All of us in one auto

Republic Day fell on a Monday in 2026, so it was a long weekend, and it felt as if everyone had chosen the same three days we had. We saw it first in Ujjain. At 10:23 on the Sunday morning the road towards Ram Ghat was a single slow stream of people, and I took a photograph of it from under a canvas awning. Mahakaleshwar was the same: the rose in my hand is from 11:40, and the next photograph, from inside the line, is from 12:24. Forty-five minutes of shuffling. At Kaal Bhairav that night the line climbed the steps to the gate in the dark.

Omkareshwar

On the Monday we drove to Omkareshwar, about 140 km from Ujjain by road. Near the town the crowd was so heavy that all of us, my parents, my bhua, my father's friend and his family, had to sit inside one single auto.

There is no room to move in that photograph. I took it at arm's length, with the orange roof of the auto above us, and then we went on towards the ghats.

Afterwards

The crowd did not thin out. The market lane at Omkareshwar was so packed that we simply moved with the crowd, the same way as everyone else, and the ghat steps had a queue along the railing. The last photograph of the day, in the temple lane, is from 7:27 in the evening. A long weekend means a long line, and we spent most of it together.