Year after year, for an endless eight months, thousands of families move to a desert in India to extract salt from the burning earth. Every monsoon their salt fields are washed away, as the desert turns into sea. And still they return, striving to make the whitest salt in the world.

The desert extends endlessly with neither a tree nor blade of grass in sight. Yet salt abounds, lying just beneath the earth’s cracked crust. This is the Little Rann of Kutch, India’s saline desert. For eight months of the year, Chhanabhai and his family live here without water, electricity or provisions – tirelessly working the salt fields. After months of rhythmic labor, they must harvest the salt before heavy monsoon rains wash their industry away.