After hours of uphill roads, suddenly, you find yourself descending into the breathtaking vista of a circular, stadium-like valley, dropping as low as 900m above sea level. Your stunned eye travels down the face of the mountains, with their forests of rhododendron, pine and oak. It crosses long, vertical gashes of rock — scars left by landslides on an awesome scale — down past small, deep green squares of subsistence cultivation, and down further to the banks of the pounding, sometimes capricious Bhagirathi. There, you spot a quite lively, bustling and lovely town: Uttarkashi, the district capital. The drama of being here is unforgettable, for it is both visual — the deep cup of the valley allows you take it in as a whole from virtually anywhere in the town — and aural — since, wherever you go you will hear the sound of the river, seemingly as loud and powerful as that of an ocean. And strangely, because the valley drops to such a low point — an altitude of only 3,799 ft — the town of Uttarkashi offers unusually warm weather for this latitude.

You may choose to make Uttarkashi merely an undistinguished stopping point on the way to destinations and pilgrimage centres in northern Garhwal, like Harsil or Yamunotri. Or you may, quite wisely, choose it as a base, spending a few days to absorb Uttarkashi Town and fan out into its intricate network of more and less accessible villages. In fact, this is a town with a strong sense of history and pride. The story goes that Uttarkashi was conceived of as an alternate, northern Kashi for the turmoil of Kaliyug. Here, as in Varanasi (Kashi), the Ganga flows in the form of a sickle, and it is said that the river changes course at will to correct the moral balance of the universe as, allegedly, in 1857 when it shifted from flowing north of the Vishwanath Temple to south of it, leaving behind a large, rocky escarpment. Indeed, natural disasters, including floods, earthquakes, fires and landslides are a huge part of recent local memory but, with a startling resilience, Uttarkashi has only grown bigger after each one.

ORIENTATION
The ancient Vishwanath Temple is close to the main market and the Bus Stand, and options for eating and checking your email are not far away. There are several other temples in and around town. You can (and will have to) walk to various places, and this usually means uphill. The Nehru Institute of Mountaineering is about 5 km away. Ujeli, a kilometre from the centre of Uttarkashi, is a village known historically for its scholars and a row of very old ashrams along the Bhagirathi where you can find accommodation. Taxis and share-jeeps (Rs 10 per head) for Ujeli are available at the Bus Stand.

From Uttarkashi, you can take short day-trips out to secluded hill temples or high-altitude meadows, or make more ambitious several-day treks to near-mythic places like Dodital. Keep in mind that nowhere is as near as it seems on the map. If your journey will involve some trekking, such as with Nachiketa Tal, give yourself enough time to rest and take in the landscape along the way.