Marginlands: A Journey into India's Vanishing Landscapes

National Geographic journalist Kumar-Rao debuts with an exhilarating and sumptuous account of India’s imperiled natural environments and the disappearing traditions of their inhabitants. Drawing on nearly a decade spent traversing the Ganga-Brahmaputra-Meghna basin, “the most populated river basin in the world”—which spans across northern India and into Nepal, China, and Bangladesh—Kumar-Rao reports on locals with sophisticated understandings of the natural world around them. These include desert-dwellers at the far reaches of the basin near the border with Pakistan who determine where to dig wells based on traditions grounded in ecology, like observing the invisible borders maintained by birds; such well-diggers accept no payment, considering the work “sacred.” Kumar-Rao reflects poignantly on the degradation of this “elemental connection between the land and its people,” pointing not only to the devastation wrought by the modern era’s lack of ecological consideration (such as the frequent destructive and deadly flooding in today’s Mumbai due to the loss of protective wetlands) but also to a more ephemeral loss of the fundamental human experience of witnessing things that “become clear only at ground level, while moving slowly through the landscape and paying close attention.” Combining an infectious awe at the resilience and power of the natural world with bracing reportage on environmental devastation, this enthralls. (Feb.)