Ady Manral

Ady Manral is a folk fusion singer songwriter, based in the foothills of the Himalayas on a quaint hillside in Mussoorie, India, called Landour. His songwriting combines simple acoustic melodies with a whiff of general life & the mood of a peaceful hill station. He released his debut EP ‘Lean on Love’ in Dec, 2018. Earlier this year, Ady released a single and the music video for a hindi folk fusion song, titled 'Kaisey', which received multiple accolades from across the country.

Akshay Shah

Akshay joined Hanifl Centre in the summer of 2015 to provide operational & programming support. With more than two decades of experience in the outdoors including trekking across high passes in the Kumaon Himalaya, Akshay is an experienced and passionate trek leader, fond of simple mountain life and its rewards. He founded and managed Kumaon based social development NGO Lok Chetna Manch for more than a decade. He has worked for NOLS India as a consultant on their natural history projects. He has vast experience of working on rural development projects, natural resource management programmes and conservation in the Himalaya. He teaches a course on Himalayan Geography for Pitt in the Himalaya (Study Abroad Programme). He is also an instructor for courses in Wilderness Medicine & CPR and is a Wilderness Emergency Medical Technician (WEMT) from Missoula with Aerie Backcountry Medicine.

Andrew Alter

Andrew Alter graduated from Woodstock School in 1978. He completed his doctoral studies in Ethnomusicology from Monash University, Melbourne. Andrew taught music for over twenty years at the University of New England in Armidale, NSW before moving to Sydney where he currently works at Macquarie University. He has undertaken a variety of roles at Macquarie including Associate Dean for Higher Degree Research in the Faculty of Arts and Senior Lecturer in Music Studies. He teaches and researches in a diverse range of sub-disciplines including popular music studies, ethnomusicology, composition, and music theory. His primary research is focused on traditional and popular music of the Himalayas and he has published two books on the music of Uttarakhand: Dancing with Devtās: Drums, Power and Possession in the Music of Garhwal, North India (London: Ashgate and Routledge Publishing, 2008), and Mountainous Sound Spaces: Listening to History and Music in the Himalaya (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's The Book of Indian Essays: Two Hundred Years of English Prose is forthcoming from Black Kite-Hachette later this year. Among his recent books are a translation (with Sara Rai) of Vinod Kumar Shukla's stories Blue Is Like Blue (HarperCollins); Selected Poems and Translations (NYRB), shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize in poetry; and a volume of essays, Translating the Past and Other Literary Histories (Permanent Black). He lives in Dehra Dun.

Ashok Abbey

Brig. Ashok Abbey is a highly experienced mountaineer, who has been passionately climbing for over four decades, since his school days. He has climbed, led and participated in many Indian and International Expeditions. Has climbed extensively in the Himalaya, Karakoram and adjoining mountain ranges. He has instructed with distinction at the National Mountaineering Institutes and has undertaken many Mountain Rescue Missions. A former President of the Himalayan Club, he is currently President of the Indian Mountaineering Foundation.

Bedi Brothers

Over the last four decades, Naresh and Rajesh Bedi have used their talents and energies to capture the beauty and mystery of India’s wildlife through their documentaries and photographs. Their films are entertaining, educative and always carry a strong conservation message. They have been fortunate to witness and record rarely seen behaviour; contributing to the scientific understanding of India’s natural history. Their exceptional achievements have been rewarded with national and international recognition.

Bernadette McDonald

Bernadette McDonald, A.O.E. was the founder of The Banff Centre for Mountain Culture and has authored eleven books on mountain culture and mountaineering. Her work has been published in sixteen countries and has received many awards, including the Banff Grand Prize, Boardman Tasker, the Kekoo Naoroji Award and the American Alpine Club Award. She has received the Alberta Order of Excellence and the King Albert Award for her contributions to mountain culture. She is an honorary member of the Himalayan Club and the Polish Mountaineering Association, and has been appointed a Fellow of the Explorers Club. When not writing, Bernadette climbs, hikes, skis, paddles and grows grapes.

