Neelima Vallangi is an independent climate journalist, photographer and documentary filmmaker from India, splitting time between Kathmandu, Nepal and India. Her stories, images and films have been published in The Guardian, Nature Climate Change, Deutsche Welle, Smithsonian.com, Al Jazeera English, BBC, South China Morning Post, The Hindu, etc. With a keen interest in mountain ecosystems and climate change, she specialises in unique stories and in-depth features from the Himalayan region, the Indian subcontinent & South Asia.
Deeply inspired by the many months spent among the lofty peaks of the Himalayas over the last decade, the unprecedented changes taking place in the high mountains moved her to exclusively start covering climate change since 2019. She has more than 15 years of experience working in the high-altitude Himalayas, and currently builds on that formative experience to deliver impactful stories, media projects and direct documentary films on the emerging challenges of climate change and associated environmental and cultural shifts in these underreported regions, across India and Nepal Himalaya.
She is passionate about demystifying climate change through creative communication, bridging the gap between science and policy through impactful storytelling, spotlighting regional climate experts in global media platforms, and mentoring journalists and storytellers from the Global South to help cover climate change. Her work on climate change spans a documentary film that has been broadcast to millions, an award-winning photo story that was part of a worldwide travelling exhibition, short films that have been screened at high-level UN and global policy meets, an easy-to-understand book on climate change for the public and policymakers, and several articles for the world’s top media publications covering climate science and climate impacts. She has also participated in and organised several public-facing events, giving presentations about climate change, joining panel discussions and screening her work.
Prior to shifting her focus entirely to covering climate change, she spent years travelling and working as a travel and nature writer/photographer, which took her to incredible places around the world. She has spent a month hiking the Lycian Way in Turkey and another month overlanding in Mongolia, all the way from the capital, Ulaanbatar, to the northernmost tip, touching the Russian Taiga. She has climbed active volcanoes in Bali and Lombok, and snorkelled in the pristine marine environment of Raja Ampat in Indonesia. Closer to home, she has travelled to almost every state in India and spent months hiking across the Western Ghats and the Himalayan range. She summited her first mountain peak in 2012, the 6150m-high Stok Kangri in Ladakh, and realised that it’s not the height of the mountain, but the breadth and diversity of the high-altitude landscape that interests her most. She has since gone on dozens of expeditions across the Himalaya, in India and Nepal, seeking out the forbidden regions and forgotten stories. Witnessing the beauty and abundance of these precious places instilled in her a deep concern for the natural world, eventually shaping her future work to highlight the precarious reality of remote regions and vulnerable communities under constant threat from climate change and biodiversity loss.
Neelima is known to spin a good yarn, has worked in the software industry as a developer in what seems like another lifetime, and continues to enjoy purposefully getting lost in the mountains and going to faraway corners where Google Maps fails.
GRANTS:
Small Grant Recipient, India Science Book Fellowship 2025-26, Foundation for Advancing Science and Technology – India, 2026
National Geographic Society’s COVID-19 Emergency Fund for Journalists Grantee, 2021
Travel & Reporting Grant Recipient, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, 2018
Clients:
[Editorial] — The Guardian, BBC, Nature Climate Change, South China Morning Post, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeera English, Smithsonian.com, National Geographic Traveller India, The Hindu, Mint, The Hindu Business Line, Indian Express, Travel + Leisure South Asia
[Commercial] — PBS, International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development (ICIMOD), UNDP Nepal, Thailand Tourism Board, Medtronic India, Nestlé India Limited, Greenpeace India, Indonesia Tourism Board, SOURCE Global, BBC, National Geographic
As seen in the Media:
Meet The Nomad Who Stopped Travelling For Leisure To Save The Planet | Travel + Leisure India and South Asia
“Climate Grief” Explained, And How To Cope With It | Vogue (UK)
Young Climate Justice Activists Are Fighting For Our Collective Survival | Forbes
Delayed snowfall, forest fires, migration, and reduced tourism—India’s mountains are crying for help | Forbes
Love In The Anthropocene | Sanctuary Asia (Invited to contribute to the special issue)
Highlighting the climate crisis with Nepali stories | The Kathmandu Post
Two storytellers unmask the human face of climate change | Mongabay
Unmasking the human face of climate change: two storytellers present a film on the climate emergency in Nepal | One Earth
Chasing the Monsoon | The Hindu