Kullu is from a small village in central India but he found his calling in the Himalayas
His first visit to the Himalayas was when, as a teenager, he went to train at the Nehru Institute of Mountaineering in Uttarkashi. What started as a pursuit of adventure soon turned to a pursuit of curiosity and knowledge. Kullu's first opportunity to study wildlife in the Himalayas came when he did his master's degree in wildlife science and conservation from the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Bangalore. He spent an entire winter following the blue sheep Pseudois nayaur, studying their foraging behaviour in the Spiti valley at an elevation of 4,500 m above sea level.
It was his PhD on the snow leopard that changed his life. He has been studying the snow leopard Panthera uncia and its prey species across the mountains of Central and South Asia ever since.