Snow leopard tours take place in the winter from November through April. Over the past twenty years, the highest number of tours were conducted in February and March because it was long believed that mating season, with increased movement of snow leopards, would have the highest chances for success. As demand for snow leopard tourism has grown, and as the number of experienced trackers has grown, we’ve discovered that snow leopards are found with the same frequency from autumn through spring. Historically, all of Voygr’s guests coming to see snow leopards have seen snow leopards if they’ve done a standard length tour, November through April.

In fact, data analysis of sightings and frequency also show us that mating itself can be hit or miss. When a female snow leopard is ready to mate, male snow leopards are attracted into the area through vocalizations and pheromones indicating readiness left on marking-rocks. This does lead to an increased number of snow leopards in the area near the female. However, that doesn’t mean that the female will be in an area that is easy to view, or within our tracking areas. Mating can also serve to take all the snow leopards out of an area, leading to a “dry-spell.” However, a lot of snow leopards do tend to go into mating season around the same stretch of time – so even if we have a dry spell in one tracking area, teams in other tracking areas can see other cats mating. We ensure we have open lines of communication with multiple teams, including other tour operators and snow leopard specialists so we can make informed decisions about how to plan for great sightings.

These elusive cats are also seen during the summer, but sightings are much fewer and the distances are usually much greater. Winter is the best time to see them because they tend to move down to lower altitudes as the upper reaches of the mountains are in deeper snow cover.

Pretty great! Voygr’s snow leopard tours have a 100% success rate, historically. We do not guarantee that you’ll see a snow leopard, but traveling with us means using the very best trackers, staying in the heart of snow leopard territory, and benefiting from our years of experience understanding animal behavior, habitat, and prey.

Our snow leopard tour is the best available, and so our guests always have access to top-of-the-line Swarovski BTX 95 scopes, the very best in optics available. All our trackers and spotters are outfitted with Swarovski optics and we always have scopes on hand for the viewing pleasure of our guests. Read more about why great optics can make or break your snow leopard trip.

Voygr Expeditions is the world’s leading supplier of high-end snow leopard tours. Our tours employ the world’s leading trackers and expedition crews and our camps are exceptional for their expedition luxury. Deploying camps in remote areas allows us to place ourselves in prime snow leopard habitat instead of being in a homestay, surrounded by noise, people, and loads of traffic. It also guarantees that our guests get a truly immersive experience in the incredible ecosystem that is home to the snow leopard. Our camps are superbly appointed with centrally heated and insulated tents, fine-dining, and fantastic attention to detail. High tech temperature sensors across the camp allow our team to keep an eye on guest warmth and comfort 24 hours a day. For those seeing the highest levels of comfort, our suites are the very best accommodation available across snow leopard landscapes internationally. In Ladakh, 95% of our staff are locals and from within the Hemis National Park area. This allows us to ensure that we’re putting critical financial resources into the communities who live on the front-lines of conservation.

Snow leopards, after the Amur leopard (also a phenomenal Voygr tour), are one of the rarest big cats to see. Besides a fantastic tour operator, you also need really good luck. We take a lot of pride in providing the best guides, services, and expertise available to increase your chances of finding the ghost of the mountains on the best possible experience.

The very best trackers on earth work with expedition leaders with years of guiding experience to create the ultimate experience. Every guide that leads one of Voygr’s snow leopard tours brings a unique set of skills, and knowledge to our journeys. Some are renowned photographers, having documented the High Asian wildlife across various habitats, others naturalists with two decades of experience working with animals and wilderness across the world.

Our trackers are legends. Dorjay, Nawang, Khenrab, and Smanla are the most well regarded field experts when it comes to snow leopards and their ecosystems in Ladakh, with over two decades working in Hemis National Park. Dorjay, our Head Tracker, is widely considered to be the sharpest snow leopard spotter in the world, with over 65% of sightings during an average season attributed to him alone. In combination, Voygr’s teams have over seventy man years of experience tracking the grey ghost. Our teams frequently travel to snow leopard range countries to train national park rangers, provide guidance on running eco-tourism programs, and helping communities mitigate human-wildlife conflict.

