Night Portraits on Diwali in Bikaner 🇮🇳

Night walks through Bikaner are hardly a pleasure. Once darkness falls, everything starts shutting down and empties out: rare pedestrians and motorbikes, metal shutters pulled down everywhere, heaps of garbage, and dogs, awaken from daytime sleep, roaming the streets, trying to decide how to kill the time.

On the other hand, in the busier spots like Kote Gate, it’s pure traffic apocalypse around 7 p.m. - a crush of people and motorbikes, and wherever you look, vendors are selling all sorts of trinkets right off the ground, leaving you nowhere to step. As soon as people and vehicles decrease, all the trash scattered all around becomes the dominant feature of the view.

But I happened to be there at a special time - during the Diwali celebration.

I wouldn't say the city was decorated spectacularly, but that wasn't the point - it was the festive spirit of the people that truly mattered.

A man in shorts and a cap with a camera - that's the stereotypical foreigner, straight out of Bollywood movies. And there I was, the only one like that in the whole crowd. Naturally, people see me as a sort of performer too - part of the festival itself, like, you could buy balloons or cotton candy, or you could just walk up to the foreigner with the big camera to become a super model for an instant.

And look what a fairy girl approached me:

She was posing so charmingly! In the background, that's perhaps her mother - look how happy she is with her baby.

And here you can see the woman's face properly:

what a sweet, lovely person.

I also tried to pay attention to candid street scenes, like these buddies talking under the arch of the Kote Gate, or this street vendor:

but they, the crowd, didn't allow me, lol - strangers kept talking to me and asking me to photograph them.

What is amazing about Bikaner - they never try to sell anything to you, like in more touristy areas, all these people have a real interest in having a small talk with a foreigner.

A family portrait on Diwali... But most people don't ask to send them photographs (happily).

Posing with a little brother on Mahatma Gandi Road.

Another fairy girl:

Very polite little person, she brought me one and then another model from the crowd.

Brother and sister?

Look at their noses - cute, neat, unusual noses... And what eyes! Such cool-looking good children.

I guess this is one of the Rajasthani types of look: the guy in the middle looks like the bro and sis above but older. And this is another type of appearance:

Brothers and cousins (look at the ears)?..

So great, so interesting that people look that diverse in India.

And everyone has their own beauty, you just need to wait until the right moment.

This man on a Hero motorcycle, he rode to me at a quite dark place and asked to photograph - probably, it's his best outfit (cool one!) and his new metal horse.

I just couldn't avoid using flash to photograph him, and, surprisingly, it didn't kill the shot.

Another day of Diwali celebration:

The same guy!

Meeting so many people is nice until you get exhausted.

You can't remember faces and names, you feel tortured by the same questions, you feel like a toy in the hands of strangers. People talk to you, but you don't feel a connection - they talk to an imaginary foreigner in their head, not you.

But... it shouldn't be different. It is what it is. When I am totally tired of answering "where are you from" and "what is your name", I'll go to a bigger city, like Kolkata. As for now, I am fine, and keep exploring Rajhastan. Today, I arrived in a new city, Jodhpur. 😎 Let's see how it will go here.

The photos were taken with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G and a Nikkor 24mm f/2.8D on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 in October 2025, in Bikaner, Rajasthan, India.