Tashi R. Ghale is not just a photographer, he’s a true mountain man and a Himalayan wildlife photographer. Mountains and Snow Leopards are two of his favorite subjects, having been profoundly influenced by the natural splendor of his childhood home in the Annapurna region of Manang, Nepal, where he now runs a trekker lodge, Hotel Mountain Lake, and takes photographs of people, mountains, and wildlife.

Ghale monitors snow leopards as a citizen scientist for Third Pole Conservancy and has captured multiple hoe images of the snow leopard He was the first to document camera-trap evidence of Pallas’s cats in Manang, Nepal. It turned out to be a Pallas cat that was thought to be extinct in the Himalaya. Long back in 1776, German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas first found it in Central Asia so it was named the after him. There was no Nepali name for Pallas cat so researchers named it Tashi Biralo (Tashi is good luck in Tibetan language and Biralo is cat in Nepali). He says “I am honoured and lucky to have the cat named for me.”

He also captured the first photographs in four decades of the endangered Himalayan wolves in the Manang Valley. Ghale, now considered to be a local authority on camera trap technology, installs and maintains camera traps in several different locations of the high altitude rocky terrain in Manang which monitors a variety of species. Ghale was the recipient of the “Abraham Conservation Award 2016” in recognition of his outstanding contribution. conservation of nature and sustainable development in Nepal from the WWF-Nepal. He was also selected as a 2018 Disney Conservation Hero. He received the award for his dedication to the conservation of snow leopards and their habitat is his community.

His first Snow Leopard encounter was in 19th March 2006, and he has 15th live sightings till date.