North India

Jim Corbett National Park, in the Nainital-Pauri Garhwal foothills of the Shivalik and outer Himalayan ranges, was carved out of reserve forest in 1936 as Hailey National Park (after the then-Governor of the United Provinces) and later renamed for the hunter-turned-conservationist Jim Corbett. Beyond its tigers — it was one of the nine original Project Tiger reserves in 1973 — its Ramganga river floodplain, sal forests, and grasslands support elephants, gharial, and over 600 bird species, making it a year-round birding destination as much as a tiger park.

Rajaji National Park, formed in 1983 by merging three older sanctuaries (Rajaji, Motichur, Chilla), sits immediately west of Corbett along the Shivaliks and is administratively merged with it into a single Tiger Reserve for elephant-corridor management; the Chilla-Motichur corridor is one of India's most cited elephant-crossing bottlenecks, threatened by highway and rail traffic.

Valley of Flowers National Park, in Chamoli district, is a high-altitude Himalayan valley famous for its seasonal carpet of alpine flowers (best seen July–August) and was inscribed alongside neighbouring Nanda Devi as a single UNESCO World Heritage property; it has no permanent human habitation and is closed through the winter months.

Nanda Devi National Park encircles Nanda Devi (India's second-highest peak) in a near-inaccessible core zone that was closed to mountaineering expeditions after 1983 to curb ecological damage; together with the adjoining Valley of Flowers it forms the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.

Great Himalayan National Park, in Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh, protects a rugged Western Himalayan catchment holding snow leopard, Himalayan tahr, musk deer, and western tragopan; it was inscribed as a UNESCO Natural World Heritage Site in 2014 for its exceptional biodiversity across a steep altitudinal gradient.

Pin Valley National Park, in the cold-desert Spiti region, is one of the few Indian parks where snow leopard and ibex are the flagship species rather than tiger or elephant; its dry, high-altitude terrain (average elevation above 3,500 m) makes it ecologically closer to Central Asian steppe than to the rest of Himachal.

Dachigam National Park, just outside Srinagar, is the last stronghold of the hangul or Kashmir stag (a subspecies of red deer found nowhere else in the wild); it was originally a royal hunting reserve of the Dogra rulers (the name "Dachigam" is said to derive from the ten villages relocated to create it) before becoming a protected sanctuary and later a national park.

Ranthambore National Park, on the edge of the Aravallis in Rajasthan, was once the private hunting reserve of the Jaipur maharajas and is now one of India's best-known tiger reserves, notable for tigers that are unusually visible hunting around its lakes and the ruined 10th-century Ranthambore Fort inside the park itself.

Sariska Tiger Reserve, also a former Alwar royal shikargah, made national headlines in 2004–05 when its entire tiger population was found to have been poached out; tigers were successfully reintroduced from Ranthambore starting in 2008, making Sariska a widely cited case study in India's reintroduction policy.

Desert National Park, near Jaisalmer, is one of the largest protected areas in India by area and protects a true Thar desert ecosystem of sand dunes, saline depressions, and scrubland; it is the single most important remaining habitat of the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard.

Hemis National Park, in Ladakh's Rumbak and Markha valleys, is India's largest national park and one of the best places in the world to sight snow leopards in the wild, alongside blue sheep (bharal), Ladakh urial, and Tibetan wolf; much of the park lies above 3,000 m and includes the Hemis monastery's traditional grazing lands.

Khangchendzonga National Park, wrapping the slopes of Kangchenjunga (India's highest and the world's third-highest peak), became India's first Mixed UNESCO World Heritage Site (natural + cultural) in 2016, recognised both for its alpine biodiversity — red panda, snow leopard, blue sheep — and for sacred sites significant to Sikkim's Lepcha and Bhutia communities.

Memory hook (Uttarakhand's five): "Corbett called Raja(ji), who carried Sona(nadi)'s flowers up the Valley to Nanda Devi's shrine." Corbett → Rajaji → Sonanadi → Valley of Flowers → Nanda Devi, in one breath.

Memory hook (Himachal's two): "A Great Pincushion." Great Himalayan NP + Pin Valley NP — HP's whole park list, two words.

Memory hook (Rajasthan's three): "Ran through the Sari in the Desert." Ranthambore → Sariska → Desert National Park.

Memory hook (the far north, one park per territory): "Dachigam's stag fled to Hemis's snow leopard, who bowed to Khangchendzonga." J&K → Ladakh → Sikkim, one flagship park each.

Practice Recall: Before reading on, name all five of Uttarakhand's National Parks.

Answer: Jim Corbett, Rajaji, Sonanadi, Valley of Flowers, Nanda Devi.