Face to Watch

When the king of Bhutan gave Rupin Dang '94 ' his first camera at the age of 6, little did the ruler know that it would launch a career in film. Two decades later, Dang has become the premier chronicler of his native India's flora and fauna. In addition to directing and shooting more than. 10 documentary films in the Himalayan outdoors, Dang's work includes the fieldguide Flowers ofthe Western Himalaya and regular columns on wildlife and the environment for The Times of India. He also founded Wilderness Films India, a production house with the first and largest library of outdoor and Himalayan stock film footage in Asia. "When you love the wilds so much, and you're a part of them, you grow up thinking of ways and means of staying on in the wilds," says Dang, who balances life in New Delhi with time in a house he owns in the heart of the Himalaya mountains. His current project is a film chronicling Nanda Devi, a 25,660-foot mountain considered by climbers to be the ultimate Himalayan peak and never before seen internationally on film.