Once upon a time, the world’s largest river island, Majuli, was a barren, dry and almost desolate land lost in northern India, but only before a milk vendor dared to change the landscape and its weather.
Some say that caring for the environment is a lost cause, but this guy is there to prove everyone wrong.
As a teenager, Jadav Payeng became so preoccupied about soil erosion in 1979 that he wanted to plant a couple of trees.
But he continued to plant more and more trees over the next four decades and has so far succeeded in creating a forest larger in size than New York’s Central Park.
“First with bamboo trees, then with cotton trees. I kept planting — all different kinds of trees,” Payeng says.
“I never feel danger in the forest,” says this self-described lone wolf. “It’s my biggest home,” a home which in addition to tigers is filled with deer, monkeys, elephants, and a wide variety of birds.