Just last year I visited Gangotri and Yamunotri along with my parents on a pilgrimage. We had taken our family friend’s car right from Delhi. The route we took Delhi - Rishikesh - Dharasu - Uttarkashi - Gangotri - Dharasu - Yamunotri.
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Gangotri is nestled in the inner himalayas well beyond typical hill-stations one goes to and so the mountains grow taller and majestic. For a city dweller like us, it was altogether different experince feeling miniscule in this setting. The drive till Uttarkashi is a typical hill drive but after that its just a narrow, one-lane, landslide-infested, broken road with umpteen bends and great ascents but the views that you get and purpose at destination are worth it. Like all other pilgrim places in himalayas, the bhagirathi rivers follows all along sometime calm, sometime noisy, narrow somewhere, wide otherwise.
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The Gangotri town itself is small with few staying options. The best is GMVN guest house where we took a room with 4 beds for 1000/- for single day. They cook decent meals. The main temple is situated river-side just a short-walk from wherever you stay. The flow of Bhagirath is so great even at place so close to its origin that one is overwhelmed. Sitting at the ghat watching river flow by and backdrop of snow-capped mountains including ’’Trishul’’ peak is a heavenly experience. Since this is such a remote pilgrim place (though holiest) and comes next only to Badrinath and Kedarnath in popularity so thankfully there is very less crowd and no endless wait for ’’darshan’’ of the deity. We could not go to ’’Gaumukh’’ due to old age of my parents whether they would be able to bear the hardship. Apart from bowing to the deity one can just amble along the mountain trails as we did to a ’’gufa’’(cave) with a ’’sadhu’’ doing a penance there. The other thing one can do is introspect over one’s life, it goal and plan. There is no better setting for that.
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There is one more ritual pilgrims perform and we did too is taking a bath in Bhagirathi early morning. Can you believe it, already the temperature outside is so low and on top of that freezing water of Bhagirathi and that too in open and people taking take bath with bucketfuls?
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I would suggest people to take good sturdy vehicle (prefreably hired as there is very less parking place and there are some hassles with private vehicles from other states by police over there) with experienced driver, and ample fuel supply as petrol pumps are few and far in between and they having fuel is also not guaranteed. Go there only during April/May or Sep/Oct well before or after rain starts as there could be landslide and rains anyway will not let you have the majestic views of the mountains. Do visit ’’Gaumukh’’ as far as possible otherwise the visit may feel incomplete. One may also stay at ’’Harsil’’ which is just 20 km before Gangotri.
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Thanks, Roopesh