CHAR DHAM 12 DAYS 11 NIGHTS

The Chota Char Dham, is an important Hindu pilgrimage circuit in the Indian Himalayas. Located in the Garhwal region of the state of Uttarakhand, the circuit consists of four sites—Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath, and Badrinath.

Access to the pilgrimage is either from Haridwar, or Rishikesh, or from Dehradun. The tradition is to visit the sites in the following order:

1. Yamunotri, the source of the Yamuna River and the head of the goddess Yamuna.
2. Gangotri, the source of the Ganges (River Ganga) and head of the goddess Ganga.
3. Kedarnath, where a form of the Hindu god Shiva is venerated as one of the 12 Jyotirlingas, This is also the foremost of the Panch Kedar Temples in Uttarakhand.
4. Badrinath, the seat of the Hindu god Vishnu in his aspect of Badrinarayan, one of the 108 Divya Desams.

Originally, the appellation Char Dham referred to a pilgrimage circuit encompassing four important temples—Puri, Rameswaram, Dwarka, and Badrinath—located roughly at the four cardinal points of the subcontinent. An archetypal All-India pilgrimage circuit, the formation of the original Char Dham is credited to the great 8th century reformer and philosopher Shankaracharya (Adi Sankara). In the original Char Dham, three of the four sites are Vaishnava (Puri, Dwarka and Badrinath) while one is Shaiva (Rameswaram). The Chota Char Dham included representatives from all three major Hindu sectarian traditions, with two Shakti (goddess) sites, (Yamunotri and Gangotri), one Shaiva site (Kedarnath), and one Vaishnava site (Badrinath).