Cadenza Collective

A unique and eclectic band from Kathmandu, Nepal, Cadenza Collective led by drummer and composer Navin Chettri seamlessly blends jazz, afro-funk, and Nepali folk music – creating an irresistible genre bending sound! Started in 1990, they have released six albums of original music, including the award winning and critically acclaimed album ‘Back to the Roots.’ Their latest album is ‘Himalayan Songlines’.Cadenza has played across the world and collaborated with many Western and traditional Nepali musicians. Navin Chettri - lead vocals/ drums/percussion; Pravin Chettri - alto saxophone/vocals; Inap Shrestha - tenor saxophone/vocals; Rajat Rai - guitar/vocals; Samir Chettri - bass/vocals; Abhisek Bhadra - keyboard

Chris Bonington

Sir Chris Bonington is one of the UK’s most eminent mountaineers, renowned both as a climber and as an expedition leader. Among his many celebrated achievements was the first British ascent of the North Wall of the Eiger with Ian Clough in 1962 and the first ascent of Changabang with Don Whillans, Doug Scott and Dougal Haston in 1974. He led the first successful expedition up the South Face of Annapurna in 1970, followed by the historic ascent of the South West Face of Everest in 1975. He has written a number of books about his mountaineering adventures and is also an accomplished photographer. Among his many honours are a Founder’s Medal of the Royal Geographic Society and a knighthood in 1996. His interview with Harish Kapadia is part of the Himalayan Club’s oral history archive.

D. R. Purohit

Professor D.R. Purohit is a senior theatre activist, scholar, mentor, writer, actor, director and exponent of the Central Himalayan folk theatre tradition. He has written 36 plays in Garhwali, Hindi and English. He is a former professor of English and Theatre and founding director of the Centre for Folk Performing Arts and Culture at H.N.B. Garhwal University, Srinagar. He has been a visiting professor at Heidelberg Univ. Germany and a Baden Wurteimberg Fellow at the South Asia Institute, Germany. He has lectured on Uttarakhand’s culture and performing arts in German, American, Swedish and Norwegian universities, as well as at many Indian universities. At present he is a National Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.

Doug Scott

Doug Scott is renowned as one of Britain’s most talented and prolific high altitude climbers. He has summited more than forty major peaks, most of which were climbed alpine style on new routes and without supplemental oxygen. Perhaps his most famous ascent was the South West Face of Everest in 1975, with Dougal Haston. After climbing the Ogre (Baintha Brakk) in 1977, an extremely challenging peak in the Karakoram, he broke both legs on his descent and it took Scott and his teammate, Chris Bonington, seven days to return to base camp, a horrendous ordeal recounted in one of several climbing memoirs he has written. Doug Scott has served as president of the Alpine Club and received a CBE in 1994, followed by the Royal Geographical Society’s Patron’s Gold Medal in 1999. His interview with Harish Kapadia is part of the Himalayan Club’s oral history archive.

Gregory Wray

Dr. Gregory Wray is a Professor of Biology at Duke University. His research focuses on the evolution of gene regulation. His love of nature began as a child growing up in India, where his parents served as missionaries. He attended Woodstock School in the foothills of the Himalayas, a hotspot of biodiversity set in a majestic landscape. He completed his undergraduate studies in biology at the College of William and Mary and his doctorate at Duke University before carrying out post-doctoral research at Indiana University and the University of Washington. He currently serves as Director of Duke's Center for Genomic and Computational Biology.

Harish Kapadia

Harish Kapadia is a distinguished Himalayan mountaineer, author and long-time editor of the Himalayan Journal from India. He has been awarded the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society, the Life Time Achievement Award for Adventure by the President of India and the King Albert Mountain Award presented by The King Albert I Memorial Foundation. He has written numerous books and articles on the Indian Himalayas. Harish was awarded the Piolets d'Or Asia Life Time Achievement Award in 2017 for his mountaineering and exploratory endeavours and he became the first and only Indian so far to ever receive this award.

