जगहें
Kedarnathतीर्थRudraprayag
A stone temple at about 3,580 m below the Kedarnath and Kharchkund peaks, reached by a walk of roughly 16 km from Gaurikund. The doors close around Bhai Dooj and the deity's worship moves to Ukhimath for the winter, with a lamp left burning inside. In June 2013 a glacial lake burst and a debris flow came down the Mandakini; the temple survived, and the large boulder that lodged behind it and split the flow is now itself venerated.
सबसे अच्छा समय: May–June and September–October. कैसे पहुँचें: Road to Gaurikund via Rudraprayag and Guptkashi, then on foot, by pony or by helicopter from Phata or Sersi.
Badrinath and Manaतीर्थChamoli
The Alaknanda shrine at about 3,100 m, between the Nar and Narayan ridges under Neelkanth, with a hot spring at the temple steps. Its head priest is by long tradition a Namboodiri Brahmin from Kerala. Mana, three kilometres on, is the last village before the Mana pass and was a Bhotiya trading settlement before it became a viewpoint.
सबसे अच्छा समय: May–June and September–October.
Gangotri and Gaumukhतीर्थUttarkashi
The Bhagirathi temple at about 3,100 m, and the glacier snout 18 km further up at Gaumukh where the river emerges. The winter seat of the goddess is Mukhba village near Harsil, and the image is carried down and back each year. The glacier has retreated measurably within living memory, which the temple's own records reflect.
सबसे अच्छा समय: May–June and September–October.
Yamunotri and Kharsaliतीर्थUttarkashi
The Yamuna shrine under Bandarpunch, reached by a steep walk from Janki Chatti. Its thermal spring is hot enough to cook in, and pilgrims lower rice tied in cloth into it and carry the cooked rice away as prasad. Kharsali across the river is the goddess's winter village.
सबसे अच्छा समय: May–June and September–October.
Valley of Flowers and Nanda Devi National Parksप्रकृतियूनेस्कोChamoli
A single UNESCO World Heritage property in two parts. The Valley of Flowers is a high hanging valley that flowers for a few weeks after the monsoon breaks and was brought to outside notice by the mountaineer Frank Smythe in 1931. The Nanda Devi Sanctuary — the ring of peaks around India's highest mountain lying wholly within the country — has been closed to visitors since the early 1980s to let it recover.
सबसे अच्छा समय: Mid-July to mid-August for the flowering.
Hemkund Sahibतीर्थChamoli
A gurdwara beside a glacial lake at about 4,600 m, identified in the twentieth century with the place of meditation described in Guru Gobind Singh's account of a previous birth, and reached by a hard climb from Govindghat and Ghangaria. A Lakshman temple stands beside it, and the same path serves the Valley of Flowers.
सबसे अच्छा समय: June–early October, when the snow allows.
Tungnath and Chandrashilaतीर्थRudraprayag
The highest of the Panch Kedar shrines at roughly 3,680 m, an easy climb from Chopta through rhododendron and meadow, with the Chandrashila summit an hour above it. It closes for winter like the larger shrines and its deity moves down to Makkumath.
सबसे अच्छा समय: April–June and September–November.
Panch Prayag — Vishnuprayag to Devprayagतीर्थChamoli, Rudraprayag, Tehri
Five named confluences on the Alaknanda — with the Dhauliganga, Nandakini, Pindar, Mandakini and finally the Bhagirathi. At Devprayag the two head-streams join and the river is called the Ganga for the first time, which makes the Ganga one of the few great rivers with an exact address of birth.
Joshimath (Jyotirmath)विरासतChamoli
The winter seat of Badrinath's worship and the site of one of the maths associated with Adi Shankara, with an ancient mulberry tree in the compound. The town sits on old landslide debris, and the subsidence and cracking recorded through the winter of 2022–23 forced evacuations and a public argument about tunnelling and construction on that slope.
Srinagar GarhwalशहरीPauri
The Panwar capital on the Alaknanda, and the town where the Garhwal school of painting was patronised. Much of the old town was destroyed by the 1894 Gohna lake burst and rebuilt; it is now a university town and the supply point for the upper valleys.
Devprayagतीर्थTehri
A vertical town of stone houses stacked above the junction of two rivers of visibly different colours, with the Raghunath temple above them. The Tirtha Purohit families here have held pilgrim genealogies for generations, and the registers are a genealogical archive of northern India.
Tehri Lake and New Tehriप्रकृतिTehri
The reservoir behind one of the world's tallest dams, which drowned the old town of Tehri, its bazaar and around a hundred villages. The displaced were resettled at New Tehri on a ridge above, and the lake is now marketed for watersports — the completed argument that Sunderlal Bahuguna spent decades losing.
Mussoorie and Landourपहाड़Dehradun
A ridge station developed from the 1820s, with a cantonment at Landour above it that keeps the older architecture, the deodars and the writers. Trigonometrical stations along this ridge fed the Survey of India's Himalayan work, which has been directed from the Doon below since the nineteenth century.
सबसे अच्छा समय: March–June and September–November.
Dehradun and the Doon valleyशहरीDehradun
A valley town on old river gravel that became the country's survey, forestry and military-schooling headquarters — the Survey of India, the Forest Research Institute with its very long colonnaded building of 1929, and the Indian Military Academy. Basmati and litchi grew here before any of that, and are being built over.
Har Ki Dun and the Tons valleyप्रकृतिUttarkashi
A cradle valley under Swargarohini reached from Sankri, through villages of stacked timber-and-stone houses with elaborately carved facades. In this valley Duryodhana is worshipped as a village deity and Karna has his own temple downstream — an inversion of the epic's moral order that the residents state matter-of-factly.
सबसे अच्छा समय: April–June and September–November.
Hanol and Jaunsar-BawarविरासतDehradun
The seat of Mahasu Devta on the Tons, and the ritual centre of a deity whose authority runs across the Jaunsari valleys and well into the Himachal hills beyond. The temple is built in the local timber-laced idiom and the deity's four brother-forms hold defined territories, each with its own priesthood.
Auli and the Kuari passप्रकृतिChamoli
Bugyal slopes above Joshimath, used for grazing in summer and skiing in winter, with the Kuari pass trek — long called the Curzon Trail after the Viceroy who walked it — running along the rim opposite Nanda Devi.
सबसे अच्छा समय: January–March for snow, April–June and October for walking.
Rishikeshतीर्थDehradun
Where the Ganga leaves the hills — a town of ashrams, suspension bridges and, since the 1970s, whitewater rafting. It became internationally known after the Beatles stayed at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram in 1968, and the abandoned ashram is now open to visitors.
सबसे अच्छा समय: September–November and February–April.
Lansdowneपहाड़Pauri
A small cantonment laid out at the end of the nineteenth century as the regimental centre of the Garhwal Rifles, and still one. Its war memorial and regimental museum record a recruitment relationship that has shaped the demography and the household economy of the whole Pauri belt.