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Louise Coghill Photography

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25.01.2022 My favourite curry place in Pokhara is run by the sweetest family with a little eight month old baby called Alina that smiles every time I look at her. Her mother, Sabina, sits down with us and shares snippets of her story. She comes from a village up in the mountains. 2000ms up. It takes a full day of walking to get up there, there are no roads, no buses, just walking. They are a village of farmers. They don’t speak english, they don’t even speak Nepali, but have their own d...ialect. Her mother doesn’t know how to read or write, she’s farmed all her life, and she's scared to come down the mountain and live with her in Pokhara. It’s a hard life up there, Sabina says. When she was eight years old, they sent her to Kathmandu, to an orphanage so she could get an education. They were too poor to keep her. An older Belgian couple came along and became her benefactors, they paid for her education. Sabina is an adult now, she’s married and bounces the happiest little baby in her lap as she tells her story. If I’d grown up in my village I don’t know what my life would look like. I ask her if its beautiful up there and she says yes. I can imagine it, Nepal is one of the most beautiful countries I’ve seen. Sabina speaks good english, she’s happy to share her story, the way she speaks, I can hear her love for her mother and her understanding for her mothers decisions. Maybe having a baby of her own now has helped shape her understanding, she’s happy little Alina is going to get an education. She’s happy their is a doctor nearby when Alina gets sick. And the Belgian couple come to visit every year, they’re excited to see how much Alina has grown. When I was eight I cried when they left, she tells me, but I understood when I got older. They’re old now, so they probably will have to stop coming soon, she says. I look at Sabina with that sweet smile she passed onto her baby, and that tenderness in her eyes as she drinks in the cuddles from those chubby arms and legs, and I wish we didn’t live in a world where some people have to choose between a child's love at home, or a child’s health and education. Some unrelated plants I shot on a rainy day in Pokhara.

23.01.2022 The view from my balcony (with a telephoto lens) as a storm rolled in and the sun set on another day in Pokhara.

21.01.2022 The Himalayas from atop a stupa in Leh, as the sun slowly left

21.01.2022 Magic only seems to exist at Twilight. Shot as we wandered back in the fading light and everything grew cold and we got lost in backyards and my tummy grumbled with hunger and we laughed as we climbed through fences and made out faint silhouettes of worried faces wondering why these ghostly characters were roaming through their backyard.

21.01.2022 Hi team, I went really quiet here the last few months while I was trekking around New Zealand. I’ve finished my 3000km hike and am making my way back to Australia. Who is still following along after my long hiatus and is interested to see some pictures from the hike? Kind regards, ... A smelly hiker who apologises for disappearing for so long. See more

20.01.2022 Well, I’m in New Zealand 116kms into the Te Araroa trail, but I’m here to share a different kind of exciting news. I’ve been lucky enough to work with Sea To Summit lately, here is my first article I had the pleasure of photographing AND writing. It seems fitting I would share a blog post predominately about avoiding dehydration on a day I got rained on for 4 hours. It was a real fun experience, and I think an entertaining read, along with some handy and very usable tips, so give it a little read and let me know what you think

18.01.2022 Hi folks, I wrote an article about my time in Leh and it just got published over on Roam Magazine. It deals a bit with climate change, monks, oracles and those late night anxieties that only really hit at 4am when you can't sleep thanks to high altitude. I'd love it if you gave it a read

14.01.2022 Day 2. Nov 7th. 28kms walked. 40/3006 1am and the possums are here, two leap across my tent and another slinks under my outer tent door. I yell and it runs away only to slink back a minute later. The attack is relentless until Jen, the first person I met on the hike, remembers she has a little solar lamp with some charge left on it. She sets it up between our tents and I finally fall into a fitful sleep filled with dreams of possums and serial killers. I had been worried by t...he hikers I met. This was meant to be a solo adventure. I was here to "find" myself and I thought that meant embracing the inner Cheryl Strayed and being alone for weeks at a time. However Jen and I chose to talk about serial killers and weird locals attacking people in the dunes, so while I wasn’t "finding myself", I also felt a lot less likely to be murdered in my sleep. Thanks Jen. The sun rose high and hot on day 2. The second hour of walking saw me arrive at the staircase overlooking THE beach. That endless beach that will take 3 days to walk across. I nibble on the chocolate covered raisins I dropped on the ground this morning and set off. Food hygiene is already out the window. The stair case slowly disappears behind me but the view in front is unchanging. I try not to look at the GPS which will tell me how many kms I’ve walked, holding off and waiting to be pleasantly surprised, rather than disappointed. 5kms, 10kms, 15kms. My hips start aching, not just the skin where my bag rubs, but deep within the joint. A shape emerges ahead, a small island, it slowly grows larger and I pray it’s the campsite. Every muscle, tendon and bone aches. My eyes fight not to close, I’ve used so much energy today I could just flop on the sand and fall asleep. I reach the bluff but I can’t see a campsite, there’s a small path leading over a hill, its maybe a 15m ascent and I’m unwilling to commit to it unless I know this is where I’m stopping. I wander an extra hundred metres around until I hear voices and see a small path with a much more manageable ascent, maybe 5ms up. My legs still protest at any upward movement but I make it to the grassy patch and set my tent up near Jen.