Himanshu Joshi

Himanshu Joshi is a singer, music composer, poet, writer, photographer and filmmaker. Greatly influenced by his uncle Mohan Upreti - a folk theatre and music legend - Himanshu started training in Hindustani classical music at a very young age. He is a part of Indian Ocean, one of India's most popular bands, known for its unique compositions. Himanshu is also an avid poet and short-story writer, choosing Hindi as his language of creative expression.

Janaki Lenin

A city girl gone feral, Janaki Lenin is the author of two volumes of My Husband and Other Animals. Her latest is Every Creature Has a Story released in August 2020. She writes on a wide range of wildlife and conservation subjects for newspapers and magazines. She and her human partner share their home on the outskirts of Chennai with numerous pets and free-ranging wild creatures.

Jigmet Angmo

Jigmet Angmo has been a student at Woodstock for the last 10 years and is currently the Student Council President. She hails from Leh, Ladakh and loves hiking, baking, reading, and spending time with family and friends.

Jon Warren

Jon Warren’s photography career was launched at Woodstock School, in Mussoorie, India, where a teacher loaned him a long telephoto to photograph his favorite peak, Bandarpunch. Since then, he has had assignments in upwards of 60 countries, photographing everything from traditional art in Bhutan to the conflict in Darfur. Jon works for charity World Vision, in Seattle, where he is close to his children - and close to the mountains.

Jono Lineen

Dr. Jono Lineen is a curator at the National Museum of Australia. He spent over 20 years traveling the world working as a forester, deep sea fisher, geologist, ski racer, mountain guide, humanitarian relief worker and a writer. His books include Into the Heart of the Himalayas and Perfect Motion.

Lalitha Krishnan

Lalitha Krishnan is a nature-documenter who feels privileged to live at 7,500 ft surrounded by the mixed forest in Landour. The dual beauty & fragility of the Himalaya drives her creative process, be it still photography or wildlife videos, blogging or penning articles, or producing & hosting ‘Heart of Conservation’ podcast. Currently she’s training mountain-strays using Operant Conditioning, a skill she hopes to deploy for wildlife conservation. You can find her on popular social media platforms.

Lokesh Ohri

Lokesh Ohri is an anthropologist, author and activist, who lives and works in the Himalayas. He is wanderer-in-chief at the Dehra Dun based group, ‘Been There Doon That’or BTDT, that advocates slow travel and responsible tourism. His latest book, Till Kingdom Come, is based on the rituals of divine kingship in Jaunsar-Bawar and parts of Himachal Pradesh. Recently, he has also authored monographs on the Cosmology and Iconography around the Ganga. He has a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg.

Majka Burhardt

Majka Burhardt is a professional climber, conservation entrepreneur, author, and filmmaker. Majka is the Founder and Executive Director of Legado, where she works to protect the world’s most threatened mountain ecosystems by working hand-in-hand with the people who call them home. Legado originated during a pioneering climbing and conservation research expedition to Mozambique.

Mamang Dai

Mamang Dai is a poet and novelist from Arunachal Pradesh. A former journalist, Dai also worked with WWF in the Eastern Himalaya Biodiversity Hotspots programme. Her first publication Arunachal Pradesh -The Hidden Land received the State Verrier Elwin Prize. In 2011, Dai was awarded the Padma Shri (Literature &Education), and the Sahitya Akademi Award, 2017, for her book The Black Hill, in English. Dai lives in Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh, India.

Maninder Kohli

Maninder Kohli was drawn to the mountains at an early age inspired by his father, Captain MS Kohli, who led India’s path-breaking climb of Everest in 1965. Over the years he has participated in over 60 treks in the Himalaya, and has led several exploratory trips to seldom visited areas. In 2010, Maninder founded Juniper Outdoor Pursuits Centre based at New Delhi, through which he continues to motivate people into the world of adventure and feels it is a great way to unwind from the stress of modern life. He is the Managing Trustee of the Himalayan Environment Trust,Director of the IMF Mountain Film Festival and Secretary of the Himalayan Club at New Delhi.

