Kathgodam to Gunji, and the two spurs beyond
The road to Adi Kailash and Om Parvat, stage by stage
Every waypoint in order, what each section of road is actually like, and the altitude figures the sources cannot agree on.
Quick answer
The road runs Kathgodam or Haldwani → Pithoragarh → Dharchula → Tawaghat → Ghatiabagarh → Malpa → Budhi → Chhiyalekh → Garbyang, Nabi and Napalchyu → Gunji. At Gunji it forks: north-east through Kalapani to Nabhidhang for Om Parvat, north-west through Nabi and Kuti to Jolingkong for Adi Kailash. Everything below Dharchula is ordinary paved road. Everything above Tawaghat is not — that stretch is narrow, exposed and actively landslide-prone, and it is the whole journey’s difficulty concentrated into about 72 km.
Inner Line Permits were suspended on 2 July 2026 and we have not confirmed that they have resumed.
Pithoragarh district administration stopped issuing Inner Line Permits on 2 July 2026 because of continuous rainfall. On 18 August 2026 the Tawaghat-Gunji road was closed by boulder falls at Malghat and Kulagad, cutting off the Vyas Valley. District officials have indicated permits may restart in September, but we have not seen that confirmed. Do not book non-refundable travel for this route until you have spoken to the SDM Dharchula office.
Last verified by us on 22 August 2026. Our dated route status page carries the full 2026 timeline and the district control room numbers, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.
The waypoint sequence, in order
This is the order you actually pass things in. We have set it out as a list rather than a paragraph because a good number of published itineraries get the order wrong, and one of them inserts a place that is not on this road at all.
| # | Place | What it is on this road |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kathgodam / Haldwani | The railhead. The broad-gauge line ends here and the road journey starts. See our Kathgodam to Adi Kailash page for the full charter. |
| 2 | Pithoragarh | District headquarters, and the last town of any size with a full range of services. Usually the end of day one. |
| 3 | Dharchula | 940 m, on the Kali river with Nepal on the far bank. The permit town, the last dependable ATM and pharmacy, and the point where the vehicle changes. |
| 4 | Tawaghat | Roughly 19–20 km above Dharchula. The confluence town where the Dhauliganga joins the Kali. The road above here is a different road in character. |
| 5 | Ghatiabagarh | The zero point of the Border Roads Organisation’s 80 km road to Lipulekh Pass. Everything beyond is BRO alignment. |
| 6 | Malpa | A named landslide point, and the site of the 1998 disaster. See below. |
| 7 | Budhi (Bundi) | Where the climb to Chhiyalekh begins — 27 near-vertical hairpins, and the proposed tunnel’s southern portal. |
| 8 | Chhiyalekh | The top of that climb. Heavy vehicles cannot pass this point in practice. |
| 9 | Garbyang, Nabi, Napalchyu | The Vyas Valley villages, on the shelf above the Kali. Garbyang looks straight across at Nepal. |
| 10 | GUNJI | About 3,200–3,220 m. Year-round posts of the SSB, ITBP and GREF/BRO. This is your base, and the point where the road forks. |
Narayan Ashram is not on the road to Gunji, and a great many itineraries say it is.
Narayan Ashram sits at 2,734 m, 14 km from Tawaghat and 136 km north of Pithoragarh, on a side road. Those figures come from the Pithoragarh district administration’s own tourism page. It is a genuine and worthwhile place, and plenty of travellers go — but you go to it and come back, usually on the return leg or as a separate excursion from Dharchula. You do not pass through it on the way to Ghatiabagarh, Malpa or Gunji.
Presenting it as a sequential waypoint between Tawaghat and Gunji is simply wrong, and if a day-by-day plan you have been sent does that, ask whoever wrote it how long the detour takes. The answer will tell you whether they have driven this road.
Distances, leg by leg
Every figure below is one we can point at a source for. Where two sources disagree we show both rather than average them into a number nobody published.
| Leg | Distance | Time | Confidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kathgodam → Pithoragarh | ~190–200 km | 8–10 hrs | Medium. Varies with the road taken — via Bhowali, Almora and Jageshwar, or via Tanakpur and Lohaghat. |
| Pithoragarh → Dharchula | 92 km (some sources 96 km) | 4–5 hrs | High |
| Dharchula → Tawaghat | ~19–20 km | Short, but slow | Medium |
| Dharchula → Gunji | 72 km (one source 71 km) | A full day’s driving | High |
| Ghatiabagarh → Lipulekh Pass | 80 km | The BRO road, in full | High — the Government of India figure |
| Gunji → Jolingkong (Adi Kailash) | 36 km | Under an hour on the new blacktop | High |
| Gunji → Nabhidhang (Om Parvat) | ~20–22 km each way, ~44 km return | Half a day return | Medium |
| Pithoragarh → Om Parvat by road | 178 km | — | Medium–high — the official district figure |
Distances and journey times on this page are drawn from published sources and from our own driving, and are given as ranges because that is what they honestly are. A figure quoted to the kilometre on a Himalayan road is usually a figure someone made up.
