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"On a late-autumn morning, in the Buddhist monastery of
Karsha in the Zanskar valley, I woke up to the first snow of an
early winter. I knew that this snowfall marked the beginning of
winter for those living here, but for me it signalled the end of
my journey to Zanskar. Had I not left on the very same day, the
mountain passes of the kingdom of Little Tibet could easily have
held me captive, since Zanskar, the most remote region of India,
is ringed by Himalayan peaks whose passes are 4000 to 5000 metres
high. The passes in the south are already covered by snow in
September, while those in the north are blocked only a month
later, thus completely cutting off Zanskar from the rest of the
world until June."
Zoltán Szabó was born in the
year of the Prague Spring (1968) in Hungary. Though he had
graduated as an agricultural economist, photography became his
profession, and he has been going his own way in this field ever
since. Zoltán specializes in photo essays and devotes himself to
themes such as vanishing archaic communities, peoples and
landscapes. In the past ten years, Lake Baikal, the Mayan Indians
and Tibetan Buddhism have been at the centre of his interest. He
is also one of the founding members of the Hungarian editing and
publishing house Sun, Wind and Stars, which has published his two
books: Ladakh — Land under High Passes and Icecubes
for God’s Whiskey — A Picture Book of Lake Baikal. Zoltán
Szabó’s extensive home page can be found at www.fotografus.com
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