The Most Beautiful National Parks in Asia
6 places in 5 countries ยท updated 6 October 2026
In short: By our ranking, the most beautiful national parks in Asia are Valley of Flowers National Park (India), Gunung Mulu National Park (Malaysia) and Jiuzhaigou Valley (People's Republic of China). The list covers 6 national parks in 5 countries. Israel has the most, with 2. Last updated 6 October 2026.
Asia's national parks cover the greatest range of landscapes of any continent: alpine meadows below the Himalaya, limestone karst and rainforest on Borneo, travertine lakes on the edge of the Tibetan Plateau, granite ranges on the Korean peninsula and desert springs beside the Dead Sea. Monsoon rains, high mountains and very old rock formations combine to produce places that exist nowhere else, and many of them have been sacred or inhabited for centuries.
The Valley of Flowers in Uttarakhand is a high Himalayan valley that turns into a meadow of alpine flowers each monsoon, protected together with neighbouring Nanda Devi as a World Heritage Site. Gunung Mulu in Sarawak, on Borneo, hides one of the largest cave systems on Earth beneath its rainforest, including the vast Sarawak Chamber, while above ground razor-sharp limestone pinnacles rise through the trees. Jiuzhaigou in Sichuan is a valley of blue and green lakes, waterfalls and travertine shoals, named after the Tibetan villages that stand along it.
Seoraksan in northeastern South Korea is a range of granite peaks and ridges, with the great rock of Ulsanbawi among its best-known landmarks. In Israel, two small reserves show how water transforms a desert. Ein Gedi is an oasis on the western shore of the Dead Sea, where springs feed waterfalls and pools in otherwise barren cliffs and Nubian ibex roam the slopes. Ein Avdat, in the Negev, is a narrow canyon cut into pale limestone, its spring-fed pools hidden between sheer walls.
In this list
| # | Place | Type | Country | UNESCO |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Valley of Flowers National Park | National park | India | โ |
| 2 | Gunung Mulu National Park | National park | Malaysia | โ |
| 3 | Jiuzhaigou Valley | National park | People's Republic of China | โ |
| 4 | Seoraksan National Park | National park | South Korea | |
| 5 | Ein Gedi Nature Reserve | Oasis | Israel | |
| 6 | Ein Avdat | Canyon | Israel |
01 Valley of Flowers National Park
India30.730ยฐ N 79.618ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
- biosphere reserve
Naresh Chandra ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The outside world learned of it by accident. In 1931 the British mountaineers Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton and R. L. Holdsworth lost their way returning from Kamet and came down into a valley full of flowers; Smythe gave it its English name and wrote a book about it. In 1939 the botanist Joan Margaret Legge, sent by Kew Gardens, fell to her death while collecting plants on its slopes, and her sister later put up a memorial near the spot. The valley was declared a national park in the early 1980s and lies, together with Nanda Devi National Park to the east, within the Nanda Devi Biosphere Reserve.
Did you know? Long before Smythe's visit, Colonel Edmund Smyth had reached the Pushpawati valley in 1862.
02 Gunung Mulu National Park
Malaysia4.043ยฐ N 114.813ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Nur Nafis Naim ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The superlatives are real. Deer Cave has one of the largest cave passages known, 120 to 150 metres across. The Sarawak Chamber, discovered in 1980, is one of the largest underground chambers in the world, about 600 metres long and 415 wide. Clearwater Cave is the longest cave system in Southeast Asia, with more than 227 km of passages mapped. A handful of show caves, among them Deer Cave and neighbouring Lang's Cave, are open to ordinary visitors.
Did you know? Mulu is regarded as the most thoroughly studied area of tropical karst anywhere in the world.
03 Jiuzhaigou Valley
People's Republic of China33.200ยฐ N 103.900ยฐ E
- UNESCO World Heritage
- UNESCO natural beauty
Image by HI-MXWG from Pixabay That seismic origin isn't just history; it's ongoing risk the park has had to live with directly. In August 2017, a magnitude-7 earthquake tore through the region and damaged several of the valley's signature features, including draining much of the water from what had been one of its clearest pools โ the same kind of violent, sudden geology that built the place in the first place came back to reshape it.
