There are some places a traveler visits once and remembers forever. Then there are places that continue calling you back.
For more than twenty years, documentary filmmaker and independent publisher Alex Goldblum has returned again and again to the historic Kingdom of Jhalavad in Gujarat, India — a landscape of deserts, palace cities, pastoral villages, royal history, and living traditions that became the foundation for one of his most ambitious documentary and photography projects.
What began as a student journey evolved into a decades-long cinematic and photographic archive.
The Kingdom of Jhalavad Series is not a single book or film. It is an interconnected body of documentaries, photography books, journals, historical studies, and visual essays exploring the people, architecture, mythology, and cultural memory of western India. Across twenty years of travel and filmmaking, the project has grown into a living narrative about history, identity, and return.
The story begins in 2005.
As a student filmmaker traveling through India, Goldblum encountered a world radically different from urban American life. In Gujarat, he found himself drawn not only to the visual intensity of India — its colors, sounds, processions, temples, and crowded streets — but also to the quieter rhythms of life in the semi-arid landscapes of Jhalavad.
That first journey produced The Snake Charmer Journals and the documentary film The Snake Charmer (2005), a short documentary that later screened at the Temple University Global Conference in Philadelphia and the Lahore Theatre Festival in Pakistan.
But the project did not end when filming stopped.
In many ways, it had only begun.
One of the defining aspects of Goldblum’s relationship with Jhalavad is the trust and friendship he developed over many years with the people and communities of Dhrangadhra and the surrounding region. Central to that relationship was his connection as a former student and personal friend of His Highness Maharaja Sriraj Dr. Jayasinhji Jhala, the 47th Jhallesvar of Halvad-Dhrangadhra. Through this longstanding relationship, Goldblum was given rare access to cultural traditions, royal ceremonies, historic sites, family archives, and community life that are seldom documented by outside filmmakers.
That connection also transformed the nature of the work itself. Rather than approaching Jhalavad simply as a traveler or observer, Goldblum became a returning documentarian working within a community that increasingly viewed him as a trusted cultural participant and visual historian. Over time, his repeated visits created lasting friendships with local residents, artists, scholars, members of the royal household, and village communities throughout the region.
As the years passed, Goldblum returned repeatedly to Gujarat, building friendships, documenting royal families, exploring historic sites, photographing village life, and filming ceremonial events tied to the former princely state of Dhrangadhra. Each visit added another layer to the archive.
The Kingdom of Jhalavad Series slowly evolved into a documentary conversation between past and present.
The books themselves reflect this evolution.
Early works such as The Snake Charmer Journals capture the immediacy of travel and discovery — the perspective of an outsider learning to navigate unfamiliar landscapes. Later works become increasingly historical and reflective. In Royal Jhallesvar Paintings of the Floating Desert (2018), Goldblum explores royal imagery and cultural symbolism connected to the rulers of Jhalavad. In The Stone City: Dhrangadhra, Gujarat, India (2018), he turns his attention toward architecture and urban memory, documenting the city’s weathered streets, palaces, and stone structures.
An important companion project during this period was the documentary film Visions of The Stone City (2018), which explored the architectural landscapes, historic streets, and cultural atmosphere of Dhrangadhra through cinematic imagery and observational documentary filmmaking. The film expanded Goldblum’s visual exploration of the “Stone City” beyond still photography, capturing daily life, historic architecture, and the layered textures of the region in digital video. The documentary later aired on WQED in Pittsburgh, bringing the history and culture of Jhalavad to American public television audiences.
The phrase “floating desert,” which appears throughout the series, becomes both visual metaphor and emotional geography. It evokes the dust-colored landscapes of western Gujarat while also suggesting something more elusive — a civilization suspended between history and modernity.
By the early 2020s, the series had expanded far beyond travel writing.
Books such as My India: Voices of The Floating Desert (2021), Jhallaraangadh: The Lake Palace at Halvad (2022), and Pastoral Life in Jesada Village, Gujarat, India (2023) reveal a filmmaker increasingly interested in visual anthropology and cultural preservation. Rather than focusing solely on monuments or tourism, Goldblum documents everyday life: shepherd communities, village traditions, oral histories, religious spaces, and local landscapes shaped by centuries of continuity.
At the center of the project lies the historic Kingdom of Jhalavad itself.
Once a princely state ruled by the Jhala Rajput dynasty, Jhalavad occupies an important cultural and historical place within Gujarat’s regional identity. Through photography and film, Goldblum attempts to preserve fragments of that legacy — not as frozen nostalgia, but as living culture.
This historical dimension became especially significant in the documentary The Raj of Dhrangadhra: The Coronation of The 47th Jhallesvar (2024), a feature-length film documenting the coronation ceremonies connected to the royal house of Dhrangadhra. The film presents royal tradition not as spectacle alone, but as a continuing cultural institution shaped by ritual, symbolism, and memory.
Complementing the documentary film was The Raj of Dhrangadhra: A Photo Book (2023), a photographic volume that documented the coronation ceremonies, royal traditions, historic palaces, and cultural symbolism of the royal house of Halvad-Dhrangadhra through extensive archival photography.
Another major chapter in the series arrived with The Knights of Jhalavad: Return to Dhrangadhra (2025).
The title itself is revealing.
Return has become one of the defining themes of the entire project.
Unlike conventional travel documentaries that move rapidly from place to place, the Kingdom of Jhalavad Series returns repeatedly to the same region across decades. Cities change. Villages modernize. Generations age. Yet the camera continues documenting the persistence of culture through time.
This gives the project an unusual sense of continuity.
Goldblum’s work often feels less like tourism and more like long-form witnessing.
That same philosophy extends into his photography books. Titles such as A Photographic History of The Kingdom of Jhalavad (2024) and Jhinjhuvada, Jhalavad (2026) function not only as art books, but as historical records preserving architecture, landscapes, and local heritage through visual documentation.
The cumulative scale of the project is increasingly difficult to categorize.
It exists somewhere between documentary cinema, historical preservation, ethnography, travel literature, and photographic memoir.
Today, the Kingdom of Jhalavad Series includes over a dozen interconnected books and films, along with more than two dozen documentary videos collected in the YouTube playlist Dhrangadhra & Gujarat: A Cinematic Exploration by Alex Goldblum. Together, these works form a multimedia archive of one region of India observed across twenty years.
Perhaps what makes the project most distinctive is its patience.
In an era dominated by short attention spans and rapid digital media, the Kingdom of Jhalavad Series unfolds slowly. It values return over novelty, observation over spectacle, and continuity over trend.
The result is a body of work that feels deeply personal while also historically significant.
Across deserts, palaces, coronations, village roads, sacred lakes, and forgotten stone cities, Alex Goldblum has created something rare: a long-term visual chronicle of cultural memory in western India.
The Kingdom of Jhalavad Series is ultimately about more than travel.
It is about the act of returning — and discovering that each return reveals another layer of history waiting to be remembered.
