Badrinath

Badri is the wild berry that Vishnu, the story says, lived on while he sat in penance here under Lakshmi's shade; the temple that grew around the black shaligram idol of Badrinarayan was reorganised by Adi Shankaracharya in the eighth century and later painted by Garhwal's kings in the reds, blues and yellows it still wears. The Alaknanda runs green and loud past the temple steps, and pilgrims bathe first at Tapt Kund, a sulphur spring hot enough to cook rice, before climbing to the Singhdwar gate. The head priest, the Rawal, is by tradition a Namboodiri brahmin from Kerala, a thread Shankaracharya tied between the far ends of India.

At Brahma Kapal, beside the river, families offer pind daan for their ancestors. Three kilometres on is Mana, a Bhotia village of stone houses and woollen shawls that the government now signposts as India's first village; here the Saraswati river bursts out of the rock and vanishes under Bhim Pul, Vyas Gufa is where the Mahabharata is said to have been dictated, and the last tea shop of India serves chai to trekkers. Beyond Mana, a 5-km walk reaches the 122-m Vasudhara falls, and a long day the Satopanth lake.

Above everything hangs Neelkanth at 6,596 m, pink at sunrise. The temple opens in late April or May and shuts by mid-November, when the deity moves to the Narsingh temple at Joshimath. A day here is bells, hot spring steam and the sound of the river in a valley of extraordinary scale.