Short answer. The Nanda Devi Raj Jat is a foot pilgrimage of about 280 km through Chamoli district in Uttarakhand, walked roughly once every twelve years and known as the Himalayan Mahakumbh. It carries the goddess Nanda Devi from her maternal home in the Garhwal foothills to Homkund, a glacial site below Trisul just beyond Roopkund, and is led by a four-horned ram. Two temple committees hold the tradition, so the journey runs under two names: Raj Jat, convened from Nauti village, and Badi Jat, convened from Siddhpeeth Kurud. The Badi Jat set out from Kurud on 5 September 2026; the Nauti committee deferred its Raj Jat to 2027.
What the Nanda Devi Raj Jat is
Nanda Devi is the presiding goddess of Uttarakhand, and in the hill villages of Garhwal and Kumaon she is not a distant deity but a daughter of the place. The Raj Jat is her vidai, the send-off a family gives a daughter leaving for her husband's house. She travels from her maternal home in the Garhwal foothills to Kailash, and the walk stops at Homkund because that is as far as human feet are meant to go.
In practice this means a procession of palanquins, village deities and thousands of walkers climbing from terraced farmland at around 1,000 m to a glacial basin above 4,500 m, over about three weeks. Dozens of village dolis join along the way and peel off again at their own boundaries. The word jat is the local term for such a journey, and raj marks it as the royal one, held under the patronage of the old Garhwal ruling house rather than by a single village.
The scale and the interval are why it is called the Himalayan Mahakumbh. It is not a commercial pilgrimage. There is no ticket, no registration counter and no operator who owns it, which is also why the arrangements around it are argued over so publicly.
Raj Jat, Badi Jat and Lokjat are three different journeys
Most confusion about this pilgrimage comes from three names being used as if they meant the same thing. They do not, and the difference matters if you are reading a date somewhere and trying to work out what it refers to.
| Name | How often | How far the doli goes | Held from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lokjat | Every year | Up to Bedini Kund, in the alpine meadows | Local temples, as a village observance |
| Badi Jat | The long-interval journey, as observed by the Kurud tradition | On to Homkund | Siddhpeeth Kurud, Nandanagar |
| Raj Jat | The long-interval journey, as observed by the Nauti tradition | On to Homkund | Nauti village, with the Kansuwa royal line |
The annual Lokjat is the one most hill families take part in. It follows the same idea on a smaller scale and turns back at the meadows. Only the twelve-year journey goes over the pass to Homkund, and that is the walk that draws national coverage.
Where Badi Jat and Raj Jat differ is not in the destination but in custody. Both walk to Homkund. They disagree about which temple the goddess sets out from, and therefore about who convenes the journey.
Who holds the tradition, and why there are two claims
The Nauti case rests on lineage and ritual office. The Nautiyal Brahmins of Nauti village are the hereditary rajpurohits of the Kunwars of Kansuwa, the descendants of the Garhwal ruling house, and Nauti holds the goddess's Shri Yantra, installed there in the ninth century by the ruler Kanak Pal. On that reading the journey is incomplete without Nauti, because the rites that open it are performed there and nowhere else.
The Kurud case rests on the older village claim. Siddhpeeth Kurud, in Nandanagar, holds Nanda Rajrajeshwari and is treated across a wide belt of Chamoli as the goddess's home temple. The Kurud side argues that as state patronage and public funding attached themselves to Nauti over successive cycles, Kurud's role in the same tradition was quietly written down, and that the older name for the journey was Badi Jat in the first place.
This is a live dispute inside a living tradition, not a settled historical question, and it is worth stating plainly rather than smoothing over. Both sides are custodians of real practice. Neither is a recent invention.
The route, and the part of it that never changes
The halt list is reissued each cycle and the two traditions open from different temples, so treat any stage-by-stage itinerary you find as belonging to one particular year. What is fixed is the geography. After the foothill villages the route funnels into a single corridor, and every version of the journey walks it.
The foothill leg
From the starting temple the doli works east along the Pindar valley through the farming villages of the Badhan and Nandanagar belts: Chandpur Garhi, Koti, Kulsari, Nandkesari, Debal, Mundoli. This is the crowded, populous part of the walk, at low altitude, where the procession is met at every boundary and passed on to the next village. Much of it runs beside a motor road, and parts of it are now covered by vehicle.
