100 Dogs of India – My Dog-Inspired India Travelogue

Indian street dog resting on a stone step in front of a pink wall. A man in a matching pink shirt walks by.

So What Will My 100 Dogs of India Project Be About?

India is so different in so many ways to life here in Scotland that I could happily photograph and write about every single aspect of it, but I wanted there to be something of a theme to my travelogue posts this time to help unify them all. Thankfully there is one aspect of India that has been a part of our lives there every single day of our trips (apart from drinking chai of course). Dogs.

In India you are surrounded by dogs almost continually from the moment you step onto the pavement in the morning to the moment you return to your room. They are even there in the darkness, calling to each other across the town from one outpost to another when you’re trying to sleep. Dogs were roaming free throughout the streets of every part of every city we have visited visited and I photographed them all (well, lots of them anyway…).

What I want to do for this project is to write a little vignette about something, anything, I noticed in India that is inspired in just a small way by a photograph of a particular dog. I will post one dog with each story.

My travelogue definitely shouldn’t be used as a travel guide to India, nor should it be taken as a factual reference to anything you might find there. It will simply comprise of my own personal observations, musings, experiences, and knowledge that was given to us by the many local people we spoke with each day. As we have learned through our travels to India, the facts given to us by locals aren’t always entirely true and instead have been metamorphosed over time to become something that better suits their particular belief and circumstances. I find even that in itself fascinating.

Photographer Trevor Wilson sitting next to his faithful Jack Russel terrier, Chip.

My own Jack Russell Terrier, Chip.
,

Day 100 Chip

There is one question that I think about an awful lot, and my 100 Dogs project makes me think about it even more. Is Chip truly happy? More to the point, is he actually happier than the street dogs in India, who most people look upon with great sadness?
,

Day 99 Named Dogs

When I chose the images of dogs for this project I picked through all of them from the four trips I have made to India over the past 9 years. Some dog images were stronger than others, and a few of the dogs had clear links to stories that I wanted to tell, so I used their photographs.
Four small puppies play together on some steps in India
,

Day 98 Puppy Dogs

As much as I love dogs, including those in India of course, I have to admit that there really are far too many. The exact number varies but it is suggested to be around 15 million animals. As I’ve mentioned in my project many times, you really don’t have to go far to find a dog in India.
Disquiet Dog
,

Day 97 Disquiet Dog

The boats used to almost always be powered by man. There was, and still is, a whole slice of Indian people who are known as boatmen and, although some might consider it a lower caste, they are rightfully very proud of their heritage and history.
A white dog rests in between two petrol pumps at a service station in Mumbai, India
,

Day 96 Petrol Dog

Our arrival experience was exactly how we expected it to have been, having flown many times in and out of another enormous Indian airport, Delhi. Ponderous, tiring, confusing and chaotic.
A dog basking in the morning sunshine in Varanasi whilst boats pass in front of the far eastern shoreline.
,

Day 95 Right Side Dog

We have heard from numerous people that you must not, under any circumstances, die whilst on the eastern shore because not only will you not be freed from the cycle of rebirth, you will be reborn as a donkey.
A Sandy coloured dog sits in front of a bright yellow hand-painted sign for the Baba School of Music
,

Day 94 Hand-Painted Dog

Almost immediately upon arrival in India you will notice the prevalence of wonderfully colourful and textural hand-painted signs and images. Here in the UK we have a few large murals made by artists but the work in India is different. It isn’t just there to be beautiful or to make a political statement — it’s there to advertise, and to provide information.
,

Day 93 Sassoon Dog

I have spent hours of my time in India simply sitting and watching the behaviour of the indie dogs. I have come to realise that, rather than simply living alongside the human inhabitants of India, they consider themselves to be a part of one large pack that includes both us and them.
A night photograph of an Indian street dog in front of two yellow minibuses
,

Day 92 Jain Hospital Dog

All of this lead me to think about the richer people in cities like Bangalore. What I wonder about is, how they are content to live in a country that really is still quite poor, and how they could be happy knowing that their own people, and maybe even their own relatives, are battling through the many hazards of the streets just to get some dinner?
,

Day 91 Motorbike Dog

During our visit to Varanasi this year we kept hearing the same statement over and over again from friends, cafe owners and shopkeepers. The number of tourists, especially non-Indian tourists, is dropping rapidly each year. We heard tales of half-empty guesthouses and closed cafes every day.
A desi dog sits inside a yellow plastic crate at the base of a holy tree in Varanasi, India.
,

Day 90 Crate Dog

The dog in the picture above had claimed a dirty yellow plastic crate for its own. It was there every time we passed this year and seemed to have made a strange little home for itself. The crate, and the dog, are sitting within a red metal railing that continues to circle an ancient tree, with one its two trunks torn in half by some enormous force.
A small dog named Sangeeth dozes on the floor of Dobhi Khana in Kerala
,

Day 89 Sangeeth

Our fascination about what these open-air laundry areas actually were meant that we paid a visit to Dhobi Khana, the one closest to our guesthouse in Fort Kochi. Dhobi means laundry, and is also the name of the caste that usually do the washing.