📷 The Gharial Bank — Chambal, India · 01 Jun 2026
A photograph and a story, every morning
The Gharial Bank
Chambal, India · nature
A dozen gharials haul out to bask on a sloping mud bank by slow green water. The long, narrow-snouted crocodilians of the Chambal — alive only here.
Gharials are nearly extinct in the wild. There are fewer than 250 breeding adults left, and most of them live along a single stretch of the Chambal river in northern India. The species is the slimmest and most specialised of all the crocodilians — long pointed snout, almost entirely a fish-eater, almost entirely harmless to humans.
This bank had a dozen animals stacked along it like dark logs, all facing the water, all motionless. The river ran slow and green behind them. I shot from a boat, drifting past at the slowest possible speed so as not to disturb the line. Gharials don't run from boats — they slip into the water all at once and disappear without a ripple — and once they go, they don't come back for hours. This colony stayed put. Sometimes the photograph is just about not being the reason something leaves.