Author Description

To many, India invokes crowded Bombay bazaars and cramped Calcutta quarters more than bucolic vistas. With a population surpassing 850,000,000, India's humanity predominates, but it's nonetheless true that India possesses a remarkable natural wealth and scope. From the Himalayas to the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Karakoram Range in Ladakh to the swamps of Assam, the enormous variety of climate and terrain supports a vast diversity of vegetation and wildlife, with one-horned rhinoceros and lion-tailed macaques, Kashmir stags and Asiatic lions prowling the preserves. Traversing the continent, Gerald Cubitt photographed the craggy, snow-capped mountains, the lush vegetation, and the wildlife that lives there, and Guy Mountfort provided the text. The pictures are astoundingly beautiful and varied. A fragile, pink, newly hatched robin accentor opens its mouth for food, 5,100 meters up in Ladakh. A mass of purple Impatiens sulcata bloom in the Valley of Flowers in the Garhwal Himalaya of Uttar Pradesh. Pristine snow gleams on the slopes of Mount Annapurna in the late afternoon sun. And the red panda from the temperate forests of Sikkim looks softly, fox-like, from its tree. There are pictures of the handsome leopard cat (hunted for its fur despite its protected status) and the clouded leopard (baring its unusually long canines), as well as hoolock gibbons swinging on vines, a Buffalo cow guarding twin calves among burned elephant grass, and a Pallas's fishing eagle high up in Kaziranga National Park. If you weren't an avid naturalist before you start flipping through this glossy archive of Indian wildlife, you will be soon. It's hard to see all that beauty without planning your own safari to one or more of India's many national parks and sanctuaries.