Protima Gauri Bedi[2][3] (12 October 1948 – 18 August 1998)[4] was an Indian model turned Odissi exponent.

Her father was Laxmichand Gupta, a trader belonging to a business family from the Karnal district, Haryana, and her mother Reba, was of Bengali by origin.

In 1974, she came into the news for streaking during the daytime at Juhu Beach in Mumbai for the launch of the Bollywood magazine Cineblitz.

Nrityagram is also the venue of the annual dance festival Vasanta Habba, which first began in 1994 and attracted 40,000 visitors when it was last held in 2004.

[12] Protima's son, Siddarth, suffered from schizophrenia and committed suicide in July 1997 while he was studying in North Carolina.

[14] In a newspaper interview given in April 1998, while camping at Rishikesh during the Kumbh Mela, she stated that she had decided to surrender herself to the Himalayas, expressing that it was the call of the mountains that had drawn her in and she also speculated about the outcome of this journey, believing that whatever lay ahead was certain to be something positive.

[15] Subsequently, in August 1998, Protima Gauri set off on her pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, and it was there that she disappeared after the Malpa landslide, near Pithoragarh,[16] in the Himalayas.

The book Timepass is derived from Protima's journals and letters, compiled and published by her daughter, Pooja Bedi, in 1999.