There are photographs that document a place. Then there are photographs that remind us why that place matters.
I first met Shiv Kunal Verma in the 1980s, when he went on to film the landmark Project Tiger television series for Sanctuary. Over the decades that followed, our conversations were seldom confined to wildlife. They wandered across mountains, rivers, forests, military history and the extraordinary landscapes that have shaped India’s natural and cultural heritage. Through all those years, one thing remained constant: an unwavering belief that the story of conservation begins with understanding the landscape itself.
Few landscapes illustrate that truth better than the Eastern Himalaya.
For more than a century, the McMahon Line has occupied an important place in history, diplomacy, and national security. It has appeared on countless maps, generated volumes of debate and remained central to discussions on India’s eastern frontier. Yet remarkably few people have ever had the opportunity to see the landscape through which it passes.
That is what makes this photographic journey so special.
Flying from the Bhutan Trijunction to the Myanmar Trijunction, Kunal has documented not simply a political boundary, but an entire mountain system. Ancient passes crossed by explorers, glaciers that nourish great rivers, forests that shelter extraordinary biodiversity and watersheds that define the frontier unfold here as parts of one continuous landscape. Geography, history and ecology become inseparable.
As I turned these pages, another story quietly emerged. Again and again, the photographs revealed glaciers carrying less snow than expected, frozen lakes already beginning to thaw, and high mountain landscapes that appeared subtly different from those many of us remember. The images make no claims and draw no conclusions. They simply bear witness. Sometimes that is the most compelling form of evidence.
For nearly half a century, Sanctuary has sought to encourage people to look beyond the obvious, because conservation begins not with legislation or policy, but with awareness. We protect only what we understand, and we understand only what we have truly seen.
That, perhaps, is the greatest gift of this remarkable photographic essay. It reminds us that mountains are far more than dramatic skylines or distant frontiers. They are the source of our rivers, the refuge of our biodiversity, the moderators of our climate and the foundations upon which entire civilisations have evolved.
In the end, this is not simply a story about the McMahon Line. It is a reminder of why mountains matter.