Pin Valley National Park

Pin Valley National Park protects a stretch of stark, high-altitude cold desert terrain in Spiti, one of the last strongholds of the elusive snow leopard alongside populations of Himalayan ibex and other high-altitude wildlife. The park's harsh, largely barren landscape, dotted with small Buddhist monasteries and villages practising subsistence agriculture, offers a genuinely different Himalayan experience from the greener, more forested parks further south.

Winter snow leopard tracking expeditions, though physically demanding given the extreme cold, have grown in popularity among dedicated wildlife travellers, drawn by Spiti's status as one of the more accessible regions globally for a realistic chance of spotting this notoriously elusive cat in the wild.

Declared a national park in 1987 specifically to protect the region's snow leopard and high-altitude wildlife population, Pin Valley remains one of the least visited of India's national parks given its extreme remoteness and climate.

Accessed via Kaza, about 3-4 hours further by road into the Pin Valley itself.