Many a time, to capture beautiful photographs, we have to venture into dark, remote places where hardly anyone lives. Away from people, away from civilization, and sometimes even away from mobile networks. Not every time do you have someone to accompany you, and that can make the excursion even more challenging.

One such night, I went to one of Dholavira’s most secluded places—the Wood Fossil Park. The road descends quite steeply to reach the shores of the Rann of Kutch lake, and the Wood Fossil Park is situated right on its banks.

On the way down, you come across huge sculptures of dinosaurs and other aquatic animals whose fossils were discovered in this mysterious land of Kutch. Those enormous sculptures can be quite intimidating at night. In the darkness, some of them almost seem as if they could come alive and attack you.

The surroundings are as quiet as they can possibly be. Mobile signals simply disappear, and sometimes the time zone on your phone even switches to Pakistan Standard Time, as if you have somehow entered Pakistan in the middle of the night. The Pakistan border is, after all, not very far from this place. Cross the muddy saltwater expanse of the Rann of Kutch, and you are remarkably close to the border.

So, imagine the place: quiet, calm, eerie, remote, but exceptionally dark and beautiful. On a clear night, the Milky Way can be seen stretching magnificently across the sky, if you know when and where to look.

One night, I visited this place with a friend for a Milky Way shoot. We descended towards a sculpture that has a face resembling a crocodile and a tail like a fish. It is an Ichthyosaurus, a marine reptile whose fossils have been found in this region. The sculpture aligned beautifully with Polaris, the North Star, so we decided to photograph star trails with this prehistoric creature as the foreground.

We set up our cameras and started shooting multiple frames, as one should when creating a star-trail photograph. We planned for a two-hour sequence in the middle of the night, surrounded by absolute silence.

There had been an eerie feeling ever since we arrived at the place. But we were too intrigued by the beautiful photograph we hoped to create to let our fear stop us. We were determined to get the shot.

Everything was going perfectly—until suddenly, we heard the footsteps of an animal slowly approaching us.

We were terrified.

The footsteps became increasingly clear. Whatever it was, it was getting closer.

This area is home to plenty of nilgai, also known as the blue bull. These are large, powerfully built antelopes, and encountering one at close quarters in complete darkness is not something you take lightly.

Our fear intensified when we began hearing its deep, threatening grunts. It sounded almost as if it was warning us to stay away.

We were no match for an animal of its size and strength.

We immediately switched on our headlights and started shouting, hoping to scare it away. That was the least we could do. There were bushes everywhere, and it was pitch dark, so we couldn’t actually see the animal. We could only feel its presence—and hear those loud, unmistakable grunts.

We kept shouting, and it kept growling at us.

For what felt like a very long time, neither of us knew what was going to happen.

Eventually, to our immense relief, it backed away. We could hear its footsteps gradually moving farther and farther from us.

Only then did we begin to relax.

It had chosen to leave us alone.

An encounter with a large wild animal at such close range can turn dangerous very quickly, and that night, we were acutely aware of how vulnerable we were in that darkness.

That was an encounter I will never forget.

Remote places like these belong to the wild animals that inhabit them. We are the intruders in their world. We cannot explain to them that we mean no harm—that we are only there to take a few photographs and leave.

To them, we are simply strangers who have entered their territory in the middle of the night.

And perhaps that is something every wildlife photographer should remember.