Nanda's Neelkanth

Chandra Prakash Kala was born and brought up in Sumadi - one of the popular villages of Garhwal in Uttarakhand state of India. He studied Life Sciences at the HNB Garhwal University, Srinagar before doing his PhD on the 'Ecology and conservation of the Valley of Flowers National Park' at the Forest Research Institute (Deemed University), Dehradun. He has published over one hundred seventy five articles and half a dozen of books, which include "The Valley of Flowers: Myth and Reality" and "Medicinal Plants of Indian Trans-Himalaya" His decade long strenuous study of the 'Valley of Flowers' laid the foundation stone for tagging it in the list of World Heritage Sites. He served many institutions, including the Wildlife Institute of India, the G.B. Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development, the National Medicinal Plants Board, and the Indian Institute of Forest Management with various capacities. In two decades of wandering, he visited widely across innumerable valleys and mountains of the Himalaya and the Alps.