14.01.2022 Always a pleasure to be included on this website. One of my faves

13.01.2022 Sunsets from monasteries in high altitude cities. (I am actually home, feel free to contact me for any of your photography needs...)

12.01.2022 I’ve been VERY quiet on here of late. I’ve been busy betting prepared to jet off to New Zealand where I’ll be hiking the Te Araroa track. It’s a 3000km thru hike that will take approximately 4 - 5 months to complete. I’ll be walking on beaches, through forest, over mountains. Walking walking walking. I’ll be updating here as I go, but I’m most often found on Instagram these days, so feel free to follow @louisetakesphotos for all the fun in between bits.

10.01.2022 As a person who travels, and a person who photographs places, and a person who likes to talk about it, and research it, I have done plenty of poking around on travel websites/magazines. And so far I don’t think there’s enough of a ‘responsible tourism’ approach being tackled by enough companies. This sense of FOMO created via instagram is intense, and is being pushed on us everywhere we turn. Our dissatisfaction is the way so many industries thrive. Tourism is a great way to... spread wealth, and can be a wonderful driving force behind conservation of landscape, historical landmarks and culture. But we have to do it with open eyes, constantly questioning the impact we might be having. When travelling, choose tourism companies who have ethical practices, only follow ‘influencers’ who understand their impact on the places they are so lucky to visit, and most importantly if you love a place, don’t be a dick to it. Ok rant over. Thanks. https://amp.insider.com/travel-destinations-instagram-influ

09.01.2022 Moody mountains and paragliders

08.01.2022 I made a little thing today. Shot from the balcony of my little jungle home, just after the rain poured down and before the monkeys poured in to make it their jungle playground.

06.01.2022 Sometimes storm clouds turn into the most beautiful sunsets. Shot up in Leh last month.

06.01.2022 An early morning adventure with my main fluff ball Jackson. Still in home isolation, but its not so bad when this is my backyard. P.s this is your weekly reminder than I am in fact back in Perth

06.01.2022 The last moments of the day passing over a 14th century Buddhist monastery overlooking the city of Leh. Our guesthouse owner told us many of the people of Leh don’t really think of themselves as living in India, it’s more like a mini Tibet. Such a strange world we live in with land borders defining who a person is, even though this Indian family probably share many of the same ancient ancestors as the Tibetan refugees that escaped over the mountains into Leh.

05.01.2022 A little article I wrote for Fabric quarterly about life in a hobbit house, with a few wintery images to boot https://fabricquarterly.com.au/20//life-in-a-hobbit-house/

05.01.2022 Pokhara at night. A portrait of a changing city.

05.01.2022 One of the characters from the back streets of Varanasi. I wish I spoke Hindi so I could have asked him his story.

03.01.2022 It took four acts of kindness to get from Kaitaia to Cape Reinga, the starting point of the Te Araroa. I wandered to the edge of town with trepidation. This was it. I stuck my thumb out half hoping nobody would stop and I could spend one more day in bed binging Fleabag. Alas, within minutes a man in his late 60’s pulled up. Rob told me the country is changing, "you be careful which cars you get into Louise, New Zealand isn’t what it used to be", he said as I jumped out on the... side of the road 40kms closer to my goal. Remembering the man who had sat next to me on the bus from Auckland who twitched with an obvious drug habit and asked if he could borrow my bank card, add a painful addiction of my own, true crime podcasts, and I was suitably on edge. The first car that drove around the corner pulled up but luckily it was only Sue, a social worker who was checking out a property up here. Her elderly client had been attacked in her home and hospitalised and she was checking out the damage to the house. She got me another 30kms and dropped me beside a dairy, with the same warning, be careful. A beekeeper helped me strap my big red backpack in beside boxes of bees in the back of his Ute and finally a French couple picked me up in their van and I sat between them on the front seat as we chatted about travel and photography and NOT about home invasions and how dangerous hitchhiking can be. I pulled my heavy bag onto my shoulders, took out my brand new walking poles and waved at the French couple as I wandered down to the lighthouse that marked the start of the 3006km hike I was embarking on. Glad to be getting away from that changing world Rob mentioned and return to the roots of humanity. Becoming a nomad, with everything I need on my back and no reception. It only took 12kms to get to my first campsite, but 12kms was still enough to make my feet hurt from the extra weight of my backpack. My hips itch where my bag rubs and the pain in my shoulders is starting. I know it’s going to get worse, but I tell myself this pain is bearable. It’s fleeting. I am human, I am made for this, to focus on the physical discomfort of living, rather than the mental anguish of existence.

01.01.2022 A collection of memories from Coral Bay a few weeks ago. A little trip with my family for Dads 60th!