Did you know? Nuorilang Falls is about 20 metres high but some 320 metres wide, often described as one of the widest highland waterfalls in China.
04 Seoraksan National Park
South Korea ยท 17.9 km from Sokcho38.125ยฐ N 128.416ยฐ E
kallerna ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The best-known silhouette is Ulsanbawi, a long, crenellated wall of granite rising above the eastern valley; reaching the top means a climb that ends on a staircase of roughly 888 steps, and from there the view runs down to Sokcho and the East Sea. Further inside, Gongnyongneungseon, the "Dinosaur Ridge", is a knife-edge of jagged spires that takes most of a day to traverse and is protected as one of Korea's scenic sites. There are quieter details too: Heundeulbawi, a boulder about five metres high that a few people can make rock gently on its base, and Biseondae, a broad rock platform in a mountain stream where the water slides over polished granite.
Did you know? The great Buddha's forehead is set with eight amber stones and a jade centrepiece, and Buddha relics from Myanmar are enshrined inside it.
05 Ein Gedi Nature Reserve
Israel ยท 29.6 km from Hebron31.467ยฐ N 35.394ยฐ E
Radosลaw Botev ยท CC BY 3.0 pl The walk up Nahal David is the classic introduction: a path along the stream through shady vegetation to a series of cascades, ending at David's Falls dropping into a pool beneath the cliff. Nubian ibex move with startling ease over the rock faces, and rock hyraxes bask on the boulders by the path. The Arugot canyon is wilder and longer, its stream running between tall walls of pale stone.
Did you know? That scroll is the earliest copy of a book of the Torah ever found in a synagogue's Torah ark, and its text matches the later standard Hebrew Bible.
06 Ein Avdat
Israel30.826ยฐ N 34.766ยฐ E
ืืื ืืจืื ยท CC BY-SA 4.0 The canyon is part of Nahal Zin, the largest dry riverbed of the Negev, which runs for some 120 kilometres from the edge of Makhtesh Ramon north and then east; erosion carved this section into a gorge. Several springs feed it. At the southern end, Ein Ma'arif drops through a series of falls and pools, overlooked by the remains of a Byzantine fortress. Further north, Ein Avdat itself is a waterfall about 15 metres high that pours into a pool some 8 metres deep, and near the northern entrance is Ein Mor, named after myrrh.
Did you know? David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, and his wife Paula are buried on a cliff edge overlooking the canyon's Zin Valley.
How this list is ranked
Places are chosen for how they look, not for how famous they are: each one has its own description and a photograph credited to its author. The order is a single world ranking that weighs the beauty of the place in curated photography together with how widely it is documented โ the number of language editions of its encyclopedia article and how often that article is read in a year. The list is rebuilt as places are added, so the order and the counts on this page are always current.
Questions people ask
- What are the most beautiful national parks in Asia?
- On our list, Valley of Flowers National Park (India) ranks first, followed by Gunung Mulu National Park (Malaysia) and Jiuzhaigou Valley (People's Republic of China).
- Which country has the most national parks in Asia?
- In our collection, the most come from Israel (2), India (1) and Malaysia (1).
- What is the Sarawak Chamber?
- It is an enormous underground chamber in Gunung Mulu National Park on Borneo, discovered in 1981. It is regarded as one of the largest cave chambers in the world by area.
- What does Jiuzhaigou mean?
- The name means 'Valley of Nine Villages', after the Tibetan villages that stand along its length in northern Sichuan.
- Why are the lakes of Jiuzhaigou so colourful?
- The water is rich in dissolved calcium carbonate, which settles as pale travertine on the lake beds, and it is very clear. Light reflecting off the travertine, algae and submerged trees produces the range of blues and greens.
- How many national parks are on this list in Asia?
- The list covers 6 national parks in 5 countries. Israel has the most, with 2.