arizona

Stills in the slot canyon

In the heart of desert sandstone lay slot canyons carved by water as it courses down after sudden squalls. The sinuous walls of the canyon, etched by eons of wind and water, reveal intricate layers, like ancient manuscripts waiting to be deciphered. Wandering the multitude of canyons in Navajo Nation was a perfect opportunity to explore the delicate beauty hidden within rugged depths. A black and white treatment for these images helps focus on the patterns and details, rather than the muted colors that the canyon originally presented.

Navajo Nation
AZ USA

Sculptures of Sand

Sculpted by wind and time, the ancient sentinels of Monument Valley stand as testament to the rugged beauty of the desert southwest. Their stoic presence speaks of resilience, whispering tales of a time when dinosaurs roamed the land. The Navajo people revere these formations, considering them sacred places imbued with the spirits of their ancestors. Gazing upon these natural wonders, we are humbled by the enduring power of nature and the vastness of time.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
Navajo Nation USA

Chasms in the sandstone

In the red sandstone canyons of the Navajo Nation, there lies one replete with mysterious curves that bend and reflect the light in strange ways. Even mid-day sometimes never makes it down the canyon, but it highlights the striations that wind along the sinuous walls. Its a delightful photographic journey to walk down the canyon and immersing in the beautiful creation of water.

Navajo Nation
AZ USA

A National Parks Journey - Petrified Forests National Park

I had meant to combine a visit to Petrified Forests National Park, tucked away in the north-eastern corner of Arizona, along with Grand Canyon during the spring of 2020. But Covid had put a stop to those grandiose plans. Nevertheless I found myself at the entrance of this Park one year later. It is one of those Parks that you can only visit and explore during the daylight hours, unless you were the few who chose to spend the night under the stars in the vast backcountry wilderness. But on this trip, I hadn't carried any gear to do so, and I chose to remain one of the daytrippers.

I wasn't sure what to expect of Petrified forests, apart from actually seeing petrified wood which I did. But I also found colorful badlands made of layers of blue clay, a desert-like landscape with large swathes of red color painted over, and crystalline wood still resembling buried logs but in various shades of blue, white, green and other colors. After seeing all these, I had wished I could have spent the night to experience this vast desert landscape after dark.

This vista showcases the Painted Desert, one of the likely choices for backcountry camping in the park. With no freshwater available, you would have to haul everything in and out yourself - and that is not for the casual traveler.

Petrified Forests National Park
AZ USA

A National Parks Journey - Saguaro National Park

The winter was proving to be depressing, and in a bid to escape to a sunnier climate, we chose to explore deserts of Arizona and White Sands. Saguaro National Park, in South-Central Arizona, made for a quick day trip from the neighboring town of Tuscon. The Park, so named for its spectacular forests of the nation's cacti, offers plenty of hikes where trails explore the diverse Sonoran desert ecosystem.

The park is divided into two parts - the Tuscon Mountain District and the Rincon Mountian District. We chose to spend the day exploring the former due to its proximity to the city of Tuscon. The latter, on the other hand, offers plenty of wilderness opportunities, including backcountry camping. If we were to come back, the Rincon would be the place to explore.

Here is one of the spiky Saguaros under a moody grey sky of the Sonoran desert.

Saguaro national Park
AZ USA

A National Park Journey - Grand Canyon National Park


They say never to visit the Grand Canyon in the peak of summer unless one had a deathwish. And yet, that was exactly what I had done. Lacking any travel experience in the desert southwest and foresight to temper my hubris, my foolish brain assumed that Grand Canyon would be perfectly ok to hike in June. It took a deathmarch down and back up the canyon to realize the foolishness and audacity of what I was attempting.

My first glimpse of the giant gaping hole was jaw-dropping. In front of me was a canyon larger than what I had imagined, gouged by a excavator of stellar proportions. It was only later I realized that this impressive geological spectacle was the the result of flowing water acting on a land that was rising slowly over millennia. My brain tried and failed at making sense of the immense number of sandwiched layers that formed the terra-firma over which I was standing.

Hiking down the canyon helped provide an even better sense of perspective, primarily because the slow slog back up gives you plenty of time to admire the layered terrain on which the trail was laid down on. It can be easy to get lost ensconced in the rich topography, but the stench of fresh mule dung fermenting in the hot sun will snap you back to real life, and you will discover newfound energy that will help you scurry past those unforgettable droppings.

On my return visit to the park, I carried with me those experiences, and that helped me time my hikes properly, including setting up at the right location for sunset. This is one such view from the rim of the Grand Canyon, looking down at the river still carving its way down the canyon.

Grand Canyon National Park
AZ USA

The Monuments

It was not my first rodeo at Monument valley. But I still got the chills looking at these towering buttes and mesas rising above the vast dry desert floor of the Colorado Plateau. And on this particular day, a transient sandstorm created a layer of haze around the shale skirts of the buttes and exaggerated the vast wild West atmosphere exuded by the Valley of the Rocks.

The park is still closed, and that prevented us from getting up close and personal with these monuments. But they still held their beauty from afar.

Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park
AZ USA

The Dancing Dame of the Sand


The object of art is to make eternal the desperately fleeting moment

The dancing dame of sand swirled and swayed with the light in the darkness of the canyon. It didn't last long - its fleeting motion dissipated in a blink of an eye, but just long enough to be frozen behind the lens of a camera. Thankfully, it didn't take much to reset and recreate the ephemeral vision once again.

Lake Powell Navajo Tribal Park
AZ USA

The Canyon Walk

The canyon walk.jpg

The graceful red sandstone slot canyons of Antelope Canyon has always had a special draw, and a few years ago, I satiated my yearnings with a photography tour of these photogenic canyons. Photography the mid-day sun beams light up the canyon in a golden red glow is an experience like no other. So it saddened me to hear that photography tours have been stopped here. From a financial perspective, these photography tours paled in sales compared to the bread and butter tours that they run in the canyon, due to the smaller group size as well as interruption to the regular tours.

Antelope Canyon
AZ USA

The Wild West

Soaring spires rising from a desolate rocky landscape interspersed by dusty road threading the undulating red rocks. This was the scenery that I found myself immersed in a sojourn in the desert southwest. Coming from the greenery of the Pacific Northwest, the stark red terrain felt as alien as the landscape on the moon. And as the glaring desert light started to fade, the hues tempered to the deeper shades of red and finally black, leaving behind inky dark silhouettes against a pastel shaded sky.

And this cycle reversed again in the morning: the light from the rising sun slipped through the fingers of earth and filtered through the clouds, creating fleeting visions of shadow and light on the monumental landscape around.

All this in one 24 hour cycle. The photographer in me wonders what an entire year would bring.

Desert Southwest
UT / AZ