Ladakh, sandwiched between the Great Himalayas, the mighty Karakoram range, and the Tibetan Plateau, is an exceptional region. It is isolated by some of the world’s highest mountains yet linked by trade routes to the ancient trading towns of Western China, Central Asia, and the dusty plains of India. Ladakh has been a bastion of the Great Silk Route for over a millennium. Today, Ladakh’s ancient mix of Tibetan Buddhist and Balti Muslim cultures are a pleasure to explore and photograph with our guests. While cultural exploration and the stunning landscapes of the region keep us busy through the springs and summers, the cold Trans-Himalayan winter brings with it the rarest wildlife encounter on earth.

A snow leopard tour in Ladakh requires expert tracking, top notch logistics, high-end winter gear, a well trained support crew, and great luck. Traveling with a company like Voygr Expeditions puts the odds in your favor.

Tracking these elusive cats in one of the highest mountain ranges on earth is no mean feat. Dorjay, Nawang, Khenrab, and Smanla, our lead trackers have over two decades of experience in Ladakh. If you can think of any famous snow leopard image or the recent award-winning film sequences of snow leopards shown in BBC’s Planet Earth II or National Geographic’s Hostile Planet, you know these trackers. Watching them pick up the trail of a snow leopard, or Tibetan wolf, that has passed by in the night is amazing. When we actually spot the ghost cat, there is a feeling of awe and wonderment. Our clients, many of whom have dreamt of this encounter, often feel their eyes well with tears. Then the cameras erupt in a frenzy of shutters.

Snow leopards are fantastically adapted to life in these high mountains. Their fur is incredibly dense, with over 4000 hairs per square centimeter. Their long tail, ranging from 75-90% of their head-body length, acts as a balancing organ, allowing it to descend and ascend rapidly on sleep slopes. Snow leopards can to leap over 15 meters. The tail also doubles as a dense blanket, insulating the paws and head from the biting cold at high altitudes.

On our journeys Voygr’s phenomenal trackers use a variety of skills to find these elusive cats. While they use high-powered scopes through the day to search for movement on the slopes, many high ridges also provide valuable clues. Scrape markings are the most common type of signs left by snow leopards. These are often found on the top of ridges, near marking rocks, at the confluence of streams and gorges, and at the base of cliffs. Snow leopards also communicate with each other by spraying urine at certain well-trafficked sites, which our snow leopard trackers routinely visit and inspect to gauge recency and direction of snow leopard movement.

Not only are these cats rare, they also cover enormous territories. Recent research indicates that there may be between 4-5 snow leopards in 100 square kilometers in what would be considered a densely populated area for snow leopards in Ladakh, such as in Hemis National Park.

Another variable for a successful tour is understanding prey behavior and movement. In Ladakh, the snow leopard’s primary prey base are wild sheep and goats such as the blue sheep (Bharal), the Asiatic Ibex, and the Ladakhi Urial. However, snow leopards are also known to prey on smaller mammals such as marmots, hares, pikas, and even some birds. On average, snow leopards can successfully kill every 8-10 days with 70-90% of attempts at hunting resulting in failure. Thus, Voygr’s trackers also monitor and look for herds of prey animals such as blue sheep. Finding and tracking a decent sized herd of such mountain sheep over a few days usually results in discovering a snow leopard that is also following the sheep.

We recommend a tour with our trackers in Ladakh, Mongolia, and Kyrgyzstan for the best chances of seeing one. Ladakh has the highest rates of success. This is because our tours in Ladakh take place in terrain that is much steeper than that in other parts of the world. This means that the cats need to traverse high ridges to look at prey movement on either side, which allows trackers with high powered scopes to spot them when they move at dawn and dusk.

Voygr operates its tours in Ladakh within Hemis National Park and is currently doing the groundwork by training rangers and building our community focused conservation program in Kyrgyzstan and Mongolia. While snow leopards have been spotted across Ladakh and the remoteness of the region allows for a decent population of prey animals (relatively speaking), sound conservation strategy dictates that Hemis National Park is the best place to see snow leopards in Ladakh and it is also the most sustainable place to run these tours.