Manoj Nair

Manoj V Nair began watching birds when he was twelve and this early interest has since continued unabated for three decades and more, having taken him to most parts of India and many remote areas of the globe in pursuit of this fascinating hobby. He is a trained wildlife biologist and a member of the Indian Forest Service.

Max Marble

Max Marble claims Mussoorie as his spiritual home. He was born in Landour Community Hospital and attended Woodstock School from kindergarten through graduation in 1967. With over 800 videos he has produced currently on YouTube, he took an interest in photography long before serving as the Whispering Pine class photographer in his senior year. Unable to obtain a visa to return to India, he served the United Methodist Church in Missouri for 40 years. His post-retirement job took him to India twice a year serving with the Ludhiana Christian Medical College. Most of his trips to India took him also to Mussoorie.

Michael Benanav

A writer and photographer with a deep affinity for the Indian Himalayas, Michael Benanav has authored three books, including Himalaya Bound: One Family’s Quest to Save Their Animals and an Ancient Way of Life. His articles and photo essays appear in The New York Times and other publications. An online feature, The Last Dokpas of North Sikkim – about which he is speaking at the festival - won the 2019 Lowell Thomas Travel Journalism Prize for Best Multimedia Work.

Mohammad Muneem Nazir

Mohammad Muneem Nazir is a poet, singer and songwriter. He is the co-founder of ‘Alif’, a contemporary music band which sets Urdu and Kashmiri poetry to music. An adept film-maker and scriptwriter, he also conceptualizes and directs Alif’s videos. Mohammad Muneem teaches Urdu Poetry/song writing at Symbiosis College of Arts and Commerce and also conducts workshops on this subject. Alif is a recipient of the ‘IRAA Award’ for their single ‘Like a Sufi’, and the Dada Saheb Phalke Award for ‘Lalnawath’. The band is currently writing and composing songs for an upcoming film ‘Torbaaz’, starring Sanjay Dutt. Their music has earlier been featured in Imtiaz Ali's film ‘Laila Majnu.’

Namita Gokhale

Namita Gokhale is an award-winning writer, publisher, and festival director. She has written nineteen books, including ten works of fiction. Her recent novel, Jaipur Journals, was released in January 2020. Betrayed By Hope, a play on the tragic life of the poet Michael Madhusudan Dutt, will be published later this year. Gokhale is a founder and co-director of the Jaipur Literature Festival.

Nandini Purandare

Nandini Purandare is the Hon. Editor of The Himalayan Journal. For several years she, along with Deepa Balsavar, has been collecting oral histories of the climbing Sherpas of Darjeeling. They are now working on a book on the subject. An avid mountain and mountain literature lover and trekker, her bonding with the Himalaya goes back forty years. She has hiked in most parts of the Himalaya as a young lady and later with her family when her children were infants in diapers! Nandini is an economist working as a consultant through her professional life. As an educator, she works with a team developing curriculum for underprivileged children. This curriculum is used in about 1000 municipal schools in Mumbai and non formal education systems as well.

Orchestra naïF

Orchestra naïF, formed in 1965 by poets, Jhaffur Khan Azad Darakht and Joel Banner Baird, is an ensemble that also includes MC Eucalips. It performs spontaneously composed music in an astonishing array of genres. Jhaffur aka Jeff Campbell – is Landour-born, trained by Whistling Thrush and Lineated Barbet; absorbs Tajik, Tuscan, Garhwali, Papua New Guinean, Bolivian, Ethiopian music. Stationed in California coastal range. Born in the Colombian Andes, Baird has worked in, tramped through and celebrated the Himalayas, Rockies and Appalachians. He is also a fan of flatlands, lake bottoms and most recently, the hills and valleys of Vermont.

