Fountain Channel at the Botanical Garden, Srinagar

April 2024, Srinagar. Everyone at the Tulip Garden next door was shoulder to shoulder for the blooms, but wander through the gate into the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Botanical Garden and the crowds simply evaporate. We had this long fountain channel almost to ourselves — just the sound of water and a spring breeze coming down off the Zabarwan hills.

What pulled me in was the repetition: fountain after fountain receding up the channel, each one a little softer than the last, until the line dissolves into the green of the hillside and the clouds sitting low on the mountains. Late-morning light, nothing dramatic — so I let the geometry do the work, stopped the XF23mm down to f/5 and used 1/640s to hold the nearest jet mid-air while the far ones blurred into mist.

Kashmir gets photographed for its showpieces, but this quieter garden below the hills is where that spring morning actually lives in my memory. The rest of the trip is in my Kashmir Collection.