The whole problem in one frame. One road, no flat ground, and a temple that on its foundation day draws more people in a morning than the valley can hold vehicles for in a week. Photo via Google Maps contributor.
For four days around 15 June the road to Kainchi Dham stops working the way it does the rest of the year. Where you park is decided by the direction you arrive from, the last stretch is by shuttle only, and the fares are fixed. Here is the 2026 order in full, with what changed from 2025.
The short version: Kainchi Dham's foundation day is 15 June, a fixed date, and for the 2026 mela Nainital Police ran a special traffic order from 13 June to 16 June. No private car was allowed to drive to the temple. Vehicles were stopped at parking assigned by direction of approach: Kathgodam and Gaulapar for arrivals from Delhi, NCR, Bareilly, Moradabad and Rampur; Vikas Bhawan, Bhimtal for Ramnagar, Kaladhungi and Lalkuan; the Sanatorium, Bhowali for Nainital, Jeolikote and Mukteshwar; and Khairna for Almora, Bageshwar and Pithoragarh. From each, shuttle buses covered the last stretch at fares the RTO fixed in advance: Rs 150 from Haldwani or Kathgodam, Rs 100 from Bhimtal or Nainital, Rs 50 from Bhowali or Khairna. Two-wheelers were banned from the temple area from the morning of 14 June, heavy goods vehicles from the morning of 13 June. If you are going for the bhandara, plan it as an event with a shuttle timetable, not as a drive. If you are only passing through to Almora, expect to be sent round by Ramgarh and Mukteshwar instead.
By Nandini Upreti, Contributor, Almora. About the author ↓
Fifteenth June is the anniversary of the consecration of the Hanuman murti at Kainchi in 1964, on a date Neem Karoli Baba fixed himself. The temple marks it with a bhandara, and the bhandara draws a crowd that the rest of the year does not prepare you for. Nainital district's own camera count, which we published in full in our month-by-month crowd calendar, recorded 866,000 arrivals in June 2026, the highest of any month and close to five times the September figure. A large share of that lands in the days around the fifteenth.
The geography is what turns a crowd into a traffic order. Kainchi sits in a narrow gap on NH 109 between Bhowali and Almora, with one road through it and almost no flat ground. Every car that reaches the temple has to stop somewhere, and there is nowhere. So each year the district administration and Nainital Police publish a plan that keeps private vehicles well away from the valley and moves people the last stretch by bus. In 2025 the police went as far as declaring the temple area a "zero zone" for vehicles. The 2026 plan, which this page sets out, was a larger version of the same idea.
Two things to fix in your head before reading on. First, nothing below applies to an ordinary day. Our Haldwani to Kainchi Dham route guide covers the 49 km drive as it is for the other 361 days, and the darshan timings page covers the temple's hours. Second, the plan is republished every year and the details move. What follows is the 2026 order as it was reported, with dates on every claim, so that you can see how firm each piece is.
The order Nainital Police issued on 11 June 2026 ran from 13 June to 16 June, four days for a one-day event, and it did not switch everything on at once. Different classes of vehicle were restricted from different hours. This is the part that catches people who read a headline and assume the rules start on the fifteenth.
| Vehicle class | Restriction begins | Restriction ends | What happens |
|---|---|---|---|
| Heavy goods vehicles | 13 June, 6:00 AM | 16 June, 11:00 PM | Barred from the route. Milk, gas, petroleum, medical and other essential supplies exempt under set rules. |
| Private cars bound for Kainchi | 13 June, 8:00 AM | 16 June, 4:00 PM | Stopped at the parking assigned to your direction of approach. Onward by shuttle only. |
| Two-wheelers and taxi bikes | 14 June, 8:00 AM | 16 June, 4:00 PM | Barred from the Kainchi Dham area entirely. Stopped at junctions and entry points, parked at Bhowali. |
| Roadways and KMOU buses to Almora, Pithoragarh, Bageshwar | 14 June, 2:00 PM | 16 June, 12:00 noon | Rerouted via Ramgarh and Mukteshwar instead of through Bhowali and Kainchi. |
| Special shuttle service | 14 June | 15 June | The two days the RTO named for the dedicated shuttle fleet. Shuttles also ran on the shoulder days from the main parking points. |
Notice the shape of it. Goods traffic goes first, two full days before the event, because a stuck lorry on a hill road blocks everything behind it. Private cars go next. Two-wheelers, which are usually the last vehicles allowed anywhere, were barred a full day before the bhandara. And the through buses to Almora were rerouted from the afternoon of the fourteenth, when the inbound crowd was already building.