Pasang Sherpa

Pasang Yangjee Sherpa, Ph.D. is an anthropologist based in Seattle, U.S.A. Her research areas include the Sherpa diaspora, human dimensions of climate change and Indigeneity in Nepal and the Himalayas. She has taught at The New School, Pacific Lutheran University, Penn State University, Washington State University and University of Washington. Her interviews have appeared in Alpinist, Al Jazeera, BBC, Foreign Policy, PRI’s The World, and Newsweek.

Prajwal Parajuly

Prajwal Parajuly—the son of a Nepali-Indian father and a Nepalese mother—hails from the former Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim. The Gurkha's Daughter, his bestselling collection of short stories, was a finalist for the Dylan Thomas Prize in the UK and a semi-finalist for the Story Prize in the US. Land Where I Flee, his first novel, was nominated for the Emile Guimet Prize and the First Novel Prize in France. Prajwal has been the Clayton B Ofstad endowed distinguished writer-in-residence at Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri, and a writer-in-residence at The Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies. He was on the jury of the 2018 Dylan Thomas Prize.

Pushpesh Pant

Dr. Pushpesh Pant is an Author, Columnist, Broadcaster, Anchor, and some time Teacher. He has taught and researched for over four decades at the JNU and has published over fifty books of which twenty deal with food. India: The Cookbook made it to the New York Times bestseller list in 2010 and has been translated into Dutch and German. His most recent book The Indian Vegetarian Cookbook came out in 2018 and was published by Phaidon London. Two others are on their way to press: Politics of Food in India and Lazzatnama: Indian Food Lore. He has just finished a short memoir Ja Mere Bachpan in Hindi to be published by Rajkamal Prakashan.

Ramachandra Guha

Ramachandra Guha is one of India’s foremost historians and biographers. His books include a pioneering environmental history, The Unquiet Woods (1989) and an award-winning social history of cricket, A Corner of a Foreign Field (2002), which was chosen by The Guardian as one of the ten best books on cricket ever written. India after Gandhi (2007) was chosen as a book of the year by the Economist, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Time Out, and Outlook, and as a book of the decade in the Times of India, The Times of London, and The Hindu. His most recent book is a two- volume biography of Mahatma Gandhi. The first volume, Gandhi Before India (2014), was chosen as a notable book of the year by the New York Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. The second volume, Gandhi: The Years That Changed the World (2018), also received widespread acclaim. Ramachandra Guha’s awards include the Leopold- Hidy Prize of the American Society of Environmental History, the Daily Telegraph/Cricket Society prize, the Malcolm Adideshiah Award for excellence in social science research, the Ramnath Goenka Prize for excellence in journalism, the Sahitya Akademi Award, and the R. K. Narayan Prize. In 2009, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan, the Republic of India’s third highest civilian honour. In 2014, he was awarded a honorary doctorate in the humanities by Yale University. In 2015, he was awarded the Fukuoka Prize for contributions to Asian studies. In 2019, he was made a Honorary Foreign Member of the American Historical Association, only the third Indian to be given that honour.

Rodney Jackson

Dr. Rodney Jackson is Executive Director at Snow Leopard Conservancy. He is a leading expert on wild snow leopards and their high-mountain habitat. SLC has grown out of Rodney’s thirty years’ experience gained in working closely with rural herders and farmers whose lives are directly impacted when snow leopards prey upon their livestock. Upon receiving a 1981 Rolex Award for Enterprise, Rodney launched a pioneering radio-tracking study of snow leopards in the remote mountains of the Nepalese Himalaya. The four-year study led to the cover story in the June 1986 National Geographic. In addition, the June, 2008 issue of National Geographic featured Rodney’s work with the Snow Leopard Conservancy India. He has been a finalist for the Indianapolis Prize in 2008, 2010, 2012, 2016, and 2018 – the first to be nominated three times consecutively. The Indianapolis Prize is the world’s largest individual monetary award for animal conservation.

