Trubal Pandya born and brought up in Varodara, India, Trupal Pandya is a 27-year-old professional photographer, currently working toward completing a bachelor’s degree in photography at the Fashion Institute of Technology, New York. Trupal stumbled into photography 6 years ago, on a tour across India, along with a nice DSLR to chronicle the country’s vast hinterland. What started as a fun trip eventually transitioned to a career-busting move that has led him to pick up the lenses full time.
He aims to document rarely seen communities, explore their local practices and show through his pictures how people around the world live. His portfolio includes pictures of the tribes of Omo Valley in Ethiopia, Huaorani people of the Amazon Rainforest, Headhunters, Aghoris, eunuchs and shepherds in India. He has traveled to countries like Ethiopia, Ecuador, India and Sri Lanka mainly focusing on communities that are standing on the edge of modernization.
The project Brokpas
About 130 kms. north-east of Kargil, on the Line of Control (Indo-Pak border), are the villages names Dha, Hanu, Darchik, and Garkon. Inhabited by a tribe that has lived in isolation for thousands of years, it is the heartland of a tribe called the Brokpas.
The Brokpas have been made famous through claims of being the descendants of lost soldiers of Alexander the Great’s army who got lost in the Himalayas and the purest of Aryan bloodline. Despite living in extreme isolation until the 20th century, the Brokpas have kept genetic pollution at bay and maintain that they are untainted. Though they have found no issue with spreading their genes outward as seen with a group of German women in 1938 in search of pure Aryan “seed,” no new DNA has been introduced according to them. Though some genetic testing has been done, it has been inconclusive in proving or disproving the theory linking them to the lost soldier myth. And when attempting to prove Aryan descent, then provokes the issue surrounding the term itself; “What is Aryan?”
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