One further date to hold. At the Chief Secretary's review on 10 June, reported by Panchjanya, officials were told to run a route plan for the next ten days around the peak, not four. The four-day order is the enforceable one; the ten-day plan is the operational backdrop. If you were on NH 109 anywhere in the second week of June, you were inside it.
This is the piece no English-language page carried in 2026, and it is the piece that decides your morning. The police order did not name one car park. It named a parking point for each direction of approach, and shuttles ran from each. Arrive from the wrong side and you were simply sent back to the parking for your side.
| If you are arriving from | You park at | Then |
|---|---|---|
| Delhi, NCR, Dehradun, Haridwar, Moradabad, Rampur, Bareilly | Kathgodam and the Gaulapar area | Shuttle bus to Kainchi Dham, Rs 150 a head |
| Ramnagar, Kaladhungi, Lalkuan and the rest of Nainital district's plains | Vikas Bhawan parking, Bhimtal | Shuttle bus, Rs 100 a head |
| Nainital, Jeolikote, Mukteshwar | Sanatorium parking, Bhowali | Shuttle bus or shuttle taxi, Rs 50 a head |
| Almora, Bageshwar, Pithoragarh | Khairna | Shuttle bus, Rs 50 a head |
Within Haldwani itself the district administration's plan of 10 June, reported by India Daily, named three sites for the cars that got that far: the Nagar Nigam Inter College ground, the area around Haldwani railway station, and Kathgodam, with the Gaulapar stadium held back as overflow once those filled. The police order of the following day compressed the out-of-state instruction to "Kathgodam and Gaulapar". Both were in force in the sense that the police diversion list still routed traffic off Gaulapar to the railway station and the Inter College for shuttles. We are showing you both lists rather than picking one, because the plan visibly evolved between the tenth and the eleventh, and the version you meet at the barrier next year will have evolved again.
Bhowali, Bhimtal, Kathgodam and Haldwani each had separate parking for four-wheelers and two-wheelers. If you have read our comparison of the four towns to base in, you will recognise the logic: the Vikas Bhawan car park in Bhimtal and the Sanatorium in Bhowali are the same points the district uses for ordinary weekend restrictions. Foundation day is the weekend system with the volume turned all the way up and a fourth point added at Khairna for the Almora side.
The fares are the most useful numbers on this page, and they came from the RTO rather than from a bus operator, which matters because the RTO can penalise overcharging. RTO Enforcement Arvind Pandey set them out on 8 June 2026, reported by ETV Bharat the following morning.
| From | Fare | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Haldwani or Kathgodam | Rs 150 | Roadways buses from the roadways station and the railway station. |
| Bhimtal or Nainital | Rs 100 | Buses plus 100 taxi-maxi vehicles from Bhimtal. |
| Bhowali or Khairna | Rs 50 | Buses plus 150 taxi-maxi vehicles from Bhowali. The Bhowali taxi shuttle was also Rs 50. |
Every bus and taxi was required to display its route and fare list, and the RTO said overcharging would be acted on. Keep that in mind if a driver quotes you something else: the list is supposed to be on the vehicle.
Do not confuse the mela shuttle with the ordinary bus. A state roadways service has run from Haldwani and Kathgodam to Kainchi Dham since 2024 at roughly Rs 110, and on a normal day that is the cheapest way up. The Rs 150 figure is the special mela fare on the special mela fleet, and it applied on the days the shuttle order was in force.
