Valley of Flowers

Declared in 1982 and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2005, the Valley of Flowers was unknown to the outside world until 1931, when the British mountaineer Frank Smythe, having come down the wrong route from a Himalayan expedition, stumbled by chance on a valley carpeted with hundreds of species of wildflower in full monsoon bloom — an experience he wrote up in a book that made the place internationally known.