The corridor above Lohajung
At Lohajung the road ends and the mountain leg begins. Wan is the last permanent village, and it matters ritually as well as logistically: Wan is the seat of Latu Devta, whom the tradition treats as the goddess's dharma bhai, her sworn brother, and who escorts her from there on. Above Wan the path climbs through Gairoli Patal to Bedini Bugyal, one of the great alpine meadows of the Garhwal Himalaya, where the procession halts and the fair is held.
The high crossing
Beyond Bedini the ground turns severe. The route rises past Pathar Nachauni and Kaluvinayak to Roopkund, crosses the notch at Jyunragali, and drops onto Shila Samudra, a moraine field whose name means the sea of stone. Homkund lies beyond it, below Trisul, above 4,500 m. There is no settlement, no shelter and no road from Bedini onward, and the last stages are walked on snow and rock in whatever weather September supplies.
The return does not retrace the outward path. The procession descends the far side towards Sutol and Ghat, in the Nandakini valley.
The four-horned ram and the ringal chhantoli
Two objects carry the journey, and both are worth understanding because they are what most photographs of the Raj Jat actually show.
The chausingya khadu is a four-horned ram, born with the extra pair of horns and understood to appear in the region when the journey is due. It walks at the head of the procession carrying ornaments and offerings on its back. At Homkund it is released, and it is not followed. The tradition holds that it continues towards Kailash on its own, and that no one watches to see what happens next.
The ringal chhantoli are the tiered ceremonial umbrellas visible in almost every image of the walk. They are built on frames of ringal, the hill bamboo that grows on these slopes, dressed in coloured cloth and foil, and each village brings its own. They serve as the travelling seat of the deity. Many are carried barefoot for the whole distance, which is a piece of information that reads differently once you know the route crosses a moraine field above 4,500 m.
The legend, and what Roopkund actually holds
The story most often attached to this route concerns King Yashdhaval of Kannauj and his Garhwali queen Balampa, who are said to have joined the journey with dancers and an entourage and to have offended the goddess by their conduct on the mountain. A hailstorm is said to have destroyed the party near the lake now called Roopkund. The moral is explicit: the walk is a rite, not a spectacle, and it is not to be treated as an outing.
Roopkund does hold human remains, hundreds of them, noticed by a forest ranger in the 1940s and visible around the lake when the ice retreats. For decades the legend and the bones were read as one story. Genetic work published in Nature Communications in 2019 complicated that: the remains fall into three genetically distinct groups, deposited in more than one event, separated by something on the order of a thousand years, and one group has eastern Mediterranean ancestry that no version of the legend anticipates.
So the honest position is that Roopkund is not the grave of one royal party. It is a site used, and died at, repeatedly over a very long period, on a route that people have been walking for a very long time. That is a stranger fact than the legend, and it does not diminish the legend, which has its own job to do.
Why the twelve-year cycle keeps slipping
The interval is nominal rather than exact. The date is fixed by the lunisolar calendar and is traditionally declared on Vasant Panchami, and it has repeatedly moved for reasons that are practical rather than doctrinal. Recent journeys were held in 1987, in 2000 and in 2014, after the cycle that fell due in 2012 was deferred in the aftermath of the 2013 Kedarnath disaster.
The recurring constraints are the same each time. Malmas, the intercalary month, can make an otherwise correct year unsuitable. September in the high Himalaya brings snow, hail and rain, and the last stages are above the tree line with no shelter. And the temporary infrastructure the journey needs at altitude, water points, medical posts, tented halts, has to be built from nothing each cycle. Any of these can move a date, and historically all of them have.
The 2026 and 2027 cycle, as a matter of record
The cycle due after 2014 produced a split, and because both journeys are real it is worth recording what each side did rather than choosing one.
- On 23 January 2026 the Shri Nanda Devi Raj Jat committee at Nauti announced that the Raj Jat would not be held that year and would instead be held in 2027, citing malmas, weather and safety at altitude, and incomplete arrangements on the high stages. The committee said the ceremonial date declaration, the dinpatta, would be issued on Vasant Panchami 2027.
- The Kurud temple committee took the opposite view, held a mahapanchayat and resolved to walk in 2026. To keep the two distinct, the 2026 journey was named Badi Jat.
