In this engaging autobiography, India's greatest ornithologist Salim Ali (1896-1987) recounts his exciting experiences in the outdoors and chronicles his unusual love of birds. Eighty-seven at the time of writing and an internationally renowned figure, he vividly describes expeditions to almost every part of the subcontinent, including the old Princely States, Burma, Sikkim, Tibet, Bhutan and Afghanistan. As he tells of his life as motorcyclist, timber merchant, scientist, author and decorated celebrity, a picture also emerges of pre-independent India, of Maharajas and colonial administration.
`a most readable book that can be thoroughly recommended, not only for its ornithological interest, but also for the insight it gives into Indian life' - J Summers-Smith, IBIS