October 27, 2025 to December 20, 2025
This was my first time in India, my first time travelling alone for an extended period, and my first attempt at anthropological fieldwork outside the safety of seminars and syllabi. What follows is not a report of successful fieldwork, but a reflective account of uncertainty, reorientation, and learning.
Research drift
I initially intended to conduct research in Kerala at a school focused on alternative lifestyles and sustainable living, with a particular interest in human-nature relations. After contacting and planning everything with my potential hosts, the project was cancelled during my planned stay.
What came after wasn’t a smooth transition to an alternative site and a continuation of the same or a similar focus, but something I now understand as research drift.
Through the website Workaway, I was able to contact Kumam Davidson, founder of Matai Society in Manipur (a women-, queer-, and trans-led community organization, with a focus on livelihood, psychological health, and LGBTQIA+ community building). After getting to know Davidson and the work that Matai Society was doing, I developed the idea of researching the effects of ongoing conflict in Manipur on its marginalized communities.
Because I had never been to India before, I initially planned to spend a month travelling through the country with a friend, hoping to gain a first impression without the immediate pressure of fieldwork. This month was also necessary for bureaucratic reasons – travel to Manipur requires a Protected Area Permit, which can only be applied for within India.
Shortly before departure, my travel companion had to cancel. Since I still needed to enter India early to initiate the permit process, I decided not to travel through the country, but to go directly to Delhi, using the time to begin my project.
Delhi: Visibility and queer networks
Arriving alone in Delhi without a clearly defined project was both unsettling and exciting. Not knowing who I’ll meet, what I’ll learn, and where exactly my research was drifting to, made me want to explore and connect even more. For the first few days I was falling asleep and waking up at odd hours, and it took some time before my days in India began to follow local rhythms.
An ariel view of Old Delhi
My first impressions of Delhi were immediately physical. The smog was extreme, and the city was loud in a way I had never experienced before, above all because of the traffic.
I thought about how I could include Delhi in my Manipur-focused research and decided to shift towards a comparative study. Rather than concentrating solely on Manipur, I wanted to analyse how Delhi, as the political and geographic centre of India, shapes the lives of marginalized communities differently than Manipur, which is often seen as politically and geographically peripheral, and largely invisible within (inter-)national discourse.
At the same time, I was beginning to move through the city in very ordinary ways. I went on walks and tried different shops in the neighbourhood, buying snacks and meals of all kinds, and slowly became more comfortable navigating daily life on my own. These small routines of buying food, trying unfamiliar things, and adapting to a new rhythm became one of the first ways in which Delhi opened itself to me.
I wanted to take more pictures but often felt uncomfortable doing so. Many of the things that stood out to me only did so because they were different from what I was used to in Germany. I could take a picture, keep moving, and eventually return to usual life. The people I photographed would remain within the realities I was only passing through.
In Delhi, I tried to establish contact by visiting different NGOs in person. Eventually, I received a positive response from a queer rights organization. I was offered the opportunity to interview staff and community members, provided I submitted a detailed project description and a flyer that could be shared within the community. I prepared both with care.
For a week, after sending the email, I heard nothing back. After visiting again in person, I learned that my email had landed in their spam folder. After discussing the content of the email, interviews were again confirmed, and we exchanged WhatsApp numbers for easier communication.
Since I was going to spend the next week in Kochi, Kerala, we agreed that the interviews could be conducted after my return to Delhi. During that week and after my return, all communication stopped again. Messages remained unanswered. Ultimately, the collaboration and interviews did not materialize. Deciding not to visit the NGO in person again, I never found out why.
At the same time, I continued trying to organize my travel to Manipur, only to find out that I was not allowed to enter the state as a solo traveller. The only alternatives I found were guided tour groups with a length of a few days, which would have made any meaningful research impossible. Trying to find other solo travellers wanting to enter Manipur was also unsuccessful.
I learned one very important lesson in person. Being an anthropologist, you’re not just confronted with people, but with bureaucracy, permits, and mobility restrictions as well, or to simplify it – politics.
Kolkata: Archives, histories and quiet forms of learning
After further consultation with Davidson, he put me in contact with two queer rights organizations in Kolkata, both of which he had worked with. One never responded, while the other, Varta Trust, offered an invitation, while also being transparent about its limited capacity. After a conversation with their Founding Trustee, Pawan Dhall, I decided to go to Kolkata.
In Kolkata, my role shifted again – from aspiring interviewer to reader, listener, and archivist. I was introduced to queer literature, the history of Kolkata’s queer communities, and gained access to Varta Trust’s archival collection, primarily the archives of Counsel Club (1993-2002), one of India’s earliest queer support groups. The group provided confidential peer counselling and emotional support, creating a safe space during a time when homosexuality was criminalized under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code and when almost no public queer infrastructure existed.
Working with personal letters, testimonies, and documents spanning decades, received by the Counsel Club and now managed by the Varta Trust, introduced me to histories that are often fragmented, private, and absent from official narratives. Though my practical contribution stayed limited, these archival encounters offered an unexpected form of ethnographic work, one that is deeply intimate.
This sense of intimacy continued outside the archives. On December 13 and 14, 2025, the ‘BIOSCOPIA: Kolkata Queer & Trans Film Festival’ took place at Basusree Cinema, organized by queer support group Sappho for Equality. I missed the first day because I was ill, but attended the second day and watched all 10 films that were shown. Together with the archival research and conversations I had in Kolkata, the films gave me personal and emotional insights into queer lives that I had not encountered in the same way before.
