Gurdwara Sri Hemkunt Sahib

Sri Hemkunt Sahib is a Sikh shrine beside a glacial lake high in the Himalaya, in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand. The district's website puts it at over 15,000 feet, and Outlook Traveller gives 15,225 feet. Pilgrims start at Govindghat and walk or ride a pony 13 km to Ghangaria, then climb 6 km of stone-paved path, about 1,100 metres (the Tribune gives 21 km in all). No one may stay the night at the top, so pilgrims must leave by 2 pm to be back before dark. Snow closes the path from about October to April, and the Tribune puts the yearly pilgrimage at about 1.5 to 2 lakh people.

Why it is sacred: the shrine is tied to the Bachitra Natak in the Dasam Granth, which, as Sikh tradition reads it, tells of Guru Gobind Singh's meditation at Hemkunt in an earlier life. The shrine's own history says that the Nirmala scholar Pandit Tara Singh Narotam listed Sikh tiraths in the late nineteenth century, including Hemkunt, and that Bhai Vir Singh drew the accounts together in Sri Kalgidhar Chamatkar. Sant Sohan Singh, a retired army granthi, then searched for the place, which locals called Lokpal, and found that the ground matched the texts.

Key moments

• 1935: Sant Sohan Singh, Bhai Vir Singh and Havaldar Modan Singh of the Survey Department went up to oversee building, and by November a 10 by 10 foot shrine was finished. Bhai Vir Singh consecrated it with a copy of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. (Wikipedia gives 1936 for the first gurdwara.)
• From the mid-1960s: the present gurdwara was designed by the architect Manmohan Singh Siali of the Military Engineering Services, according to Wikipedia, citing the shrine's website.
• June 2013: floods stranded pilgrims at Govindghat and Ghangaria. The Tribune reported the Hemkund Trust putting 2,800 devotees at Govind Dham and the SGPC saying over 6,000 pilgrims were reportedly stranded at Ghangaria. The saroop was airlifted from Hemkund Sahib to Joshimath and all pilgrimages were cancelled.
• 5 March 2025: the Union Cabinet approved a 12.4 km ropeway from Govindghat to Hemkund Sahib, a public-private project costed at Rs 2,730.13 crore and designed to carry 11,000 people a day.
• 25 May 2025: the yatra opened after the winter closure, with a ceremonial ardas at 9:30 am. The Shri Hemkund Sahib Management Trust oversees the shrine.

Today: it is among the most demanding regular pilgrimages of the Panth, kept going each summer by the Trust and by sewa along the route.