Incredible photos of Gandalf in New Zealand

THE grey wizard became an icon of Middle Earth in the Lord of the Rings, and now it seems he’s back in New Zealand.

GANDALF is one of the most-loved characters from Lord of the Rings.

Now it seems the epic saga’s iconic grey wizard has returned to Middle Earth — but not quite in the way you’d expect.

When amateur photographer Akhil Suhas started his six-month road trip around New Zealand, he told Mashable didn’t want to take the same pictures as everyone else.

“I wanted a recurring subject in my photos and with so many photographers visiting the country, I figured that I needed to do something to set me apart,” he said.

The idea came to him while he was watching the trilogy for the fifth time: he should take a Gandalf the Grey costume on his 15,000-kilometre trip.

However, it wasn’t easy framing photographs in full wizard regalia.

“[I] tried the camera on a tripod with a timer shot, didn’t work,” he explained.

However, thanks to the fantasy’s enormous fanbase, he didn’t struggle to recruit excited tourists to stand in as body doubles.

Here are the incredible results:

Suhas was born in India, but just finished studying Operations Management and Finance at the University of Auckland.

The 21-year-old funded his journey by working in hostels along the way and sleeping on a mattress in the back of his station wagon.

“Before I started this journey, I thought to myself, it doesn’t matter that I might spend a bit of money of this trip, I have my whole life ahead of me to earn money and pay off student loans and bills. At the end of the day, your memories last longer than material things,” he told The Guardian.

He learnt photography by watching videos on YouTube and reading widely, and his Instagram following has boomed since he started his hashtag “GandalfTheGuide”.