In February 1800, Dr. Francis Buchanan, on his survey of southern India had visited Honnavar, a small coastal town in the present-day district of Uttara Kannada in the state of Karnataka. He had recorded the importance of fishing as a commercial activity but had little to say about the lives and livelihoods of the fishers.
While retracing Francis Buchanan’s Journey we visited Honnavar to see and record what Buchanan had not.A Life at Sea captures the mundane lives of fishers aboard their motor boat on one February day and night in 2021 … more than 200 years after Buchanan had passed by these very shores.
