The Van Gujjars are nomadic water buffalo herders who live in the forests and mountains of northern India. Traditionally, they dwell in the wilderness, where their world revolves around the feeding and well being of their animals. They spend the winter months in the lowland jungles of the Shivalik Hills, where thick foliage provides plenty of fodder for the buffaloes. Each April, however, temperatures there soar above 110 degrees;the leaves and grasses wither and die; creeks run dry. With nothing left for their animals to eat or drink, the Van Gujjars must move. Entire families, from infants to the elderly, trek with their herds up into the Himalayas, where melting snows reveal lush alpine meadows laced by gurgling streams. When the cold sets in at the end of September, they head back down to the Shivaliks, where the jungle has sprung back to life following the monsoon rains. The tribe has followed this cycle of seasonal migration – up in summer, down in winter, shunning settled village life – for over a thousand years.

Van Gujjars have special emotional relationships with their buffaloes, loving them as family members, and tending to them with devotion. They name each buffalo, and mourn for them when they die, almost as if they were human. As a result, they use the animals only for their milk, never slaughtering them for meat. In fact, though they are Muslim, Van Gujjars are traditionally vegetarian.

Even though they live in the wilds, hunting has never been a part of their culture. They have a profound understanding of the need to live in balance with nature, knowing that if the forest stays healthy, their families and their herds will stay healthy, and if the forest dies, so will they. Living sustainably has been the core ethic of the tribe since time immemorial.

In 2009, I joined the Van Gujjars on their spring migration, traveling with one extended family from the Shivaliks up into the Himalayas. For forty-four days, I walked with them, ate with them, helped them with their chores, and slept beside them on roadsides and in the mountains. As the days passed, we became close and came to care for each other deeply. I got a very personal sense of their immediate struggles and joys, as well as their hopes and dreams and fears for the future-not as a stereotypical group of tribal forest-dwellers, but as unique individuals with unique personalities, desires, and concerns.

It is my hope that my writings and photographs will give others who will never meet the Van Gujjars an intimate glimpse of their way of life, and will rouse sympathy for their struggles to adapt to a world that is changing rapidly around them, threatening the survival of their culture. The challenges they face include forced evictions from their traditional lands; the obvious shrinking of their forests due to logging, urban growth, and climate change; and the recent promotion by outsiders of more conservative forms of Islam than the Van Gujjars have ever before practiced.

Beyond all of that, I hope that through these images, by looking at their faces and into their eyes, you will feel a personal connection to the remarkable people who took me in like family, and sense their kindness, their dignity, their humor, and their humanity.