HAIR INDIA #47 India's Longest Beard, aka The Python, (6-feet)

Just tracking down this beauty was a story in itself. Obviously no book about the beards and moustaches of India could be complete until the longest specimens were captured on film. 'The Python' continued to elude me, however.

For a start the only reference available to Mr. Saddar Shamsher Singh Saroye (owner of the Guinness World Record 'Longest Beard in the World') was 10-years old. Was the venerable gentleman still alive? A friend mentioned Chandigarh would be a good place to start the search.

8-hours across the Punjabi plains from Delhi I travelled by bus, fellow passengers assuring me that indeed, the Long Bearded One lived 'somewhere' near Le Corbusier's planned city.

Next morning I asked at the bus station and a friendly conductor placed me on a local bus, telling me to get off after 20 minutes. This I duly did, finding myself in the middle of a vast field, potatoes stretching from horizon to horizon. I began to walk down a rutted track, following my nose.

Soon a spluttering Vespa scooter pulled up. The two students aboard, hearing of my mission, insisted I and my camera gear join them on the pillion. 10 minutes later we reached a muddy hamlet. One of the students assured me the owner of the Python lived here. We knocked on the appropriate door and were ushered into the living room where an old man wearing a large turban was finishing off his breakfast.

At first I didn't see the beard, so artfully was its' full length concealed within the turban! Up to the rooftop we proceeded - Shamsher Singh, the two students and I. Our open-air studio proved perfect for the unravelling. One student held my off-shoe flash, the other, artfully, pinched the very tip of the Python itself between finger and thumb!

Alas! Just the year before, in an act of curious vandalism, a foot-long length of the beard had been pulled out by one of Shamsher Singh's grandchildren. So the beard pictured here is the longest in India, but no longer in the world (a Sikh gent living in Vancouver, apparently, has that hirsute honour!).

From the book ‘Hair India’, photography by Chris Stowers

Edition 1/1

Digital image

5000px X 2205px

Location: Near Chandigarh, Punjab, India, 2007

The Hair India Collection consists of 87 images taken in India between 2006-2008