Char Dham Yatra from Delhi

The Char Dham does not begin in Delhi. It begins where the plains end — and for almost every road itinerary that means Haridwar or Rishikesh. From Delhi, that is a single day's travel, by any of three routes.

By rail. Haridwar Junction is the station most Delhi pilgrims use. Uttarakhand Tourism describes it as well connected by rail with Delhi and the other major cities of India, with frequent services — daytime trains that put you in Haridwar by afternoon, and overnight services for families who would rather sleep through the journey. We do not print train numbers and departure times on this page, because they shift through the year and a wrong timing is worse than no timing. Send us your dates and we will tell you what is actually running.

By air. The nearest airport is Jolly Grant, Dehradun (DED) — 37 km from Haridwar, 21 km from Rishikesh, and 35 km from Dehradun city. The Airports Authority of India's own schedule for this season lists several direct Delhi–Dehradun services every single day, flown by IndiGo and Air India, on the summer schedule that runs to late October — covering most of the yatra season.

By road. Buses for Haridwar and Rishikesh leave from ISBT Kashmiri Gate. Most of our Delhi groups prefer a private vehicle from their own gate instead, because the yatra vehicle then stays with the family for the entire circuit — no re-hiring in the hills, no bargaining at a bus stand at midnight.

Past Rishikesh the journey changes character completely. There is no railway and no airport beyond it. From there the whole circuit is mountain road: early starts, long driving days, gate-controlled stretches, and weather that has the final say over any schedule a travel agent writes.

Four shrines in the Garhwal Himalaya, approached in a fixed sequence that runs west to east: Yamunotri → Gangotri → Kedarnath → Badrinath. Two rivers first, then Shiva, then Vishnu. Every Satmarg itinerary follows that order, because the order is part of the yatra.

Treat the altitudes as approximate. They follow the state health department's Char Dham handbook and BKTC's own temple pages, and the official sources differ from one another by up to a couple of hundred metres. What is not in dispute is that all four dhams stand above three thousand metres.

Kedarnath and Badrinath are administered by the Shri Badarinath Kedarnath Temple Committee (BKTC), which also looks after forty-five smaller shrines along the two routes. Its own account records the Kedarnath temple as having been raised over a thousand years ago by Adi Shankaracharya.

Every duration, every halt and all our packages sit on the main Char Dham Yatra hub.

This is the thing a first-time Char Dham pilgrim most often gets wrong. Registration is mandatory. Registration is also free. If anyone asks you for money to arrange it, stop.

Under Government of Uttarakhand travel policy, every pilgrim — and every vehicle — must be registered before the journey begins. The only official portal is registrationandtouristcare.uk.gov.in, run by the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board. You are issued a Yatra Registration Letter carrying a QR code, and you must present yourself for verification when you reach each shrine.

That verification is not a formality on paper. The state runs registration and check points along the yatra roads — at the Rahi Hotel in Haridwar, the Transit Camp and the Gurudwara in Rishikesh, at Herbertpur and Nayagaon, at Barkot for Yamunotri, Hina for Gangotri, Sonprayag for Kedarnath and Pandukeshwar for Badrinath, and again at Janki Chatti and at the Gangotri and Kedarnath temples themselves. These are the points at which the letter is checked, so it is not a paper to leave at home.

Vehicles. A Green Card and a Trip Card are issued separately, through the State Transport Department's portal at greencard.uk.gov.in — and the passengers must already be registered on the tourism portal before a Trip Card can be generated at all. The two systems are joined.

Helicopter. Kedarnath helicopter shuttle tickets can be booked on heliyatra.irctc.co.in and nowhere else. BKTC and the state registration portal both say it in those words. Anyone else offering you a Kedarnath heli seat is selling you nothing — which is also why you will not find operator names or fares quoted on this page.

For a booked group we file the registration for every pilgrim, and arrange the Green Card and Trip Card for the vehicle. You carry the letter. We carry the paperwork.

The season. The kapat of each dham open in late April or early May and close for the winter in October or November. BKTC's own account of Kedarnath has the temple reopening in the first week of May, on an auspicious date the committee announces in advance, with the winter worship held at Ukhimath from November until May. The exact dates are fixed afresh each year and announced by the committees — they move, so we confirm them for your travel month rather than printing a date that will be wrong next season. BKTC itself lists May through November as the months to visit Kedarnath and Badrinath.

The altitude is the real subject. All four dhams stand above three thousand metres. The Government of Uttarakhand's Char Dham health handbook, written with the doctors of AIIMS Rishikesh, puts the effective oxygen at the shrines at 17.9–18.6 per cent, against 20.9 per cent at sea level. A family that is on the plains on Monday and sleeping near Kedarnath by the weekend has asked a great deal of the body in a very short time.

That same handbook is blunt about the arithmetic. Do not climb to a sleeping altitude of 2,750 m or more in a single day. Once above that, raise where you sleep by no more than about 500 m a night, and take an extra night for every 1,000 m gained. Avoid alcohol and hard exertion for the first 48 hours at height. And if you intend to fly to Kedarnath, it advises spending a night in the helipad-zone village first, because the ascent from there is usually more than a thousand metres in one lift.

This is why our itineraries look slower than some. The night at Guptkashi or Sonprayag before Kedarnath is not a filler night. It is the yatra.

Who should think twice about the trek. The state's own advisory is honest about it: the deaths that occur on the yatra are overwhelmingly cardiac, and overwhelmingly among pilgrims past sixty, with Kedarnath at the top of that list. If you live with heart disease, uncontrolled blood pressure or a lung condition — or if you simply have not walked sixteen kilometres uphill in some years — see your doctor before you book, and then talk to us about the alternatives rather than about the trek.

There are alternatives, and they are not lesser. Ponies and palanquins run on the Yamunotri trek, and ponies on the Kedarnath trek. The helicopter shuttle removes the climb altogether, and BKTC notes that a pilgrim staying at Sitapur, Sonprayag or Guptkashi can complete Kedarnath darshan in a single day by helicopter or pony. And many Delhi families choose Kedarnath and Badrinath alone for a first season, returning for Yamunotri and Gangotri later. Two dhams done properly is a yatra. Four dhams endured is not.

Count from your own gate in Delhi, not from Haridwar. The transfer day is a real day, and leaving it out of the calculation is how people end up driving a mountain road in the dark on their first evening.

Whatever the shape, we build slack into it. In the Garhwal a landslide, a closed gate or one morning of low cloud can cost half a day, and an itinerary with no slack turns that half day into a missed darshan you travelled a fortnight for.

Exact day-by-day plans, halts and all our packages: the Char Dham Yatra hub. The shorter route: Do Dham Yatra.