A cultural archive of Eastern Uttar Pradesh

Our mission

Purvanchal — the eastern districts of Uttar Pradesh — holds one of the densest concentrations of cultural practice in India: festivals observed at the waterline, weaves read across generations, songs that belong to particular months. Much of it is documented unevenly, or through lenses that flatten it.

Our mission is to document the region with care: reporting and photographing the ordinary as seriously as the extraordinary, crediting the people whose work and memory keep the culture alive, and publishing in a form that respects both the reader and the subject.

What we publish

• Festival explainers and dispatches — what a festival is, how it is practised, and what it feels like on the ground.
• Photo essays — visual stories built around a place, a workshop, or a day.
• Interviews — long-form conversations with musicians, weavers, cooks, priests, and scholars.
• Oral histories — first-person accounts, lightly edited, with context notes.
• Recipes and food stories — one dish, one place, one cook at a time.

What we don't publish

• Listicles, “top 10” travel roundups, or tourist-guide copy.
• AI-generated text or unsourced cultural claims.
• Content that exoticizes the region or its people.