Nanda Devi Raj Jat

The largest and longest foot pilgrimage in the Indian Himalaya and the defining religious event of Garhwal. Because it comes round only about once a generation, most people who walk it do so once in their lives.

It is a wedding send-off rather than a temple festival. Nanda Devi is treated as a daughter of the Garhwal hills being escorted from her maternal home to her husband Shiva at Kailash, and the villages along the way are seeing her off.

A palanquin and a ringal-bamboo umbrella carrying the goddess are carried on foot for about 280 km across some nineteen to twenty-two staged halts. Each village feeds and houses the procession and hands it on to the next. Above Wan the route crosses high, exposed ground and the walking becomes serious.

The doli and the chhantoli are carried the whole distance on foot. A four-horned ram walks at the head of the procession and is released at Homkund with the offerings tied to its back; nobody follows it beyond that point.

Nanda Devi is understood as a daughter of these hills. The ram that goes on alone from Homkund carries the offerings to her husband's house.

The jat has been kept by the Nauti committee and the villages of Chamoli for centuries, organised around the idea of the goddess as a married daughter making the journey to her husband's house.