Char Dham Opening and Closing Dates: How They Are Decided

The Char Dham shrines are open for roughly six months a year and closed for the other six. The dates move every year, they are announced only a few months ahead, and every hotel, helicopter seat and registration slot on the circuit depends on them. Understanding how they are set is what lets you plan before the announcement rather than after it.

Each shrine has its own announcement

The four dates are not decided together. Each temple's committee fixes its own opening on a particular festival, by tradition:

• Badrinath — the opening date is announced on Basant Panchami, at Narendranagar.
• Kedarnath — announced on Maha Shivratri, at Ukhimath, where the deity spends the winter.
• Yamunotri and Gangotri — these two open on Akshaya Tritiya, which is why they are almost always the first to open and always open on the same day.

Closing follows the same pattern in reverse, clustered around Diwali. Yamunotri closes on Bhai Dooj, Gangotri on Annakut or Govardhan Puja, Kedarnath on Bhai Dooj as well, and Badrinath a couple of weeks later in the second half of November, with its date announced on Vijayadashami.

What this means in practice

Because Akshaya Tritiya and Basant Panchami move with the lunar calendar, the season opens somewhere between the last week of April and the middle of May, and closes between the end of October and the third week of November. That six-month band is stable even though the exact days are not — which is enough to plan around.

A working rule: the season is late April to mid-November, the shoulder days at either end are cold and thin on services, and nothing on the circuit operates outside it.

Where the deities go in winter

The shrines close but the worship does not stop — each deity moves to a winter seat lower down the valley, and those towns are open all year:

• Kedarnath's deity moves to Ukhimath, near Guptkashi.
• Badrinath's worship moves to Joshimath and Pandukeshwar — Joshimath is a genuine winter destination for this reason.
• Gangotri's deity moves to Mukhba, a short distance from Harsil.
• Yamunotri's moves to Kharsali, across the river from Janki Chatti.

Winter darshan at these seats is quiet, cheap and almost entirely unvisited by outsiders. If your dates cannot be moved into the season, it is a real alternative rather than a consolation.

Planning before the dates are announced

Announcements land in February or March; the booking rush follows within days. What you can do beforehand:

• Decide your window — May to mid-June for warmth and crowds, or mid-September to October for clear post-monsoon weather and thinner traffic.
• Hold rooms in the base towns that are always tight — Badrinath itself and Kedarnath have very few beds.
• Be ready to register the day the portal opens. See the registration guide.

The dates you should not plan around

July and August fall inside the season but are monsoon. Roads close on this circuit with no notice, and the closures last hours or days. The shrines stay open; getting to them stops being predictable. If those are your only free months, plan a shorter two-shrine trip with buffer nights rather than all four.