Chopta, Tungnath & Auli — The High Garhwal in Six Nights

North to where the Ganga leaves the mountains. This night exists because the drive to Chopta is seven to eight hours of mountain road and nobody should start it after a day on the plain; it also puts the trip beside the river for an evening, with the Parmarth Niketan aarti at sunset and an early dinner. Anyone flying into Jolly Grant lands an hour away and has most of the afternoon in hand.

The long climb. Up the Ganga to Devprayag, where the Bhagirathi and the Alaknanda meet and become the river, on through Srinagar and Rudraprayag, and then east up the Mandakini valley through Ukhimath. The last hour is forest road to Chopta, a scatter of huts and tea shops on a meadow at 2,680 m with no town attached to it. Arrive in the afternoon, walk twenty minutes up the ridge to see where tomorrow goes, and sleep early — the air is thin enough to notice.

Away early on the stone path that climbs out of the meadow: three and a half kilometres and about a thousand metres of ascent to the Tungnath temple at 3,680 m, the highest Shiva temple known and one of the Panch Kedar. The temple opens in late April or May — 22 April in 2026 — and closes after Diwali in November, when the deity is carried down to Makkumath for the winter; outside those months the walk still goes, to a shuttered shrine in the snow. From the temple it is another kilometre and a half to the Chandrashila summit at 4,000 m, with Nanda Devi, Trishul and Chaukhamba on the skyline when the weather allows — which it decides, not us. The start is early for a reason: after a lightning death on this ridge in May 2026 the Rudraprayag police have restricted the climb beyond Chandrashila in the afternoon, and the guide turns the group round if the cloud builds. Down by mid-afternoon.

The morning drops to Sari village and walks up three kilometres to Deoria Tal at 2,438 m, a lake in a bowl of forest where the Chaukhamba group stands in the water on a still morning. Back down, and then north: Ukhimath, Chamoli and the Alaknanda valley to Joshimath at 1,875 m — officially renamed Jyotirmath in 2024 — the town that holds Badrinath's winter seat at the Narasimha temple and guards the road to the Niti valley. It is a working hill town rather than a resort, and the evening is a walk through it.

Up the sixteen kilometres of road to Auli, which runs between about 2,500 and 3,050 m along a ridge of meadow and oak above the valley. The ropeway from Joshimath has been out of service since the town's subsidence emergency in January 2023 and had not resumed at the time of writing, so the road is how this itinerary goes up, and it is the better way to see the valley anyway. In the January-to-March season the slopes are skiable and lessons and hire are arranged on request; no snow is promised in any month, and it should not be — January 2026 brought none at all until the twenty-third. Out of season the day is a walk across the meadows to the artificial lake and back, with Nanda Devi to the east on a clear afternoon.

The long descent, and the best road day of the trip: the Alaknanda all the way down through Chamoli, Karnaprayag, Rudraprayag and Devprayag, with a stop at each confluence where two rivers of different colours meet and run together for a stretch before mixing. Lunch on the way. Rishikesh by evening, three hundred metres above sea level and fifteen degrees warmer than where you woke up, for a last night on the bank.

Breakfast and the drive out to the airport at Jolly Grant, the railhead at Haridwar or the highway to Delhi. With an afternoon flight there is time for the Triveni Ghat morning or an hour in the market first. Anyone with a day in hand usually spends it at Rishikesh rather than on the road, which is a better use of it than anything else on the way.