Indian summers: Mumbai and beyond
Words & photographs by Ian Cochrane

'Ian Cochrane took me on an evocative journey as rewarding as the real thing – more so, since no tourist in India could gain the kind of personal insight intimately portrayed within these covers.'
– Robert Hollingworth, author, They called me the Wildman

RRP $29.95
Size 'B' 198 x 128 mm
Format full-colour paperback with cover flaps
Distributor Dennis Jones & Associates;
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Working in the 'new' India in 2007, Ian Cochrane stumbled upon secret, exotic places. Greeted by white-robed Jains and black-burka'd Muslims, he found a salmagundi of turbans and Nehru caps; a god appearing at every turn; backdrops crammed with churches, idols, towers and temples.
He encountered technicolor characters, soaking up stories while wandering Mumbai and beyond to Delhi, the Taj Mahal, the Godavari River, Ajanta, Ellora and Goa.
Indian Summers is about being there, in this land of two million gods.
Cochrane's nostalgic imaginings commingled with 1967's Summer of Love – gurus, tie-dye and cheesecloth-clad women with flowers in their hair; youthful bearded men in patched jeans and psychedelic headbands.
His guidebooks: an ancient, dogeared map bequeathed by his Scots grandmother, who always longed to see the Taj Mahal, and a remembered school atlas frozen in the days of the British Raj.
Little did he know. In the summer of 2007 he arrived for a working stint in the 'new' India – the largest democracy in the world, with a population figure fast overtaking China. He touched down in the mixed-up metropolis of Mumbai, with its 20 million souls, the most horrendous traffic in the world and the largest slums in Asia. Not to forget the cricket gods, Bollywood and billionaires.
In 13 stories, two maps and 100 photographs, you'll untangle glimpses of India in all its idiosyncrasy, viewed through the kaleidoscope of past and present and told by an accomplished teller of tales.