Why I return: The places that grow with me
- Samprathi Karthik
- 4 days ago
- 6 min read
Some places ask you to come back — not for what they show, but for what you become each time you stand there again.
Here are ten reasons why I return to the places I visited. This article might seem to be lengthy but I would like cover as many as I can to share my thoughts.
The pull of the familiar that never stays the same
People often ask why I go back to the same places: Hampi, Bharatpur, Mangalajodi, Varanasi, Agumbe, Coorg, the Western Ghats, the Little Rann of Kutch, Corbett national park and more…Why not chase novelty? Why keep circling the same map?
As much as I love novelty, it doesn’t always come from distance. Sometimes the closest doorway into wonder is simply returning — again, and again — until the place stops being a destination and becomes a relationship.
I’ve realized that the familiar is never static.
Hampi, with its timeless boulders, feels different every time I walk among them.
Mangalajodi becomes more than a birding destination — it becomes a conversation with movement and still water.
Varanasi transforms between dawn and dusk as if the city is performing its own internal theatre.
The Western Ghats change shade by shade, season by season.
To return is to witness this unfolding — not as a visitor, but as someone learning the language of the land, slowly.
I don’t go to see the place. I go to let the place see me.
There is a moment — usually after the second or third visit — when a place stops treating you like an outsider. When the shopkeeper at the corner recognises you. When someone waves without asking who you are. When a bird doesn’t fly off in your presence because the forest already knows your footsteps.
This is the threshold I love crossing.
In Hampi, the stones feel both ancient and strangely familiar, as if they remember my last footsteps.
In Mangalajodi, the marshlands become less cautious with every visit. The godwits, the stilts, the herons — they seem to adjust to my presence, not because I am invisible, but because I have learned to move with their rhythm.
In Varanasi, I return to the same ghat before sunrise, and each time I stand there, the city acknowledges me differently.
In the Western Ghats, the rustling canopy sometimes feels like a conversation that paused the moment I left and resumed when I returned.
These small recognitions give me a sense of belonging.
Not ownership.
Not claim.
Just presence — shared, understood, accepted.
Living, not observing
My photography is rooted in experience, not in acquisition of scenes. To return to a place means to live there, even if temporarily: to wake up with the local light, to understand how the breeze shifts with the hour, to know when the forests fall silent before rain, to sense when a valley softens its echo.
In Hampi, I’ve walked through the boulders for days without lifting the camera — allowing the landscape to enter my mind, not in urgency.
In Mangalajodi, I’ve spent hours standing in a single patch of marshland, listening before looking, letting the calls and movements of the wetlands tune my senses.
In Varanasi, I’ve watched the river through entire afternoons, slept on the ghats, observing how the city changes its pace with every hour.
In the Western Ghats, the monsoon has drenched me enough times that I now know which trails shift, soften, or overflow first.
This immersive way of being is not about collecting stories. It’s about letting the land shape the way I listen.
The season teaches what the landscape cannot say in words
Returning across seasons is like meeting the same person at different stages of their life.
Hampi in summer is a map of heat, in winter is a lesson in breath and in monsoon spills green in places you thought were only stone.
Mangalajodi changes character with its birds — some seasons quiet, some seasons bursting with arrival.
Varanasi feels intimate in winter, restless in summer, and contemplative in monsoon.
The Western Ghats turn liquid under rain and gentle under early morning light.
Every season offers a different truth. Returning becomes the only way to see the landscape complete — a cycle, not a snapshot.
Letting encounters happen, not forcing them
I do not go to a place with the intent of making an image. If anything, I return with the intent not to look for one.
The most meaningful photographs in my life have emerged from encounters I did not plan:
A monkey sitting alone among Hampi’s ruins as if it held the memory of centuries,
An egret in Mangalajodi changing direction at the exact moment the light shifted,
A man at Manikarnika Ghat in Varanasi lighting the pyre of his loved one, his face holding a quiet acceptance that revealed more than any frame could contain.
A snail on a tree in the Western Ghats trail as the mist parted.
These moments are not manufactured. They appear like a question, and I respond.
The act of returning increases the chance of such encounters — not because I expect them, but because the place begins to trust me enough to offer them.
"I’ve realized that returning to a place is not a repetition. It is recognition.
It is not about going farther. They are about going deeper.
Each visit reveals something new — not only in the land, but in me."
- Karthik K SamprathiFamiliarity allows depth, not repetition
Many imagine that going to the same place means coming back with the same photographs. The reality is exactly the opposite.
Repetition belongs to the visitor. Depth belongs to the one who returns.
The first time I visit a place, I see what everyone sees.
The third time, I see what interests me.
The fifth time, I begin to see what the land wants to show.
Beyond that, I begin to see what I was not ready to understand earlier.
Hampi’s monuments form new shapes when my mind is calmer.
Mangalajodi’s wetlands reveal patterns only after I learn to recognise their stillness.
Varanasi offers moods I would have missed if I had come only once.
The Western Ghats open hidden layers when I return unhurried.
The familiarity frees me from the obvious. Only then do I reach the essence.
Seeing what time does to a place — and to me
Returning across years has revealed something unexpected: I am not only documenting how places change; I am documenting how I change with them.
Hampi made me attentive.
Mangalajodi made me patient.
Varanasi made me fearless with chaos and feel a sense of calmness.
The Western Ghats taught me how to wait.
Each return shows me who I was when I last stood there — and who I’ve become since. A photograph becomes a conversation between two versions of myself.
When the land shapes the artist
My photography is philosophical by nature, and places play a role in shaping that philosophy.
When I return: I slow down. I observe with intention. I surrender the impulse to chase. I listen. I let the land guide the direction of my frame.
Sometimes I collect no images for days. But the place leaves impressions that eventually surface as photographs — sometimes months later.
This is why I return: the land deepens my way of seeing until the photograph becomes a byproduct of a lived experience.
A place becomes a mirror when you return often enough
Returning allows me to understand the place at the level of texture, mood, scent, and temperament. But beyond that, the place becomes a mirror.
It reflects back what I bring to it: my state of mind, my pace, my expectations, my willingness to surrender.
Some days the land feels open.
Some days it feels distant.
Some days I am the one who is distant.
This relationship, like any meaningful one, deepens with time.
The photographs are only the evidence of a larger journey
What I bring back — the final images — are just traces. The real work happens before the shutter: in the walking, the waiting, the conversations, the listening, the observing, the moments that went unphotographed.
Returning allows me to gather these invisible fragments — and the photograph becomes the visible tip of the experience.
In essence
Each time I return, the place and I meet as two beings who have both changed or evolved, and what unfolds between us feels less like observation and more like a silent conversation — an exchange of who we have become since our last encounter.
Places remember.
Light remembers.
Even the wind remembers.
They welcome me back into the conversation — unfinished, ongoing, alive.