Doomed for Doon

His parents marry at the Doon School itself; headmaster John Martyn bellows across the tables that the yet-unborn son must be registered for Doon. "I was doomed for Doon!"

Carried into Walong, NEFA

Across the Digaru on a swimming elephant, to a bamboo basha that tigers tested with their paws at night. His father's battalion, 2 Rajput, stood on the McMahon Line.

2 Rajput destroyed on the Nam Ka Chu

The battalion is annihilated in the opening of the China war. The grief and silence around that battle would become the germ of his life's work.

A camera, not a gun

At Kanha, aged four, a chance meeting with biologist George Schaller: shoot tigers with a camera, not with a gun.

Eleven months at Fort Benning

While his father tops the Allied officers' course in Georgia: Little League home runs, and Apollo 11 watched live on a neighbour's colour TV.

The assault on Akhaura

His father leads 18 Rajput in the Bangladesh War — earning a Battle Honour and a Mention-in-Despatches.

The Doon School — nicknamed "Fauji"

War paintings in the Art School, chief editor of the school paper Hell'uva Fag while still a junior, and top of the English Language paper in India's last Senior Cambridge batch.

He rebels against the army

Expected to enlist, at the NDA entrance exam he writes only his name and roll number and walks out.

Madras Christian College

From failing every first-semester subject to captain of the college tennis team; co-creates the campus festival "Deep Woods."

Opening the routes to Zanskar

Quits the Times of India for a quarter of the salary to open Himalayan trekking routes for Tiger Tops between Srinagar and Leh; crosses the 17,000-ft Umasi La into Zanskar in his first season.

A life saved on the Kanji La

On a late-season crossing, finds a frostbitten sixteen-year-old horseman left for dead in a stone shelter — revives him and pays to have him flown out. The boy lives.

First descent of the Marsyangdi

Eighth man on the first successful raft descent of Nepal's Marsyangdi river.

Shot in the shin at Kaziranga

Investigating rhino poaching, he chases poachers to the Brahmaputra and is shot — the slug dug out with a heated knife, the wound dressed with egg white.

Operation Blue Star

A surreal midnight audience with Lt Gen Sundarji; he witnesses the Golden Temple assault from Amritsar, then covers the Sikh Regiment mutiny at Ramgarh.

Bhopal, for the Associated Press

He walks the gas-soaked lanes of Nishatpura with a wet cloth over his face, and is the lone journalist in pursuit as Union Carbide's CEO is quietly flown out of India.

A napkin sketch for Rajiv Gandhi

Flying to Punjab rallies, he sketches an assassination vulnerability on a napkin mid-flight; by the next sortie, the rally platform design had been changed.

Wildlife camp, and a wolf hunt

Convenes the Army's first Wildlife Preservation Camp at Sariska; in Hazaribagh, joins a village beat against man-eating wolves and shoots two of the four himself.

He quits journalism for the jungles

After watching a staged "militant" photograph make the national front pages, he leaves journalism for good.

"You'll have to shoot yourself"

At Calcutta airport, with no cameraman in sight — the emergency that made him a cinematographer.

The Bastar wild buffalo

Deep in Naxal Bastar, from a watchtower in 46°C heat, he films the wild buffalo — the first photographic record since 1956 — then is escorted into Abuzmad by an armed Naxal column to film tribes few outsiders had seen.

KaleidoIndia is founded

With film editor Dipti Bhalla — the partnership named on the spot at the stamp-paper vendor's counter.

Call of the Wild

The five-part series for the Department of Tourism: wild tigers filmed mating at close range in Ranthambhore, forty elephants swimming a Periyar lake.

Twelve feet from a tusker

Alone beneath a tree in Corbett, camera running, as the resident tusker halts, studies him, and saunters off. "The closest I came to attaining Nirvana."

Marriage, then reconnaissance

Marries Dipti Bhalla in Bombay. Within weeks the two are flying reconnaissance across India for the IAF film.

Premiere on Doordarshan

Salt of the Earth, narrated by cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma, is telecast nationally — outdrawing the country's most popular programming.

The Naval Dimension trilogy

Carrier recoveries on INS Vikrant, missile launches filmed from a helicopter hovering at "hand-shaking distance."

Four days at gunpoint in Kashmir

For the Army's Green Flash films he spends four days embedded — hooded, at gunpoint — with a Hizbul Mujahideen group; the tapes are screened for the Prime Minister and the Army Chief.

Charting the Deep

His hydrography film is screened in Malta — and helps India beat the Royal Navy to the contract to chart Oman's waters.

Shown to President Clinton

His Kargil film is presented to Bill Clinton during the US state visit; Time magazine features it.

Aakash Yodha

A year flying with the IAF — formation aerobatics with the Surya Kirans, Su-30s, doors-off helicopter sorties to 20,000-ft Siachen posts.

Aakash Yodha on Air Force Day

It airs on Discovery — the Air Chief credits him with "single-handedly solving the IAF's recruitment problem." The Standard Bearers, his NDA film, follows weeks later.

First book: Ocean to Sky

India from the Air (Roli Books) — a decade of aerial photography, with a foreword by Rakesh Sharma.

The testimony of a survivor

In Varanasi he records Honorary Captain Darshat Singh — a Nam Ka Chu survivor shot some twenty times in 1962 — the testimony that will open his landmark book twelve years later.

The Military World Games

Shoots the Games film and book, teaching himself digital sports photography and out-shooting the international agencies.

The Northeast becomes a calling

The Northeast Palette, then the Assam Rifles 175th-anniversary volumes, released by President Pratibha Patil.

The Long Road to Siachen

The Question Why (Rupa) — its cover photograph one he had taken himself on a 2001 helicopter approach at 20,000 ft.

Courage & Conviction

Co-authors the autobiography of Gen V.K. Singh (Aleph), and is commissioned to write the definitive series on India's post-Independence wars.

The alternate-education mission begins

Packed lecture halls from Doon to Chennai reveal students starved of their own military history; he begins monthly lectures and, in October 2017, the first two-day Military History Seminar at Welham Boys'.

The Tamil Nadu volume, and Taipei

The Tamil Nadu volume of his southern project is launched in Chennai; the same year he presents it to President Tsai Ing-wen in Taipei.

The mission carries forward

The two-part Yodha: Illustrated Military History of India and a quartet of wildlife volumes carry the work onward: giving India back its military and natural history.

The Arunachal Trilogy

Three forthcoming volumes on Arunachal Pradesh — Western (The Sap Runs Perennial), Central (Ladders to Heaven) and Eastern (The Wild Green Kingdom) — a portrait of the state's land, peoples and wildlife.