Rohit Chakravarty

Rohit Chakravarty is a PhD student at the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research in Germany. He studies bats in the Himalaya region of Uttarakhand, investigating how their diversity changes across elevations, what they eat and generally, how they get by their lives in the mountains. He has previously worked on bats in the Andaman Islands and has co-authored the book, The Naturalist's Guide to the Mammals of India.

Rukun Advani

Rukun Advani got his PhD from Cambridge University in 1982 and worked for eighteen years in academic publishing in New Delhi. In 2000 he and his wife Anuradha Roy moved to Ranikhet, from where they have been publishing scholarly books under their own imprint, Permanent Black.

Sanjay Nepal

Sanjay Nepal has been working as a tour guide & trip leader since September 1997 in Nepal, India, Bhutan & Tibet. He is known for his anecdotes and deep knowledge of the religion and culture of the sub-continent. He has traveled extensively in Europe, USA and Australia for seminars and lecture tours on Buddhism & Hinduism as well as Palmistry & Chinese Face Reading. A polyglot, he has published several articles in English journals in Nepal. His other passion is writing poetry.

Sanjay Panday

Dr. Sanjay Panday is a lecturer at Folk Performing Arts, HNB Garhwal University. After his masters in Classical Music he did his PhD on Study of the Songs of Nanda Devi. He is a Sangeet Prabhakar in Classical Singing, Folk Singing, Tabla & Dance. He has produced musical audio albums on Nanda Devi Songs, Raman Chaiti Songs, Pandav Leela, etc. He has also sung for the international film Dev Bhoomi.

Sanjay Sondhi

Sanjay Sondhi is a Dehradun-based naturalist. An engineering graduate from IIT-Kanpur, in 2009, he set up TITLI TRUST (www.titlitrust.org), a nature conservation not-for-profit organisation, which is devoted to studying and protecting India's lesser known flora and fauna. The Trust’s primary focus is conservation and livelihood programs with local communities, conservation education and outreach and resolving human-wildlife conflict. He has authored numerous books and technical papers on amphibians and reptiles, birds, butterflies and moths and other Indian wildlife.

Sanjeeva Pandey

Sanjeeva Pandey has maintained an abiding passion for the Himalayas, especially for conservation of the Himalayan environment, throughout his career with the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department, spanning over 35years. From 1998 to 2006, he served as Director, Great Himalayan National Park (GHNP), a prime hotspot of biological diversity where he engaged himself in biodiversity conservation through livelihood based natural resource management, a subject on which was awarded his PhD (2013). His efforts with Friends of GHNP have resulted in inscription of GHNP Conservation Area as a World Heritage Site in June 2014. He has co-authored a book on GHNP with Dr. Anthony Gaston.

Santiago Girelli

The Woodstock Students Virtual Choir Production was completely recorded from home by WS Students, edited in India and UK during Nov 2020 to be premiered at the Mussoorie Mountain Festival 2020. Artistic Direction and Production by Dr. Santiago Lusardi Girelli - Voice and Choir Master at Woodstock School. ‘Seasons of Love’ is a song from the 1996 Broadway musical RENT, a rock musical with music, lyrics by Jonathan Larson, based on Giacomo Puccini's 1896 opera La Bohème. In the song the cast sings the famous Five hundred twenty-five thousand, six hundred minutes (the number of minutes in a common year). The lyrics ask what the proper way is to quantify the value of a year in human life, concluding in the chorus that the most effective means is to ‘measure in love’. In this new normality we all are living due to the Covid19 lockdown, we want to reconsider life, and measure this 2020 in new parameters, and the best way to do it is always one, let's measure life in love. The world-famous musical The Sound of Music was released in 1965 and immediately became one of the most successful music score in history, having sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. Today, more than 50 years later, not only for its musical beauty but for its significant lyrics, The Sound of Music inspires us all once again in these challenging moments we are experiencing due to the Covid 19 lockdown. The Sound of Music leads us to raise up with hope, and to transform our nostalgia for the Himalayan Mountains in a way that only music can do, by creating a path to connect in distance through the beauty of singing.

