The whir of a cotton spinning wheel, the sung prayer of Dalit school children (once known as Untouchables), the cry of a newborn child—this is how photographer Rena Effendi transports us to India’s villages.

“India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages.”—Gandhi

For the July 2015 issue of National Geographic magazine, Effendi was tasked with telling the story of Gandhi’s lasting influence in contemporary India. She was asked to capture what she calls a “ghost story”—a tale with a main character who is no longer with us. So she decided to trace the route of his famous 1930 Salt March from his home base at Sabarmati Ashram near Ahmedabad to Dandi Beach, a 241-mile journey that peacefully protested an unjust British