Deoghar & Jamtara

Deoghar begins with a story larger than the landscape itself. Ravana, having won Shiva's favour after years of penance, sought to take the god with him to Lanka. The plan failed when Vishnu, disguised as a shepherd, placed the lingam on the earth, where it was destined to remain. Local tradition remembers Baiju as the first to worship it.

Today, the sacred and the ordinary occupy the same landscape. From Deoghar into Jamtara, these photographs look beyond the spectacle of pilgrimage to the people, places and everyday lives that give this landscape its human character.