Gangotri

Gangotri is a small temple town in the Uttarkashi high country where the Bhagirathi river rushes through a gorge and a white-stone shrine marks the spot where the Ganga is worshipped as having descended to earth, the goddess personified in the water. The temple, credited to an early nineteenth-century Gorkha commander on a much older sacred site, opens with Akshaya Tritiya in spring and closes at Diwali, when the deity is carried down to the village of Mukhba for the winter.

The geological truth sits nineteen kilometers and a full day's trek above: Gaumukh, the cow-mouthed snout of the Gangotri Glacier, is the actual source, reached through the national park on a permit, past pine forest and moraine with the great peaks standing over the valley. Pilgrims have always treated both as one journey: the temple where the goddess is met, the glacier where she is born. The glacier is retreating and the valley has seen catastrophic floods this century, which is part of the picture the entry keeps in view.

Visiting

The Uttarakhand Char Dham registration portal is the official yatra requirement and carries the shrine's seasonal dates; the 2026 season opens April 19. The Gaumukh trek needs a separate national park permit.

Photo: [Wikimedia Commons](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Gangotri), CC BY.