While in school looking out for scorpions, snakes and lizards was what kept me busy during those long summer vacations spent in my native Sindhudurg, Maharashtra . However, it was Sanjay Gandhi National Park that helped me discover wildlife in my own backyard in Mumbai and ever since I have been hooked. I volunteered with BNHS's Conservation Education Center as a nature interpreter and also took part in herbivore population monitoring surveys conducted by Center for Wildlife Studies in Karnataka during my graduate years. I followed my interest in wildlife ecology and conservation by pursuing a postgraduate degree in the field from Wildlife Institute of India, Dehradun. I studied the responses of rainforest lizard communities to tea plantation edges in Anaimalai Hills of Southern Western Ghats for my master's thesis. I have developed an interest in bio-geography, community ecology and population ecology while pursuing my coursework at WII, and I am keenly interested in how their theory can be applied in practice. It was during my master's course that I first visited Kedarnath WLS and Nandadevi and had a chance to explore wildlife in the Himalayas, this along with a brief stay at Spiti with NCF's team stroked my interest in working in high altitudes. My current work with NCF's High-Altitude Program involves assisting with the long-term monitoring of snow leopard populations.