On the size of that fleet, the sources genuinely disagree and we would rather show you the disagreement than smooth it over. India Daily, reporting the district administration's plan on 10 June, gave 120 shuttle buses, 60 from Uttarakhand Transport Corporation and 60 from KMOU. ETV Bharat, reporting the RTO on 9 June, gave 60 roadways buses, around 150 KMOU buses across the various routes, and a further 30 buses lent by the Graphic Era institute for the Bhimtal to Kainchi run, plus the 250 taxi-maxis. The likeliest explanation is that 120 was the core shuttle fleet and the larger figure counted every vehicle pressed into service across the network. For your purposes the difference does not change the plan: there were a great many buses, and they ran from ten points, including Bhowali, Bhimtal, Khairna, Kathgodam, the Haldwani roadways station, the Haldwani railway station and the Gaulapar ISBT.
A translation trap, since much of this is reported in Hindi. "KMOU" is the Kumaon Motor Owners Union, the private operators' body that runs the hill bus routes, written in Hindi as kemu. It is not KMVN, the state tourism corporation. Several automated summaries get this wrong, and if you see "KMVN buses" in an English write-up of the mela, that is the tell that nobody read the source.
The two-wheeler rule surprises more people than any other, because a scooter is the vehicle everyone assumes will be waved through. It was not. From 8:00 AM on 14 June to 4:00 PM on 16 June, all two-wheelers and taxi bikes were barred from the Kainchi Dham area, stopped at the junctions and entry points, and directed to designated two-wheeler parking in Bhowali. From there the shuttle was the only way in, the same as for a car.
Taxis were treated as private vehicles for the purpose of reaching the temple: stopped at the parking for their direction, passengers onward by shuttle. Taxis and small vehicles heading into the hills for other reasons were sent by the alternative routes described in the next section. If you are hiring a cab from the plains for the day, our guide to Haldwani cab operators and fares is the place to start, but understand that on these four days the cab gets you to Kathgodam or Gaulapar and no further.
Heavy goods vehicles were off the route from 6:00 AM on 13 June to 11:00 PM on 16 June, with exemptions for milk, gas, petroleum, medical supplies and other essentials under set conditions, and with goods traffic for Almora, Bageshwar, Pithoragarh and Champawat sent by the alternative routes. This is the restriction that most affects the town rather than the pilgrim: for four days the hill supply chain ran on a different road.
This is the section for the reader who has no interest in the bhandara and is simply trying to drive from Haldwani to Almora, Ranikhet or beyond in the middle of June. The short answer is that NH 109 through Bhowali and Kainchi was closed to you, and the police diversion list, which ETV Bharat published in full on 11 June, sent you round.
From the plains, vehicles for the hills were pushed off the Bhowali road at the Khutani band and sent by Ramgarh and Mukteshwar to rejoin the Almora road beyond the Kainchi valley. From the Almora side, vehicles reaching the Kwarab bridge were turned towards Nathuwakhan, and from the Odakhan and Lakshmikhan junctions on towards Mukteshwar and Ramgarh. The two halves of the diversion meet on the Ramgarh to Mukteshwar ridge, which is the same high road our Haldwani to Mukteshwar guide describes, and it adds distance and a good deal of climbing to a journey that would normally follow the river.
Roadways and KMOU buses to Almora, Pithoragarh and Bageshwar were on the same diversion from 2:00 PM on 14 June to noon on 16 June. If you had a bus ticket to Almora for the afternoon of the fourteenth, you went by Mukteshwar whether the ticket said so or not. Our Haldwani to Almora route guide covers the ordinary journey; in the mela window, add the diversion and add time.
Inside Haldwani the diversion list ran to more than thirty named junctions, from Nayagaon on the Ramnagar side through the RTO road, Kusumkhera, Chhadail and Sheetal Hotel to Gaurapadao and Teenpani on the Bareilly road, all of them designed to push through-traffic around the city and Kainchi-bound traffic towards Kathgodam and Gaulapar. We have not reproduced the full list here because it changes and because it belongs to the police, but the pattern is what matters: if you were driving across Haldwani on those days, you were being steered, and the steering was towards the parking for your direction.
