Vignettes from Wild India!

Imagery in High Definition from across the Himalaya! A Himalayan Fox at a Snow Leopard kill, the Valley of Flowers, daisies in Landour, the Himalayan Barbet at its nest-hole, the White-breasted Dipper in the Teesta in Sikkim, and other images!

Wild India: Indian wildlife seems to get straight-jacketed into a mould that almost entirely comprises of the tiger! This is rather sad as the tiger is just one of the more prominent species that strikes us as beautiful and rare in the Indian wilderness. With its numbers in decline, we need to move away from the tiger as the focal point of wildlife tourism in India, and create interest in the numerous lesser cats, antelopes, deer, pheasants and other rare species of birds and animals that India harbours in the shadow of the great Himalayan mountains.

Arunachal Pradesh is Indian north-eastern most state and a tourism jewel in the rough. While the inner line permit and difficulty of access make visitation a somewhat tedious affair, once there, the domestic or international traveller is truly rewarded by the experience. The people are warm and welcoming, traditional and well-cultured, they are little changed by modern India and still continue with their age-old traditions. The weather is lovely year-round, the forests are green and salubrious, the wildlife diverse and engaging,the birdlife fabulous, and above all - the geography is diverse and unique.

I have been visiting Arunachal Pradesh since 1998 and ever since I discovered the Macaca munzala in Arunachal, the first and only new species of simian to have been discovered worldwide in the recent past, I kept returning for more!

Sikkim is truly India's hidden jewel. The last state to join the Indian union, it is a small state but has a wide range of attractions for a domestic or inbound international traveler. With a warm and welcoming local population, low crime rate, high hospitality quotient,cool and comfortable climate, green mountains, wide biodiversity, rich forests, bountiful rivers and much more, it is a tourism destination that is waiting to be discovered by a wider and more sophisticated international audience of the type the currently visits Bhutan. Sikkim has everything that Bhutan has going for it, and then some..

Back in 2009 and 2010, we wanted to expose the state's tourism bounty to a wider audience, and created this film at the end of 2010 to draw attention to all that the state can offer. We believe we have succeeded with this film and while it has been widely viewed, we would like it to reach a much larger audience, both in India and abroad, to heighten the tourism profile of the state and reward India's finest and most hidden tourism jewel. The people also need tourism at this point in time, as they recover from the most painful and debilitating earthquake. Despite the damage and human death tall that the tragedy wrecked, the people have put in their best to recover from it and even remain cheerful through the gloom. Tourism can be their saviour now!

Since we have the largest archive on the Himalaya in the world, in 2010 we decided to make a TVC that would attract the sophisticated global traveller to visit India and then travel around the Himalaya.

We feel the need this TVC successfully recreates the magic, adventure and excitement of being in the Himalaya and would like it to be shown to a wider global audience, to raise the profile of the Indian Himalaya and make people realize that there is more to the Himalaya than what is seen in Nepal, Bhutan and around Mt. Everest!

So many states touch our mountains that tourism in India can greatly gain from marketing our mountains better. Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal, Sikkim, West Bengal and Arunachal all stand to benefit.We would like to see Indian tourism gain from our chief geographical feature - the Himalaya!

This footage is part of the professionally-shot stock footage archive of Wilderness Films India Ltd., the largest collection of imagery from South Asia. The Wilderness Films India collection comprises of thousands of hours of high quality broadcast imagery, mostly shot on HDCAM 1080i High Definition, HDV and Digital Betacam. Write to us for licensing this footage on a broadcast format, for use in your production! We pride ourselves in bringing the best of India and South Asia to the world... wfi @ vsnl.com and [email protected].