Shimla Water Catchment Wildlife Sanctuary

A 951-hectare protected forest 9 km east of Shimla on the Hindustan-Tibet Road, first leased from the Rana of Koti by the British in 1878 to secure Shimla's water supply and declared a wildlife sanctuary in 1990. Nine perennial streams including God Ki Nala and Churat Nala flow through the sanctuary's dense cedar, oak, and pine cover, feeding a gravity-based reservoir system that still supplies the city today. The sanctuary shelters leopards, barking deer, musk deer, Koklass and Kaleej pheasants, and connects southward to the Chail Sanctuary through a forest corridor.