Kashmir and the Camargue

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While working for the BBC's Delhi bureau in the 1990s, Andrew Whitehead visited Indian-administered Kashmir repeatedly, but usually to cover stories of violence and division during its armed insurgency and Indian Army response. Some things have changed. He returns to Srinagar and sees visitor numbers multiplying and violence ebbing, along with a once undreamt presence of Indian tourists. But all the same, old contacts tell him, separatist and militant sentiments and the mood of resentment are still seething away under the surface. In the south of France, Tessa Dunlop is in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, a small town in the Camargue which is also a place of pilgrimage for Europe's Roma. From all over Europe, they converge on this point to adore and process with their dark-skinned patron saint Sara la Kali, from the church crypt down to the sea. But do the town's cafe owners - or its mayor - really welcome these visitors with open arms? (Photo: A Kashmiri resident remonstrates with an Indian para-military soldier at a checkpoint in Srinagar, seeking safe passage to a hospital during an ongoing curfew. Credit: Rouf Bhat/AFP/Getty Images)