Arunachal’s Dibang Valley The local tales of mountain tigers drew
me to Arunachal Pradesh’s Dibang Valley in
2012. Little did I know that many other stories
were also waiting to unfold. I teamed up with
the local Idu Mishmi and started placing camera
traps across their forests. Twenty months
and more than 200 camera traps later, as
images came in, we found ourselves staring
in amazement at snapshots of medium-sized cats in a striking array of colours. Three sets of cat images confused us in particular: one with spots like those of a leopard, a darker one
with jaguar-like rosette pattern, and, a third
that was pitch black.