Sejal Worah

Dr Sejal Worah is a resident of Mussoorie and Delhi, depending on the hat she is wearing. As Programme Director of WWF India in New Delhi, she manages a multi-disciplinary team of professionals working on various facets of environmental conservation and sustainable development. Prior to this, she spent over a decade working on conservation in South and Southeast Asia and in East Africa. More recently, she has migrated back to Mussoorie where she has set up Uttarakhand’s first Private Nature Reserve at Jabarkhet which aims to combine forest restoration and conservation with generation of local livelihoods and demonstration of the value of nature.

Shavaun Kidd

Shavaun Kidd is the Outreach Conservation Educator for the Snow Leopard Conservancy. She also serves as social media manager, maintaining the Conservancy’s presence on a variety of platforms. Shavaun is responsible for the online newsletter and maintains the Conservancy’s website. In addition, she handles online fundraising sales. Shavaun earned a Master of Liberal Arts and Sciences Degree focusing on conservation education and anthrozoology from Western Illinois University.

Shekhar Pathak

Shekhar Pathak is a Himalayan traveler and a historian. He has published many books, research papers and articles. He has edited 20 volumes of PAHAR. Last year his work on the Chipko movement Hari Bhari Ummeed was published. A collection of his essays Dastan-i-Himalay (2 volumes) is being published by Vani and another work The Chipko Movement: A People's History by Permanent Black. He is currently working on The Idea of Opening of Himalaya, which he initiated at NMML.

Shweta Basnett

Shweta Basnett is from Sikkim and has been working on the Himalayan Rhododendrons for over a decade. She is interested in using Rhododendron as a model system to investigate plant-pollinator interactions, species' life histories, and seasonal phenologies. Currently, she is investigating how the biochemical traits of Himalayan Rhododendron vary along the elevation gradient. She has published several research papers, popular articles, and book chapters. For her Ph.D. research, she received the Best Paper Award from the International Phenology Conference, supported by the International Society of Biometeorology.

Stefan Fiol

Stefan Fiol researches drumming, dance, ritual practice, popular music and the histories of commercial and folkloric cultural representation of the Uttarakhand Himalayas and North India. He is Professor of Ethnomusicology and Affiliated Faculty in Asian Studies at the University of Cincinnati. His monograph, Recasting Folk in the Himalayas: Indian Music, Media and Social Mobility, was published by University of Illinois Press in 2017. His current research project explores drumming (specifically the dhol and damaun) as a tool of historiography in the central Himalayas, specifically through mapping drumming practice and reading shifts and continuities against insights from oral history, archaeology and sociolinguistics.

Stephen Venables

Stephen Venables was the first British mountaineer to reach the summit of Mt. Everest without supplemental oxygen. In 1988 he ascended a new route up the massive Kangshung Face, with a joint American-Canadian-British team, and survived a solo bivouac above 8,000 meters. He has made numerous first ascents of other peaks in the Himalaya, Hindu Kush and Karakoram. Venables has received numerous awards and has served as past president of the Alpine Club. He is the author of more than a dozen books and is also well known as a public speaker and commentator, appearing in documentary films and television shows featuring adventures in the mountains. His interview with Harish Kapadia is part of the Himalayan Club’s oral history archive.

Suchit Basnet

Suchit Basnet is a leading ornithologist and naturalist from Nepal. He began his career in wildlife tourism as a full-time naturalist in Nepal’s Chitwan National Park in 1989. During his stint there, he accumulated an invaluable knowledge of the fauna and flora of the forests and wetlands of Nepal’s lowlands. Since 1994, he has been a full-time guide at Naturetrek, leading groups throughout Nepal and India. He was chairman of Nepal’s Rare Birds Committee for eight years. Till date, he has discovered five bird species new to Nepal.

