Wildlife in East Asia

At Jigokudani in the mountains of Nagano, wild Japanese macaques climb into a steaming hot-spring pool on snowy mornings while visitors watch from a metre away. Few wildlife sights anywhere are so close or so easy, and it sets the tone for East Asia: the region has no big-game savanna, but it has animals found nowhere else.

The headline is the giant panda, best seen at breeding centres around Chengdu in China. In winter, Hokkaido in Japan has red-crowned cranes dancing in the snow and Steller’s sea eagles on the drift ice off Shiretoko. In Mongolia, Khustain Nuruu has wild Przewalski’s horses, and the Gobi has ibex, argali and, for the very patient, snow leopards.

Most of these trips are cheap and need no safari outfitter: a train, a bus and an early start.

For a mountain setting, the breeding centre in Wolong National Nature Reserve, part of the UNESCO-listed Sichuan Giant Panda Sanctuaries, is about three hours from Chengdu. Seeing a panda in the wild is extremely unlikely. China’s other primates are easier: golden snub-nosed monkeys in Shennongjia in Hubei, the rare Yunnan snub-nosed monkey in forests below the Meili Snow Mountains, and macaques on Nanwan Monkey Island in Hainan, reached by cable car.

Birdwatchers head for the wetlands. Zhalong near Qiqihar is a breeding ground for red-crowned cranes from spring to autumn, and Poyang Lake in Jiangxi holds most of the world’s Siberian cranes from about November to March. In Jinghong in Xishuangbanna, wild Asian elephants roam the rainforest. See China National Parks.

Eastern Hokkaido is Japan’s wildlife frontier. In winter, red-crowned cranes gather at feeding grounds near Kushiro and Kushiro-shitsugen National Park, Japan’s largest marsh, where you can photograph their courtship dances from roadside platforms. From late January to March, boats from Rausu on the Shiretoko peninsula sail out to the drift ice, where Steller’s sea eagles and white-tailed eagles perch on the floes. In summer and autumn, cruises along Shiretoko’s roadless coast regularly see brown bears on the beaches. Daisetsuzan has pikas, foxes and bears on its alpine plateaus.

In the far south, the jungle island of Iriomote is home to the rare Iriomote cat, seldom seen, and its mangrove rivers are best explored by kayak. Night drives on Amami Oshima look for the Amami rabbit. See National Parks in Japan.

In the south, the Gobi Gurvansaikhan National Park has ibex and argali sheep on its ridges and lammergeiers over the gorge of Yolyn Am, plus the great dunes of Khongoryn Els. Wild Bactrian camels survive only in the remote Great Gobi Strictly Protected Area, which needs a special permit. Snow leopard tours run in the mountains of the South Gobi in winter, but sightings are rare even with expert trackers.