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In January 1952, Margaret Lee Weil, a 30-year-old journalist and photographer, arrived in India to pursue her dream of catching a glimpse of the man whom she had “hero-worshipped from 10,000 miles away all these years,” according to a particularly effusive diary entry.

Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, had just concluded weeks of campaigning for India’s first general election.

Ms. Weil was not alone in her adulation — thousands of Indians flocked to his appearances and broke down barricades to see Mr. Nehru as he gave speeches invoking India’s struggle for freedom in the wake of its hard-won independence. When the voting concluded in February, Mr. Nehru’s Congress party had won 364 of 489 seats in Parliament.

Ms. Weil had traveled from her home in New York to India to meet Mr. Nehru. She had read his books in college, and became so inspired by his autobiography that “the only thing I talked about, read about, dreamed about was India.”

The fight for India’s independence came alive for her through his words. “I want to let him know he brought me to India,” she wrote.

While in India, Ms. Weil traveled extensively, writing for foreign publications about gas pipelines and the inoculation of children at remote health centers, as well as taking photographs of eunuchs, a highly marginalized community in India. Her adopted daughter provided a scanned copy of her diary, as well as letters she wrote to friends during this time.

In August, she decided to follow Mr. Nehru on his vacation to Sonamarg, a glacier in the mountains of the valley of Kashmir. The photographs she took during that trip offer an intimate view of Mr. Nehru and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, who would become India’s first female prime minister. Kashmir was a significant setting; it was where his family was from and the place he fought to keep a part of India.

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Accompanied by a friend, Ms. Weil “rattled up the Himalayas in a little tin buggy,” by which she meant her rickety yellow car, nicknamed “Miss Lemon.”

In her diary, Ms. Weil wrote that she caught up with Mr. Nehru — who was part of the Kashmiri Hindu Brahmin community known as Pandits — in Srinagar after a guard of honor ceremony with the armed forces there.

“A guard of honor snapped to a proud salute; Indian bagpipers in incongruous Scots kilts, scarlet jackets and tiger skins flung regally over their shoulders wailed the national anthem, and then at the first glimpse of that famous white Gandhi cap and red rose in his boutonniere, the throngs waiting since before daylight broke into cheers amidst a bright flurry of waving flags and bouquets. Then as the last melodious “Jai Hind” ricocheted in the Himalayan peaks, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru walked briskly down the plane ramp to his ancestral home, his paradise on earth, his picture poster Valley of Kashmir.”

Ms. Weil asked Mr. Nehru if she could take pictures of him for Collier’s, an American magazine.

“I don’t care who takes my pictures as long as they don’t get in my way,” he snapped, according to one entry.

A 34-year-old Indira Gandhi, according to Ms. Weil, had “long dark hair and a narrow sensitive face – a double of her father’s.” Mr. Nehru, in Ms. Weil’s words, appeared “every inch the statesman,” and “amazingly youthful for a man in his sixties.”

The next day, she continued up the mountainside until she reached Sonamarg, a village of stone huts next to a stream, with the mighty glacier in the background.

At Sonamarg, Ms. Weil wrote that she was stopped at an army outpost some distance from Mr. Nehru’s tents. After three hours, she saw Mr. Nehru and his daughter coming down to meet her.

She told Mr. Nehru that she had never seen such a beautiful place, and he inquired about her safety on her journey.

Mr. Nehru and his daughter were both surprised by Miss Lemon — they wanted to see what she described as her car’s ability to fold into a bed through the operation of a lever.

Ms. Gandhi was particularly fascinated. “You Americans!” she exclaimed, according to Ms. Weil. “You think of everything MECHANICAL!”

Ms. Weil wrote how later that day, she captured photographs of the countryside with Mr. Nehru.

“It seemed so unreal, being there in a remote Himalayan beauty spot with the man whose printed words had fired my dream of India,” Ms. Weil wrote.

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The next day, Ms. Weil accompanied Mr. Nehru and Ms. Gandhi on a horse ride. Mr. Nehru helped her during the ride and instructed her on including the backdrop of the mountains in her frame.

During the ride, Ms. Weil found it difficult to make inroads with the young Ms. Gandhi.

“I caught up with Indira, who seemed rather cool with me. Baffled, I asked her if she thought I had been taking too many pictures and perhaps getting in the Prime Minister’s way. She said her father enjoyed having his picture taken. It was then that I noticed that my loco pony was kicking her thoroughbred.”

After their expedition ended the next day, Ms. Weil followed Mr. Nehru and his entourage back to Srinagar, then to Delhi. A rude shock awaited Ms. Weil in the nation’s capital, where the government authorities told her that she would have to leave the country, compelled by a rumor that she was spying for the United States, according to a letter she wrote to a friend.

The Indian authorities did not approve Ms. Weil’s visa requests and she was forced to leave the country in May 1953. Maya Weil, Ms. Weil’s adopted daughter, said that this experience stuck with her mother. “She spent a lot of time in clearing her name,” she said in a telephone interview.

Maya Weil said after Ms. Weil returned to the United States she taught and engaged in social work. She died in 1992 of lung cancer.

The younger Ms. Weil said that even though her mother wrote to Mr. Nehru several times explaining the visa problem, she never received a response.

“She loved India more than anything,” Maya Weil said, adding that she felt, prophetically as it turned out, “that she would never be allowed to return.”