The temple's own bhandara is the point of the day. But foundation day at Kainchi also brings dozens of private bhandaras, organisations and families serving food to pilgrims along the approach roads, and in 2026 the District Magistrate stopped them doing it on the road. On 13 June, reported by ETV Bharat, DM Lalit Mohan Rayal ordered that no bhandara or prasad distribution would be permitted on the main road, the darshan route, or anywhere it obstructed traffic. Anyone wanting to serve pilgrims could do so on private premises or at sites the administration designated, and the order said action would follow against anyone who ignored it.
The reasoning was traffic: a roadside bhandara draws a crowd, the crowd spills into the carriageway, and on a road that is already one lane of shuttles in each direction that is enough to stop everything. Our entry rules page records that roadside bhandaras, food vans and carts had been cleared from the Nainital, Bhimtal and Bhowali approaches in earlier years too; 2026 made it a formal order with a named officer behind it. If you are travelling with a group that plans to serve food, this is the rule to read before you load the vehicle.
Comparing the two years is the honest way to show you how fast this plan moves, and therefore how much of this page to trust for 2027.
In 2025 the shuttle service began on Saturday 14 June from Haldwani and the Kathgodam roadways station, with the KMOU station as a third point. ETV Bharat reported "around 100 buses" in the fleet and that 90 shuttle runs had carried pilgrims up on the first day. The City Magistrate, A. P. Bajpai, confirmed that two-wheelers and private vehicles were barred and that shuttle was the only way in. SSP Prahlad Narayan Meena declared the temple area a zero zone for vehicles and divided it into police sectors. For the first time an ATS unit was deployed alongside the PAC and SSB, and a separate report the same week put the number of selected parking sites at fifteen.
In 2026 the shuttle fleet was larger, whichever figure you accept; the parking was organised by direction of approach rather than as a list of sites; the restrictions were spelled out as timed windows for each vehicle class; the Chief Secretary personally reviewed the plan and asked for a ten-day route management period, zonal and sectoral policing, an evacuation plan and multilevel-parking access; and the District Magistrate added the roadside bhandara ban. Health services were put on alert and a green corridor was kept from Haldwani to Kainchi for ambulances, fire and police vehicles. That corridor is worth a sentence of its own, because it has been misread: it was for emergency vehicles, not a fast lane for pilgrims.
The direction of travel is clear. Each year the plan reaches further out from the temple, starts earlier, and assigns more. Whatever the 2027 order says, expect it to be at least this strict.
Everything above reduces to a few decisions.
Sleep on the plains, at the point where your shuttle begins. On these four days a hill hotel above Bhowali is not an advantage, because you cannot drive from it to the temple either. The shuttle runs from Haldwani and Kathgodam, so a room within reach of the Kathgodam railway station or the Haldwani roadways station puts you at the start of the queue rather than in it. Our hotels near Kathgodam station and hotels for tourists in Haldwani pages are built for exactly this, and the rates on the plains do not spike the way Nainital's do in June. The summer guide gives the June price bands.
Take the first shuttle you can. Our route guide's advice for an ordinary day is to be at the gate before 8:30 AM. On foundation day the shuttle timetable replaces your own departure time, and the earlier bus is the calmer bus. Carry the fare in small notes, expect the list on the vehicle, and expect to walk the last stretch from wherever the shuttle sets down, because the temple area was closed to vehicles.
If you are coming from Delhi, aim for Kathgodam, not Bhowali. The whole point of the direction-based parking is that arrivals from the plains stop on the plains. Driving up to Bhowali in the hope of a closer start sends you back down.
If you are only passing through, do not. Choose another day for the Almora run, or accept the Ramgarh and Mukteshwar diversion with time in hand.
Decide in advance whether the bhandara is the point. If it is, June is the month and this page is the plan. If what you want is a quiet darshan, the crowd calendar says February, and the month-by-month Haldwani guide says the same for the town. The trip planner will build either version around your dates. And whichever you choose, the ashram itself does not take overnight guests, on foundation day or any other, so the question of where to sleep is real.
