Harry Potter fans, check out these kids playing Quidditch in a remote Himalayan village

A 'real' Quidditch match complete with flying broomsticks and a ball

Features Harry Potter

The game of Quidditch, that JK Rowling created in the Harry Potter series, has amazed generations of readers and movie lovers, so much so that a real life version of the game has also been created.

And now, a freelancer photographer and teacher has recreated the wildly popular game in a remote Indian village with his lenses.

25-year-old Anshu Agarwal, who has been employed by an NGO as a teacher in a village called Kalap in interior Garhwal, Uttarakhand, is a "diehard Potterhead". Earlier this month, he released a series of photographs on his Facebook page Anshoots Photography of children playing Quidditch.

The idea for the photo project stemmed from an exercise that Agarwal had given to his students.

"As an exercise to teach the children English I show them Harry Potter movies on Sundays. They are smitten by them too and once expressed how they wished to be witches and wizards themselves. Since I was already into Levitation Photography, I thought of making an effort to materialise their fantasy," he explains.

Recreating a Quidditch match for real

A one-foot high wooden bench was constructed, broomsticks as shown in the movies were mimicked and a volleyball was arranged for.

Agarwal, who hails from West Bengal and has spent a major part of his life in Hyderabad, says, "Many children of the village clustered around in different locations of the village for 4 consecutive Sundays as I captured the thrilled kids hopping on their broomsticks. The images were stacked together and edited on Photoshop."

His subjects- the students- were amazed to see the end result with “eyes’ popping out” in wonder.

"To me photography is a bridge between my perception of the world around me and what it actually is. While I’m behind my camera I feel a dire need to take control over the subject and the surroundings. Perhaps that explains why I am mostly keen in creating something larger-than-life," Agarwal says, adding that he intends to work on more Harry Potter themed photos using the Light Painting technique.