Balochistan at a Crossroads

Description

Balochistan at a Crossroads is a captivating account of Willem Marx’s travels in Balochistan. He recounts his adventures here as he goes into the backcountry to conduct some exclusive interviews. He confesses that although his travels were exhausting and sometimes very dangerous, the country’s landscape was endlessly beautiful in its emptiness. The list of people he had to interview contained the name of one of Iran’s most wanted terrorists and a ragtag militant organisation, living in the isolated mountain valleys, which was aligned against the mighty Pakistani Army. He traversed broken and almost invisible trucking routes through the desert at night in order to complete the interviews. The history, topography and people of Balochistan enthralled the author and his photojournalist friend Marc Wattrelot, who managed to capture spectacularly emotive scenes, which have gone unseen by most casual visitors to this less-known corner of this world. The author feels that Balochistan is reminiscent of a charming past, but when he met the people, he realised it is the future to which they were all looking at, often with apprehension.

Willem Marx & Marc Wattrelot

Marc Wattrelot grew up in Paris where he attended the Sorbonne University and Sciences Po Toulouse. There he studied Geography, Political Science and Journalism. His photographic work in Balochistan won the Anthropographia Honorary Mention and has been exhibited at the New York Photo Festival, the Forum for Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, the Gijon Photojournalism Festival in Spain and in Paris. Marc was based in New Delhi for three years where he worked as a journalist for several French television channels.