 Imagine meeting a tiger on foot in the jungle. It happened to me many years ago, while I was a volunteer in a tiger census program in Nagaholi National Park. So I was walking along with a forest guard who was armed, along a narrow path in the jungle, which was climbing up a little bit like that, early in the morning in summer. And suddenly we hear this sound, It's a tiger. It's one of the most hair-raising sounds you can hear in the Indian jungles. And we both crouched down on the path because I knew that the tiger was not very far away. And I didn't want to miss seeing that tiger. And then from this position when we crouched, after a minute or so I couldn't resist anymore because I didn't want to miss seeing the tiger. So I just stood up like this on my toes and glanced across that path. And there the tiger was, looking straight into my eyes. It was the most amazing moment of my life. But the tiger vanished in seconds. It's incredible how shy these animals are, despite their ferocious reputation. And I ended up as being the only volunteer in those 150-odd volunteers who volunteered for that program to have actually seen a tiger during the four-day census we had. So what do you do for a living? I'm a naturalist. And naturalists guide people like you to see wild animals in parks all around the world and hope to impact you to do something to save them and their habitats. And how do they become a naturalist? It all happened as I chased my childhood passion which was triggered off by reading Jim Corbett's stories. But the actual turning point came when I went to Jim Corbett National Park itself. It was four o'clock in the afternoon and it was already dark in this dense, solid jungle. And then stepped out a somber in its full winter coat, very shyly, and looked at me into my eyes. And that was it. It was love at first sight. And it tumbled into the world of animals head over heels. And here I am, standing before you. And in the next five minutes, I would like to take you on a journey of my love affair with wild animals over the past 25 years which took me to all the seven continents of this world and to some of the most remote and the beautiful parts of this world. For example, this exciting encounter I had with a lion in the magical Masaimara, which is one of the richest wildlife habitats in the world. I was camping with a friend in this campsite and one day we were walking around early in the morning and we came across this very fresh lion pug mark. And it crouched down to take a picture of this. And my friend grabbed me from behind and I thought he was playing a prank. I just tilted my head like that and there was this lion. We just made that pug mark maybe one minute before and it was staring at us. And I thought we would be just eaten like this. But luckily, it ran away. Let me tell you, every time this happens, I get actually disappointed that how come this fearsome predator didn't charge at us? And it only reaffirms the point that even this mighty beast think that man is the most dangerous beast. So this Masaimara is a magical place and I'm very fortunate to go there every year since the last 13 years. It's my annual pilgrimage. Back in India, I went to this astounding habitat in the Hemis National Park in the Himalayas and look how beautiful this habitat is to look for the most elusive cat in the world. And in my first trip itself, I was lucky to see the grey ghost of the Himalayas, the snow leopard. Imagine, there are just 250 of them left in the wild in India and not more than 2500 in the whole world. That's how fragile these habitats are. But one of my most exciting encounters was with this great ape, the orangutan. In the steaming jungles of Borneo, I was walking along with two local guides, again down this narrow path as you can see and from the opposite side was walking this mighty orangutan. It was a male. Just look at its mighty head and the massive forearms and the way they walk on the fish. So it came straight towards us and my local guides just whispered, just sit there and just disappeared because the clearing there was very small. So they disappeared. So I just crouched there next to the path and the orangutan came and settled down not very far from me and it kept staring at me. I was obviously frightened but the moment it settled down a bit he started grooming himself then I managed to gather some courage and take a few pictures. Obviously he'll ask me, weren't you scared? Yes, I was but I also felt a strange kind of peace in his presence and as he walked away he kept looking at me a couple of times. So it is this very unique and powerful connection I'm able to make with wild animals around the world which completely moves me. For example, this absolutely surrealistic habitat of the Ethiopian wolf in Ethiopia. These are the Ethiopian highlands, extremely fragile landscapes and I was lucky to see this rare predator, the Ethiopian wolf. I had only one day in that park or this mountain gorillas in the Virunga mountains of Rwanda where I was very fortunate to see this powerful silverback mountain gorilla and even these animals are highly endangered. There are less than 400 left in the world or in the Arctic where I was lucky to see the polar bears, the mighty land predators and I had very close encounters with them and these habitats are rapidly disappearing because of the climate change or in the Antarctic where I was lucky to see the king penguins which is a very rare penguin to spot in summers. And just four days back when I got the mail from Ted, I was in Australia looking for rare animals and this is what I saw. What is this? This is a rare egg laying mammal the only two species in the world an echidna and this came out at three in the afternoon and it looked at me in my eye just like all the other animals and it seemed to give a message through me to all of you saying that I have been around on this earth 40 million years before you human beings so why don't you just empathize and share your planet with us. Thank you. Thank you.