Sujeev Shakya

Sujeev Shakya is a thought leader who traverses many worlds. He earned the title of Nepal's CEO (chief eternal optimist) for the optimism he projected in his book, Unleashing Nepal. He writes and speaks extensively on business, development, economy and leadership. He writes a regular column for the Kathmandu Post. His book Unleashing The Vajra – Nepal’s Journey Between India and China was launched at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2020.

Suman Singh Panwar

Suman Singh Panwar's story mirrors the mountains that sustain him - constantly shifting but toweringly firm. It is a traditional Garhwali story of unprecedented change. Suman is at once a subsistence farmer, a digital nomad, a world traveler, a fishing guide, a trekker, an educator, a conservationist, and a father. His is the story of a pahari who is redefining what it means to be from the Himalayas.

Suniti Bhushan Datta

Suniti Bhushan Datta is a consultant wildlife biologist, mountain/wilderness skills instructor, nature educator, photographer and endurance cyclist, based in Dehradun. He is frequently found amongst mountains and forests, birdwatching, and documenting and photographing wildlife. Along with a passion for wildlife and the outdoors, Suniti has diverse interests that include trekking and mountaineering, astronomy, survival and navigation, military history, aviation and painting.

Takar Nabam

Takar Nabam hails from Doimukh, Arunachal Pradesh, India. In 2002, he was gifted his first guitar on the condition that he could not let his academics take a back seat. In 1998, he moved base to Delhi. Between playing sessions for several artists, to teaching music at several schools, he found his solace in songwriting. 
In 2016, his debut record, ‘Same Sky’ received modest reviews from Rolling Stone India, The Indian Express, among others. ’This Home That Home ‘released in 2018, marked a significant departure in sound from his first album, reflecting a blend of the different influences on his music. Takar is presently back in his hometown, rediscovering his culture and writing songs in his native dialect.

Tania Saili Bakshi

Dr. Tania Saili Bakshi, third generation Mussoorie-wali has had a highly professional successful track record of more than a decade of filing stories as a bilingual Reporter for NDTV 24 x7 and NDTV India. Presently a consultant with NDTV, she is an Editor for ‘Newspost’ Uttarakhand’s three year old bilingual news web-portal. In the past she did put pen to paper and wrote articles for magazines and newspapers like Deccan Herald; Garhwal Post; Hindustan Times, Discover India and Democratic World. Tania has also carried out editing and translation work for National Institute for Administrative Research, Mussoorie and various NGOs.

Tetseo Sisters

Tetseo Sisters are siblings who have spent their young lives promoting the nearly forgotten music of the Chakhesang Naga tribe that they inherited from their parents. Their songs are melodious, focused on vocal harmonies - rich in tones and nuances culminating in a startling perfection of rhymes and rhythm. Often accompanied by the single stringed ‘Tati ‘and their guitar toting brother Mhaseve, the sisters - Mercy, Kuvelu, Alune and Azi, delight with a fresh new experience. They sing about life lessons, nature, love and friendship, hope, courage and youthful ambitions, values, time and living an inspiring life.

Virginia Jealous

Virginia Jealous’s most recent book is Rapture’s Roadway. It’s a memoir about her father’s obsession with poet 'Laurence Hope', whose exotic, erotic Indian Love Lyrics made her (yes, she's a woman!) a global celebrity in the early 20th century. Poems that illuminate Hope's experience of the high Himalaya are the focus of this festival session. Virginia is based in Denmark, in Western Australia.

Vivek Sarkar

As a curious nature enthusiast, Vivek has always found the faunal diversity quite intriguing. Amongst all of them, he closely followed butterflies for over a decade. For the past few years, he has been completely occupied by the loud yet unknown world of cicadas, so much so that he started documenting their diversity during his stay in Uttarakhand. Presently he is pursuing a PhD studying them, parallel to his job at Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun.