I'm a wildlife biologist by profession. I have been fascinated with wildlife and the outdoors since I was a child and decided that I would be an ecologist at the age of seven - though my parents tell me I was three weeks old when I had my first experience of wildlife! My earliest memories are of hunting, fishing and shooting trips. From the time I was able to walk, I would be accompanying guards and rangers in game parks and reserves. I was lucky to grow up around people like Indira Gandhi, Salim Ali, H.S. Panwar, M.K. Ranjitsinh and Bittu Sehgal, conservationists from the old school. My father was a shikar (hunter), and he would go hunting every weekend - when hunting was banned, he took up photography. We would shuttle between Assam, Himachal Pradesh and Kashmir. Summer holidays would be spent in Kashmir, in the Dachigam National Park; here I could spot the Himalayan black bear. Winters would be spent in the forests of Rajaji National Park, where we would see herds of elephants - and occasionally bump into leopards! I've also gone fishing on the Brahmaputra, where my father and brother would go after crocodiles and wild buffalo
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