice off my …
02 Jan
Limqasil
Limqasil
Was it worth it? Khamis laughs out loud at the question, while his brother Salim, who couldn’t ever put together enough money for a wife, …
26 Dec
the Rubble of Bat
the Rubble of Bat
January 2008 A handful of kilometers away from the forgotten civilisation that erected stone tombs 5,000 years ago, Zuwayna squints across her courtyard looking for company. The …
14 Dec
Samakt
Samakt
July 20, 2008: A quarter past noon. Hellishly hot white light bouncing off a landscape of rock outside. But I’m squeezing ISO1600 in the depths …
07 Dec
Vakils of Misfah
Vakils of Misfah
Up here now www.pinaki.info | because the best stories are our own
17 Nov
Invitation
Invitation
Now up at the Bait al Baranda, the second in the series. This is what Time Out Muscat said after the last one.
11 Oct
le Conquet
le Conquet
But it is twilight in le Conquet, and the sea is rushing in so fast it gives you vertigo when you stand in the middle …
28 Sep
Paris, 5.05pm
Paris, 5.05pm
Past Notre Dame, unbearably overloaded with architecture and tourists, where the faithful can buy a fake gold medallion from a vending machine for two Euros …
19 Aug
Kaliabor
Kaliabor
No one goes to Kaliabor, not even the Assamese. But you can have a look at it here.
15 Aug
One way or the other
One way or the other
I suppose there are poor people everywhere, and some of them work through a hard life and their children start off a little better. But …
09 Aug
Wadi Slooh
Wadi Slooh
Up here now. Huddled in the shade of goatskins, plastic sheets and dried thorn bushes, with civilisation somewhere behind the dust I’ve just kicked up, and …
08 Aug
the Mingis
the Mingis
A camel in Qafifa, where I shot the remnants of the Mingis. Who says only elephants have nice eyelashes? A muzzle helps when one moves …
05 Aug
Confessions
Confessions
I have four pages of scribbles that I scratched into the Moleskine as the taxi lurched from one end of the city to the other. …
03 Aug
Failure at Kaziranga
Failure at Kaziranga
Up here now. It is May 1999, and I’m in the jungles of Kerala on holiday from college. I have borrowed a little film point-and-shoot from …
23 Jul
Squeezing art out of geology
Squeezing art out of geology
It was September 2005, and I was, after a year and a half in Oman, hungry for intellectual stimulation. I found it one Friday morning …
19 Jul
Three Men and a Trilith
Three Men and a Trilith
Anything is possible in Dhofar, even an Egyptian journalist, a British soldier and a line of Iron Age rock arrangements no one has figured out …
18 Jul
Wadi Creepy
Wadi Creepy
This is what 5.43 on a January evening in a dead-end wadi looks like, with the fluttering dishdashas somewhere to the south, a thousand and …
11 Jul
Children and Grandchildren
Children and Grandchildren
The 135 rials Fatma earns at the school is spread wafer thin over the house and granddaughter she takes care of, and she had to …
07 Jul
Sibelle and the Persians
Sibelle and the Persians
It is January 2007 and Sibelle and I are 2,100m high on the Jebel Akhdar, at the top of the steps that the Persian army …
02 Jul
Sibelle, windblown
Sibelle, windblown
This is what you get more than a thousand kilometres of desert away from Muscat: an unknown beach a couple of turns away from the …
28 Jun
Samakt: Draft
Samakt: Draft
I need help. Is this piece worth putting up on my site, under the Oman portrait section? First useful comment gets a Bialetti Moka Express. …
20 Jun
Gallery on the Stairs
Gallery on the Stairs
Starting now, I will be exhibiting one story at a time at the Gallery on the Stairs at the Bait al Baranda, Muscat. I’ll go …
10 Jun
Dead-Ends and Old Men
Dead-Ends and Old Men
It was April 13, 2008, and I was at the end of a dead-end road, desperately looking for inspiration up a mountain. Instead, I found …
26 May
a Jeep called Viola
a Jeep called Viola
Dragging the fan belt along the highway at 140 wasn’t such a good idea after all. It was my second breakdown in three days. The …
19 Apr
Dinner for One
Dinner for One
Not as good as this one, of course. Or this, for that matter. Or even the chai shop in Sana’a. But considering I’m in Muscat, …
11 Apr
A Quiet Cancer
A Quiet Cancer
I was a thousand metres above sea level near a prehistoric lake and the moon was so close and bright I had to turn my …
08 Apr
Twilight Grey
Twilight Grey
Hani is sitting under the caves gouged into mountains that give her village its name, wrapped head to toe in twilight grey, red and green …
06 Apr
Husbands, Sons, Lemons.