- The Nanda Devi Badi Jat set out from Siddhpeeth Kurud on 5 September 2026, its first halt Charbang, with 26 halts announced for the route. The committee's published schedule ran to 25 September. Reported dates for the closing rites at Homkund varied between outlets, which is normal for a journey whose late stages depend on weather.
- Not every traditional participant joined. The committee stated that the Nanda doli of the Badhan region would not take part in the 2026 journey, and the reasons given for that differed depending on who was asked.
Underlying the split was a route argument. The itinerary being prepared from Nauti opened at Nauti with a first halt at Ida Badhani. The Kurud side objected that a journey which omitted Kurud misrepresented the tradition, and took the demand as far as the state tourism department in Dehradun.
What the walk actually demands
Anyone reading about this journey as a possible trip should be clear about what the upper half involves. It is not a temple visit with a walk attached.
- Altitude. The route climbs from around 1,000 m to above 4,500 m. The final stages sit high enough for acute mountain sickness to be a real risk, and they are reached after two weeks of consecutive walking days.
- No exit. From Wan onward there is no road, no settlement and no vehicle evacuation. Anyone who cannot continue has to be carried down.
- Weather. September in this range is the tail of the monsoon meeting the first snow. Hail, whiteout and rain on exposed ground are all normal, and the schedule bends around them rather than the other way round.
- It is a rite, not a trek. The procession moves at the pace of the palanquins and the ritual, halts where the tradition halts, and is not organised for visitors. Photography, drones and access at the high stages are restricted by the administration in most cycles.
Between cycles the same corridor is walked as an ordinary trekking route, Lohajung to Wan to Bedini Bugyal, and that is a very different proposition: shorter, permitted, and served by registered operators. If mountain roads are part of your plan in the monsoon months, our Kumaon road and landslide advisory tracks blockages on the approach routes.
Questions people ask
Is the Nanda Devi Raj Jat the same as the Badi Jat?
They are the same tradition organised by two different committees. Both walk to Homkund. The Raj Jat is convened from Nauti village with the Kansuwa royal line and the Nautiyal rajpurohits; the Badi Jat is convened from Siddhpeeth Kurud in Nandanagar. In 2026 the two names were used deliberately to keep two separately organised journeys distinct.
How often is it held?
Nominally once every twelve years, with the date set by the lunisolar calendar and traditionally declared on Vasant Panchami. In practice the interval has slipped several times because of calendar months considered unsuitable, weather at altitude, or conditions on the ground. Recent journeys fell in 1987, 2000 and 2014.
Can an ordinary visitor join the walk?
The lower village stages are public and are watched by very large numbers of people. The high stages beyond Wan are another matter: there is no road, no shelter and no evacuation, the altitude exceeds 4,500 m, and access is usually controlled by the district administration during the journey. Anyone considering the upper route needs to be a fit, acclimatised walker and to follow whatever restrictions are in force that cycle.
Why does the four-horned ram matter?
The chausingya khadu leads the procession carrying offerings, and at Homkund it is released and not followed. The tradition understands it to continue towards Kailash alone. It is the single most recognisable element of the journey and its appearance is taken as the sign that the journey is due.
Is Roopkund on the route?
Yes. The high section passes Roopkund, the lake known for the human remains around its shore, shortly before crossing Jyunragali towards Shila Samudra and Homkund. Roopkund is not the destination; Homkund, further on and below Trisul, is.
Does it cost anything to attend?
No. It is a village procession held under temple committees, not a ticketed event. There is no entry fee and no booking. Costs, if any, are your own travel, food and stay.
How we put this together
We are an independent guide based in Haldwani and we are not connected to any of the committees that organise this journey. This page is compiled from committee announcements reported in the Uttarakhand press, the Free Press Journal's reporting on the 2026 departure, Haldwani Live's coverage from Chamoli, the Wikipedia entry on the Nanda Devi Raj Jat and the sources it cites, and the 2019 Nature Communications paper on the Roopkund remains. Where reports disagree, the disagreement is stated rather than resolved. Dates, halt lists and access rules are set afresh for each cycle by the organising committee and the Chamoli district administration, and they, not this page, are the authority on any journey being planned. Corrections are welcome at hih.editorial@gmail.com.