Himalayan Pilgrimage
Uttarakhand ("northern section") state borders Nepal and Tibet in north India. The state has two main regions: Garhwal in the west, and Kumaon in the east.
Many Hindus consider Garhwal as "God's country" (devabhumi), and it has many important pilgrimage places. The time and trouble that it took to reach these places were seen as austerities to cleanse one's soul.
This image was taken in November 2005 at about 10,000 feet while traveling the footpath to Kedarnath. The Himalayas are always stunning in their beauty and majesty; on this occasion the path was so deserted (the temple was closing for the season two days later) that it was also a bit spooky.
The big image below (courtesy of d-maps.com) depicts Garhwal, its river systems, and some of its pilgrimage sites, primarily focused in the Mandakini and Alakananda River valleys.
The roads in Garhwal--and the pilgrim paths before them--tend to run up and down the river valleys. I wanted to give a birds-eye view for the sites listed in this website (which is still very much under construction), both so that people could get some sense of where they are in relation to one another, and also how the sites are connected in networks (e.g., when going to Kedarnath one passes through Gupt Kashi and Gauri Kund, and when going from there to Badrinath one passes through Ukhimath, Gopeshvar, Joshimath, and Pandukeshvar.
This diagram follows the itinerary of Garhwal's current dominant pilgrim circuit--the Char Dham/Four Divine Abode circuit of Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath. This circuit is a relatively recent development. A century ago when travel was on foot or horseback, it was far more common for people to go either to Yamunotri and Gangotri, or to Kedarnath and Badrinath. It was only after motorized travel came to the region that the Char Dham circuit became widely feasible, with completion time shrinking from three months of foot travel in the 1930s to three weeks of bus/horse travel in 1960, to the current ten days for most package tours. Since the 1980s the state government has aggressively promoted religious tourism in this area.
You can either click on the individual thumbnails on the map (eventually), take click on the "Haridwar" link at the bottom of this page to start a tour through all the pages (with the next link at the bottom of each successive page).