Gangotri

Gangotri sits at about 3,100 metres on the Bhagirathi, the headstream generally treated as the Ganges, and its eighteenth-century white temple is one of the Char Dham. The actual source lies nineteen kilometres upstream at Gaumukh, the cow's mouth, the snout of the Gangotri glacier, reached on a trek through a valley walled by the Bhagirathi peaks and Shivling, one of the most striking granite spires in the Himalaya. Permits limit daily numbers on that trail. Below the town, the river narrows into a gorge at Bhairon Ghati, and the temple closes each winter when the deity is taken down to Mukhba.

What you actually see

• The white temple - the eighteenth-century shrine on the riverbank.
• The Gaumukh trek - nineteen kilometres up to the glacier snout.
• Shivling and the Bhagirathi peaks - granite spires above the valley.
• The gorge - the river narrowing below the town at Bhairon Ghati.

When to go

May to June and September to October, within the open season from roughly late April to November; the monsoon brings landslides. The Gaumukh trek needs a permit obtained in advance and daily numbers are capped.

Honest expectations

The glacier has retreated substantially and Gaumukh is further up the valley than older accounts describe. Altitude affects trekkers. Roads in are long, narrow and landslide-prone.

Nearby

Yamunotri lies west; Kedarnath is east.