It cannot promise that 2027 will look like 2026. Every figure above is dated and attributed, and the reason is that the 2025 and 2026 plans differ in fleet, in parking logic, and in the officers issuing them. Treat this as the pattern and the previous year's detail, then check the Nainital Police and district administration notices in the first fortnight of June before you travel. We will update this page when the 2027 order is published and say what changed.
It cannot promise the fleet size. Two credible reports a day apart gave two figures, and we have shown you both.
It cannot promise the exact parking list inside Haldwani, which shifted between the administration's plan and the police order within twenty-four hours.
It cannot tell you the shuttle timetable, because none was published in the reports we have read; the service was described as continuous from the parking points across the shuttle days. If a timetable exists, it lives on the vehicles and at the parking points on the day.
And it cannot verify the crowd forecast. Reports spoke of "lakhs" of pilgrims and one national site put the expected figure above five lakh for the mela; the only hard count we have is the district's June monthly total, which is on the crowd calendar page and is the number we would rely on.
Everything here is read directly from the Hindi-language reports named in the text, which we have linked in the citations rather than paraphrased from a summary. Where two of them disagree, we have said so. If you find an error, the correction link below reaches a person.
The buses leave from Haldwani and Kathgodam. A room near the station puts you at the front of that queue, and plains rates in June are the same as they are in February.
No. In 2026 Nainital Police barred private cars bound for Kainchi Dham from 8:00 AM on 13 June to 4:00 PM on 16 June. Cars were stopped at a parking point assigned by direction of approach and the last stretch was by shuttle bus only. The same rule applied to taxis. In 2025 the police went as far as declaring the temple area a zero zone for vehicles. Expect the 2027 order to be at least as strict.
At Kathgodam or the Gaulapar area, on the plains. The 2026 police order sent arrivals from Delhi, NCR, Dehradun, Haridwar, Moradabad, Rampur and Bareilly there, with shuttle buses onward at Rs 150 a head. Within Haldwani the district's plan also named the Nagar Nigam Inter College ground and the railway station area, with the Gaulapar stadium as overflow. Driving up to Bhowali in the hope of a closer start does not work: you are turned back to the parking for your direction.
The RTO fixed the 2026 fares in advance: Rs 150 per passenger from Haldwani or Kathgodam, Rs 100 from Bhimtal or Nainital, and Rs 50 from Bhowali or Khairna, with the Bhowali taxi shuttle also at Rs 50. Every vehicle was required to display its route and fare list, and overcharging was to be acted on. This is separate from the ordinary roadways bus from Haldwani to Kainchi Dham, which runs the rest of the year at roughly Rs 110.
No. From 8:00 AM on 14 June to 4:00 PM on 16 June 2026, all two-wheelers and taxi bikes were barred from the Kainchi Dham area. They were stopped at junctions and entry points and directed to designated two-wheeler parking in Bhowali, from where the shuttle was the only way in. A scooter gets no closer than a car does.
The enforceable police order in 2026 ran four days, from 13 June to 16 June, with different start hours for different vehicle classes: heavy goods vehicles from 6:00 AM on the 13th, private cars from 8:00 AM on the 13th, two-wheelers from 8:00 AM on the 14th. The Chief Secretary separately asked for a ten-day route management plan around the peak. The dedicated shuttle service was named for 14 and 15 June.
Yes. NH 109 through Bhowali and Kainchi was closed to through-traffic, which was diverted at the Khutani band via Ramgarh and Mukteshwar from the plains side, and at the Kwarab bridge via Nathuwakhan and Mukteshwar from the Almora side. Roadways and KMOU buses to Almora, Pithoragarh and Bageshwar ran the same diversion from 2:00 PM on 14 June to noon on 16 June. Heavy goods vehicles were off the route for the full four days. Choose another day if you can.
No, and that is the reason every figure on this page carries a date. In 2025 the fleet was reported at around 100 buses with fifteen parking sites; in 2026 it was 120 or more, with parking assigned by direction of approach, timed windows for each vehicle class, a Chief Secretary's review and a District Magistrate's ban on roadside bhandaras. Each year the plan starts earlier and reaches further. Check the Nainital Police notices in the first fortnight of June before you travel, and treat this page as the pattern rather than the timetable.