India's Other National Parks, From the Himalayan North to the Western Ghats

Start in Ladakh. Hemis was established in 1981 across about 4,400 square kilometers, the largest national park in India by area and the only one lying north of the Himalayas, and it holds the highest recorded density of snow leopards of any protected area in the world.

Dachigam lies about 22 kilometers from Srinagar on the eastern side of Dal Lake. Its land was first protected in 1910, originally to safeguard the drinking water of Srinagar, and its name refers to ten villages relocated at that time.

Kishtwar was established on February 4 1981 across about 2,190 square kilometers at altitudes from 1,700 to 4,800 meters. Glacial valleys and silver fir and spruce forest give way to alpine pasture that shelters the Himalayan snowcock and the brown bear.

Pin Valley, about 675 square kilometers in Himachal Pradesh, is part of the Cold Desert Biosphere Reserve and was established in 1987. It runs from roughly 3,500 to more than 6,000 meters and is a stronghold for the snow leopard and the Siberian ibex.

Turn west to Rajasthan. Desert National Park covers about 3,162 square kilometers of the Thar Desert, and roughly 44 percent of it is sand dunes. It also contains fossils from the Jurassic period and dinosaur remains roughly 65 to 66 million years old.

Dudhwa sits in the marshy Terai grassland of Uttar Pradesh. It began as a wildlife sanctuary in 1958 to protect swamp deer and became a national park in January 1977 after advocacy by the conservationist Billy Arjan Singh.

Panna in Madhya Pradesh was established in 1981 and won an Award of Excellence in 2007 as the best-maintained national park in the country. Poaching wiped out its tigers around 2009, and reintroduction and protection have since rebuilt the population to as many as 80.

Satpura covers about 2,133 square kilometers of central Indian highlands, split into a 1,339 square kilometer core and a 794 square kilometer buffer. It takes its name from the Satpura range, from Sanskrit words meaning seven mountains, and gained tiger reserve status in 2000.

Reach the Gujarat coast. This park covers about 163 square kilometers of coral reef and mangrove across 42 islands, the best known being Pirotan, protected since 1982. Its mudflats host a greater flamingo colony that has reached as many as 20,000 nests.

Sanjay Gandhi National Park occupies about 104 square kilometers inside Mumbai and draws more than two million visitors a year. It holds a notably dense urban population of leopards and the roughly 2,400 year old Buddhist Kanheri caves.

Kudremukh in Karnataka protects about 601 square kilometers of tropical wet evergreen forest in the Western Ghats. The Tunga, the Bhadra and the Netravathi rise within it, and it receives roughly 7,000 millimeters of rain a year.

Mudumalai lies in the Nilgiri Mountains of Tamil Nadu, covering about 321 square kilometers between 850 and 1,250 meters and bordering Karnataka and Kerala. It joined the Nilgiri Biosphere Reserve in 1986 and was declared a tiger reserve in 2007.

End in Kerala. Silent Valley was established in 1984 after the Save Silent Valley movement of the 1970s stopped a proposed hydroelectric dam on the Kunthipuzha River, and it preserves one of the last undisturbed tracts of South Western Ghats mountain rainforest.