Cunha. It won the Best Rural Architecture award in 1991. To raise funds to run Nrityagram, the tourist resort Kuteeram was built in 1992. Nrityagram is also the venue of the annual dance festival Vasanta Habba, which was first started in 1994 and had 40,000 visitors when it was last held in 2004. It was not held from 2005 to 2007, due to the advent of the 2004 tsunami and a shortage of funds. Final years Protima's son, Siddarth, suffered from schizophrenia and committed suicide in July 1997 while he was studying in North Carolina. This changed the course of her life irrevocably, as in early 1998, she announced her retirement and changed her name to Protima Gauri. Soon she started travelling in the Himalayan region, starting with Leh. In a newspaper interview given in April 1998, camping at Rishikesh during the Kumbh Mela, she said, "I have decided to give myself up to the Himalayas. It is the call of the mountains which has beckoned me to them. And who knows what may come out of it? It is bound to be something good," Subsequently, in August, Protima Gauri set off on her pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, and it was there that she disappeared after the Malpa landslide, near Pithoragarh, in the Himalayas. Her remains and belongings were recovered after several days, along with seven other bodies found in the landslide in Malpa, a village near the India-Nepal border. In her autobiography, Timepass, based on her journals and letters collated and published by her daughter, Pooja Bedi, in 2000, she gives an account of her relationships and lifestyle, the birth of her dream project, Nrityagram, and her eventual transition into a sanyasin towards the end of her life, when she retired from public life and wanted to explore the Himalayas. Personal life Protima Bedi met Kabir Bedi during her modeling career. After a few months, she left her parents' house to live with him. She married Kabir and had two children - including Pooja Bedi. They separated in 1974. See also Indian women in dance Notes References Time Pass: The Memoirs of Protima Bedi, with Pooja Bedi Ebrahim. New Delhi, Penguin, 2000. . External links An Interview with Protima Gauri Special feature on Protima Bedi 1948 births 1998 deaths Bedi Protima Deaths in landslides St. Xavier's College, Mumbai alumni Odissi exponents Indian female classical dancers Bengali models Indian Hindus