travel

Transit documents people on journeys. While traveling, you hear laughter and bits of stories in amongst the monotonous sighing of the train or the mourning sound of an aching ship. Mostly, you hear silence. By fate, destiny or chance, strangers are thrown together for a short while, forced to share an intimate space. There is a quiet comfort in sitting back and watching the world fly by.

Predating the Incas, the Uros people have lived for centuries on "floating islands" on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. They make their homes by folding the totora reeds that grow on the lake into layers thick enough to hold several houses. Just as their ancestors did, the Uros people bundle totora reeds together to make structures and sturdy boats used for fishing and trips to the mainland.

In Copacabana, Bolivia, a new addition to the family in the form of a vehicle is not ready for the road until the Virgin says so. Every day, cars line up in front of the Basilica of Our Lady of Copacabana covered in flowers and the sticky sweet smell of champagne, ready to be blessed by the priest. Entire families come to the ceremony to ask for protection on the road.

My favourite part of any day is the time I spend travelling to and from places. The journey is the best for SO many reasons... The day ahead is totally unknown and could unfold in any number of ways. It is a simple yet exciting. We are close to so many people yet completely disconnected. I capture moments during my journeys because they are unique, subtle and oddly poetic. These moments to me are some of the happiest of my life.

It’s rush hour in rural Haiti, as market vendors load up their vegetables and hustle home on horseback before the rains come. The one-lane excuse for a road between Les Ceyes and Jeremie is so tight that when two trucks approach from opposite directions, each honks furiously until one gives in and backs up a steep cliff in reverse until it can pull aside. Now, a foreign company is turning that road into a major highway in a desperate effort to attract a more modern type of commerce to this isolated, donkey-driven region. But will they come?

 

Beach boys, Mombasa Kenya.

Simon's Town is a Metrorail railway station in the town of Simon's Town on the Cape Peninsula; it is the southern terminus of the Southern Line. The station is located between Station Road (the M4) and False Bay.

The train track rans directly along the sea, you could look out and see the ocean and all the people along the beaches. Running through Muizenberg all the way past Fish Hoek, Kalk Bay, from Cape Town city to Simonstown.


image/text: mcmurali