Husbands, Sons, Lemons.
Saalma is ecstatic when my fixer Seema and I hunt down her house the next day, and practically hugs me when I say I have …
05 Apr
Saalma: 10.30am
Saalma: 10.30am
It is half past ten and the light is being broken up by the jagged edges of an entire neighbourhood of palm fronds, scattered on …
30 Mar
Stinky and Exclusion
Stinky and Exclusion
It is half past eight at night and we are sitting down to coffee and Irish cream over dull green kitchen tiles and a single …
21 Mar
Umm Khalid
Umm Khalid
Umm Khalid used to be royalty back home in Mandh, but that was a lifetime ago, in a faraway land now divided between Iran and …
17 Mar
under Wadi Qani
under Wadi Qani
Ayman is subconsciously twitching his knees in the diffused light that filters through shut windows at the far end of the majlis, as if trying …
15 Mar
the Mosque at Awayna
the Mosque at Awayna
Behind the priest, water is seeping through cracks in the rocks and out of the mountain, quietly channelled past the archaeological site, the ravaged remnants …
09 Mar
The Voice of Emptiness
The Voice of Emptiness
It is midday and I am sweating my way up over water-smoothened rock, blue-faced lizards and a mountainside of sun-bleached thorns. High on top, on …
11 Feb
the Fisherman at Khor al Fardh
the Fisherman at Khor al Fardh
Hilal bin Ali al Amri has been burnt almost black after a lifetime in the glare of the sea, loading wood and dates onto dhows …
10 Feb
the Sheikh of Wadi Lawami
the Sheikh of Wadi Lawami
The old man hitches up his dishdasha, showing off scars from operations in India as we huddle into the little room surrounded by mango and …
02 Nov
Announcement: Resignation
Announcement: Resignation
After almost five years, five hundred gigabytes of photographs, an estimated five hundred thousand words and one hundred and twenty thousand kilometres under the belt, …
21 Oct
Tom Traubert’s Blues
Tom Traubert’s Blues
It is 4 minutes to midnight and dinner was too long ago, and Tom Waits is singing Tom Traubert’s Blues and I follow its lyrics …
19 Oct
4.47, Wadi Geel
4.47, Wadi Geel
I am sitting by myself on an exposed outcrop of rock almost 400km from Muscat, in a little dead-end wadi that no one knows of. …
16 Oct
jumping into a sweatshop
jumping into a sweatshop
How does it feel to spend a whole day stuck in a sweatshop, and have an entire photography workshop’s worth of people jump in and …
16 Oct
14 frames
14 frames
One wild eye stares at me as I am offered fruit by an old lady who sits looking out over Hillat Mina at 5pm. I’m …
16 Oct
five years of synthetics
five years of synthetics
Raj is from Punjab, and has found it worthwhile to work in a hole in the wall shop in Muscat, in a back-alley maze where …
05 Oct
between graffiti and a cat
between graffiti and a cat
A heartbeat away from pavements, Range Rovers and the royal ship, from the gold souk and the corniche and the hypermarket – those reassuring fixities …
25 Sep
Pakistanis, mutton and metaphors
Pakistanis, mutton and metaphors
It is just past six and a hundred Pakistanis sit down to eat on the pavement, wedged in between bare mountains, tons of second-hand Toyota …
07 Sep
the edge of calcutta
the edge of calcutta
The truth is, Calcutta was a failure. After a lifetime of hearing about it I just about scraped through, like a pariah dog of the …