Deosai

Declared in 1993, it protects a vast high mountain plateau between 3,500 and 5,200 metres, nicknamed "the land of giants" for its sheer scale and reckoned the second highest plateau in the world after Tibet. It was created specifically to protect the Himalayan brown bear, whose regional population had fallen to barely twenty or so animals in the 1990s through poaching; today, under strict protection, its numbers have recovered markedly, and each summer the plateau flowers with millions of wildflowers that give it another of its nicknames, "the land of flowers".