But let's start from the beginning - on October 2, I arrived in Delhi on a flight from Kathmandu...
Paharganj, Delhi
On October 2, I arrived in Delhi, but somehow I didn’t catch the vibe, although there is huge potential for photography there. Every time I was happy to go out for a photo walk, but every time the catch was tiny.
Eventually, I realized that I should leave Delhi, despite feeling moral pain, "oh no, I don't want to miss all those Delhi photo opportunities".
What was wrong, you are asking?.. Usually, I choose non-tourist areas in the cities I visit, but, this time, I found a decent room for a good price on booking.com in a travelers' hub, called Paharganj. I had been there before and knew what to expect, and I thought, why not.
A colorful alley in Paharganj
Turns out, it would be better to avoid this place. Numerous hidden sellers suck away a huge amount of time and destroy inspiration - I just couldn't fully focus on photography.
I was thinking about moving to a hostel in a residential district in Delhi, away from Paharganj. But then I realized, I got stuck in Delhi, and I should leave - that simple. That was the initial plan anyway: two nights, one photo walk, not more.
Want to mention: even within Paharganj, good people regularly care about you and advise you of good things. Strangers offer genuine help in the metro if they see a confused foreigner.
Small cheerful talks with locals are also common. No doubt, people of Delhi are amazing, but I wanted to move on, towards adventures in less developed parts of India.
A Train to Churu
Luckily, on the train line I needed, there were no problems with tickets, so I purchased one upon arrival at a train station - after a one-hour sleep at night with the alarm clock at 5:30 am - no problem! - many nice adventures start this way! 🤠
Surprisingly, my sleeper class car was quite empty - after an hour of the trip, most people left - the whole compartment, consisting of 6 berths, was left for me and a nice Indian lady - hush, she's sleeping:
I had a berth myself available for sleeping but I couldn't stop watching things in the windows - Delhi railway slums, towns, small stations, farms, people, cows, birds - so many brightly green parakeets in Rajasthan!
Churu
Churu is not famous at all, and I liked that - we live in a time when the standard and typical have completely lost meaning, at least for people who don't want to live generic lives.
If everyone goes to city X, go to city Y - this formula is not a universal travel rule, but sometimes it works wonderfully. That’s what happened with Churu. I thought about Jaipur - no doubt a marvelous city (and visited by many) - but at the last moment I decided to jump into the unknown - a city I researched on Google.Maps and considered "it might be cool".
I arrived on October 6 when Churu was flooded with rainwater, waded to a guesthouse, I had found on Google.Maps, paid for a fan room ($4.5) and - after washing the feet, which was necessary hygiene minimum considered all the dirt in the flood water - quickly fell asleep.
A Walk
Yesterday, I went for my first photo walk in the city and was amazed - Churu doesn’t just have a few mansions with murals, it has a charming old town where buildings with wall paintings are literally everywhere.
Foreigners come here very rarely, so I got a lot of attention - people passing on motorcycles often say hello, some stop to ask questions or pose in front of the camera, sometimes they take pictures of the foreigner themselves - to show their friends and relatives.
The place isn't spoiled with tourism - in four hours of walking, only one person begged for money, and no one tried to sell me a thing just because I am a foreigner. Even auto rickshaw drivers don’t offer their services.
As it is supposed in India 🙂, there are many animals in the streets of Churu.
All streets are "guarded" by these wonderful giants:
Not just a simple cow - this beast can smash you if it wants. But it doesn't want. Most of these roaming horned guys are males... Is this religious or has a practical reason, I don't know yet.
In Churu, horse-driven vehicles still work for carrying freight. It looks so lovely but I feel sad about animals - they don't want this work at all.
And not only horses - donkeys, mules, and:
After you see this in the street... you are a happy person!
Rajashtani ladies wear red saris... eyes-catching like poppies.
Men - prepare to talk, talk, and again talk. 😀 There is always one with basic English to help the rest to understand a foreigner.
Many smiles - it's not a selection, Churu is this.
All those colors and emotions would be enough for me to be happy about coming to Churu but the city has more, much more to offer.
Such mansions, called havelis, are usual for the old town of Churu.
As I understand, several havelis are considered cultural heritage and protected in some way, the rest just live out their life...
Some of them just stay empty, but others serve as residential buildings, many of them. For example:
A doorbell and a lightbulb. You can find many such examples, including plastic pipes cutting through murals - people need to live somewhere so they live.
Isn't this a masterpiece? Churu murals are never or almost never the same so you can always discover something very special.
Also, these wall paintings slowly disappear, ruined by time - you might be the last person who photographs one or another scene. That adds to walks in old Churu a sense of transience.
Apart from murals, this city offers so many fantastic textures and details... A perfect destination.
However, it has one complicated side to introverts - you need a lot of social energy to walk these streets. A number of handshakes can count dozens - depends on how open you are looking. A number of teenagers who want to be photographed sometimes exceeds all reasonable limits 😄 However, you can use the latter to your advantage - I'll share lovely portraits of young locals in one of the nest posts. 🙂
The photos were taken with a Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 in Delhi and, on October 7, 2025, in Churu, Rajasthan, India.