A stage event in progress at the ‘Bioscopia Kolkata Queer & Trans Film Festival‘ on December 14, 2025 at Basusree Cinema in South Kolkata
One moment that stayed with me was seeing A. Revathi on stage after the screening. She’s known for her writing and activism on transgender lives in India, and especially for helping bring Hijra experiences into public discourse. Having just watched a film connected to her life and work, it was special to encounter her in person. It also reminded me how important language is in fieldwork, since the talk was held mainly in Hindi and Bengali (both languages I neither speak, nor understand). That’s part of the reason my initial plan was to go to Kerala because I’m learning Malayalam.
At the same time, learning about queer lives in India as someone who is not part of the community often made me feel somewhat out of place, especially in queer spaces and queer safe spaces. Though I was welcomed everywhere with openness, I remained aware that I was entering spaces shaped by experiences I do not share. In that sense, it resembled my discomfort with photography. I could enter these spaces, observe, learn, and eventually leave again, while others had to continue navigating discrimination, exclusion, and vulnerability in everyday life. I had the privilege of moving through both public and queer spaces without fearing the same consequences. And yet, something important changed in me through these encounters.
Through the archives, through documentaries made by queer people, about queer lives, and through conversations on the ground, I gained a perspective on people’s lives that I simply did not have before. Hijras asking for money on the street and knocking at car doors were no longer simply seen as beggars. They were given a voice, a history. After years of studying and reading about feminism, capitalism, colonialism, climate change, and war, I found myself confronted with a simple but powerful truth – personal stories can create forms of understanding that abstract knowledge alone cannot. I had known, in theory, that vulnerability and storytelling matter. In Kolkata, I began to understand more deeply why.
Eventually, I was asked to write an article about my experiences, giving me the opportunity to be more than a student trying his best not to fail in his first research project. Through reflexive writing, I became a participant in knowledge production.
First time in India: Between social media and reality
Before coming to India, I had not only finished four semesters majoring in anthropology but was also minoring in South Asian Studies, learning about its history, religions, politics, and cultures. I was yet to be confronted with the limits of theoretical knowledge.
Much of what circulates about India on social media is overwhelmingly negative. Air pollution, garbage, overcrowding, danger (especially for women), unhygienic food. I was aware that such content thrives on exaggeration and extremes, but without prior experience, it still shaped my expectations.
Stepping out of the airplane in Delhi, the first thing I noticed was the air. It felt thick, almost viscous, and even burned in my eyes. Though I adapted quickly, I developed a persistent cough that lasted throughout my stay, and even for a short while after returning to Germany.
At no point did I feel afraid or unsafe. At the same time, I’m aware that my experience as a man differs fundamentally from that of a woman navigating public space. Speaking of public space, Delhi and Kolkata were dirty, but nowhere near the almost apocalyptic imagery often portrayed online. Both are megacities, densely populated, yet I only felt truly overwhelmed by crowds once, while visiting the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata (somehow, I chose to visit on a day many others chose as well).
What also became clear to me while moving between Delhi, Kochi, and Kolkata was how diverse India is. The architecture, languages, landscapes, food cultures, religious presence, and histories differed immensely from place to place. And yet, certain continuities appeared everywhere. One of my favourite examples, however irrelevant it may seem, was the momo. Filled dumplings exist in many culinary traditions. In India too, they seemed to appear everywhere, always slightly different, and always delicious.
As for hygiene and food, India might not meet the standards I’m used to, but I ate everything, from restaurants to street food, and never once got sick. Indian cuisine is truly among the best in the world. Biryani in particular became one of my favourite dishes, and I still find myself wondering whether I preferred the ones I had in Delhi or the ones in Kolkata.
Everywhere I went, people were hospitable, helpful, and kind; I was never made to feel unwelcome.
First time travelling alone: Mobility, motivation and loneliness
Travelling alone turned out to be logistically easy. Navigating airports, train stations, and unfamiliar cities sounded far more intimidating than it actually was. Motivation and loneliness turned out to be bigger problems.
Motivating myself day after day to go out, explore, and experience was harder than expected. On days when I stayed in, I felt guilty, as if I was wasting time, money, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
The loneliness I experienced wasn’t a deep existential loneliness. I remained in contact with family and friends and knew my time away from home was limited. Still, experiences felt incomplete. Eating alone, not being able to share the day’s stories in person, standing in front of Taj Mahal, the first of the Seven Wonders of the World I’ve ever seen, without someone to exchange a look of shared amazement with, all of it felt only half as meaningful. I found myself wishing to share both the mundane and the extraordinary with someone else.
First attempt at anthropological fieldwork: Changes and disappointment
Because my plans changed so frequently and my project gradually lost its clear shape, I began to lose hope that anything resembling a ‘good’ research project would emerge. But a familiar phrase proved true. When one door closes, another opens. Still, the emotional toll was significant. Since the beginning of my studies, I had been preparing for this moment. To feel like I was failing, despite preparation and anticipation, was deeply unsettling.
Fortunately, I’m able to identify where things went wrong, what I could have done better, what was beyond my control, where self-blame might be productive, and where it isn’t.
I also found myself working within a thematic field, queer rights, that is important and relevant, but largely new to me. For a first research project, it might have been easier to work on a topic I felt more familiar with and passionate about from the start. At the same time, this unfamiliarity forced me to confront questions of positionality more directly. What does it mean to learn from people whose experiences one doesn’t share? What does it mean to enter spaces shaped by vulnerability, exclusion, and struggle, while knowing one can leave them again? I didn’t find definitive answers to these questions, but I became more aware of them.
This journey may not have ended in a neatly bound research project, but I learned how to remain present when the field refuses to take shape.
This was my first time; it won’t be my last.
About the main photo: The author’s first view of Taj Mahal. All photo credits: Taykut Tiryaki
