4/ 100 Red Window Dog

We were having a bad day when I made this photograph of a sandy-coloured dog resting, as they so often did, on one of the little carts that are so ubiquitous in India.

We had left Delhi and moved to the city of Jaipur. We particularly wanted to return here because, from our two previous trips in 2018 and 2019, it had been one of our favourite places in India. This year (2025) it was a bit of a slog from day one but hey, not every day of an adventure is going to be amazing. As Anthony Bourdain wrote

“Travel isn’t always pretty. It isn’t always comfortable. Sometimes it hurts, it even breaks your heart. But that’s okay. The journey changes you; it should change you.”

Firstly, Jaipur was cold. Much colder that it would have normally been. So cold, in fact, that it was making the national news and the locals were trying to squeeze just one more scarf around their heads. It was hardly anywhere near as chilly as the Scottish winter we had left behind but, still, it was unwelcome. Then it started to rain and only stopped, mercifully, on the most important day of our time in Jaipur — the festival of Makar Sankranti (more about that another day).

On the day I photographed this dog it was both cold and wet. The streets were a filthy sludge of litter floating in impassable puddles spanning the full width of the street. Every mode of transport was already full of locals who were also trying to avoid the rain, so getting a taxi was out of the question. We resigned ourselves to a long walk home in the grim weather.

The rain intensified so we took temporary shelter underneath one of the beautifully ornate ledges that decorated so many of the houses in the Kishanpole Bazar area. After a few minutes an older lady beckoned to us from the hallway of a house on the other side of the narrow lane we were on. She was very insistent so we sprinted over and took refuge just inside the doorway of what we assumed to be her house.

We spent a very pleasant 15 minutes standing in the stairwell, passing photographs and videos to each other on our phones. Us showing her pictures of our garden in the snow. Her showing us her children. Neither of us spoke the other’s language but that didn’t matter at all and she was delighted to chat with us.

Suddenly a young man burst through the door and started screaming at the lady, and then at us. Pointing to Fiona he forcefully gestured to the door, and the pouring rain. It was abundantly clear that we had to leave so, not wanting any trouble, we stepped out. What was harder to leave behind was the poor lady. Whatever taboo she had broken by offering shelter to two strangers it was clearly a serious matter as this young man was really angry with her and we could hear her crying and being yelled at for some time as we walked away.

I still think about her a lot and I would never have left her if we had been in the UK but I was powerless in this particular situation. I had no desire for Fiona to bear the brunt of whatever misguided hatred he clearly had for women. We both got the sense that things might have developed badly for us if we had intervened. This is the first, and hopefully, the last time I have ever witnessed an outburst like this in India and I think we both still regret not trying to help.

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