We do not publish a single Kathgodam-to-Adi-Kailash total on this page, for the reason set out on the section hub: roughly 400 to 430 km one way is the honest range, and it moves with the road chosen for the first day.
The road, section by section
This route is not uniformly hard. It is easy for two thirds of its length and then it is genuinely serious, and knowing where the change happens is most of what a traveller needs.
| Section | Condition | What it asks of the vehicle |
|---|---|---|
| Kathgodam → Pithoragarh | Paved state highway and national highway. | Nothing special. An ordinary car is entirely adequate, and more comfortable than a 4x4 for eight to ten hours. |
| Pithoragarh → Dharchula | Paved national highway down the Kali valley. | Still normal-car country. Nepal is across the river for much of it. |
| Baluwakot → Tawaghat | 35.6 km under widening by the BRO’s Hillways Company, and has been for four years. As of 25 February 2026, 29 km were complete and 6 km remained, against a June 2026 deadline. Compensation of 125 crore rupees was allocated, of which 90 per cent had been disbursed. | Expect works, one-way control and dust. This is roadworks, not danger — but it eats time, and time is what the 4 PM onward cut-off spends. |
| Tawaghat → Ghatiabagarh → Gunji | The hard part. Narrow, exposed and actively landslide-prone. Named danger points: Malghat, Kulagad, Garbadhar, Malpa and Elagad. Overhanging boulders. Drops of about 1,000 ft to the Kali. A waterfall that falls roughly 2,000 ft across the road. 27 near-vertical hairpins on the Budhi to Chhiyalekh climb. | A 4x4, and a driver who has done it. Heavy vehicles cannot pass Chhiyalekh. |
| Gunji → Jolingkong | Fully blacktopped. Built by the BRO in about 15 months at roughly 200 crore rupees, a 3.75 m carriageway at around 14,000 ft. Reported complete in December 2024; by late 2025 the leg was described as taking under an hour where it had taken about two and a half. | The newest and, counter-intuitively, the easiest driving on the whole route. But 3.75 m is one lane with passing places. |
| Gunji → Kalapani → Nabhidhang | Motorable, on the BRO Ghatiabagarh–Lipulekh alignment. | 4x4. High, cold and thin. Beyond Nabhidhang, Lipulekh Pass is ITBP-controlled and not open to ordinary tourists. |
What the 72 km above Dharchula is actually like
We would rather describe this plainly than either dramatise it or gloss it.
Above Tawaghat the road is cut into the side of the Kali gorge. For long stretches it is a single vehicle wide, with rock overhanging on one side and a drop of around a thousand feet to the river on the other. In places boulders sit above the carriageway with nothing holding them but friction. At one point a waterfall comes off the cliff and falls something like two thousand feet across the road, which means you drive through it. Five points on this stretch have names because they slide often enough to have earned them: Malghat, Kulagad, Garbadhar, Malpa and Elagad.
Then, from Budhi, the road climbs to Chhiyalekh in 27 near-vertical hairpins (one source counts 26). This is the section the Union Minister of State was referring to when he said heavy vehicles cannot commute in the Chhiyalekh area — and it is why we treat a Tempo Traveller as ending its usefulness at Dharchula.
None of that is a reason not to go. It is a reason to go in the right vehicle, with a driver who has driven it before, in a month when it is not raining, and with a spare day in the plan. The 4x4 page covers the vehicle question properly.
Malpa, 1998
In 1998 a landslide at Malpa killed around 205 people, including about 60 Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims.
It is the defining event of this road and we are not going to leave it off a page that describes the road as a drive. It is not a story to be told for effect, and we are not telling it for effect. We are telling it because Malpa is a place you pass, because it is still one of the five named slide points on this stretch, and because a traveller reading a cheerful itinerary deserves to know what this valley is capable of.
The practical lesson is narrow and useful: this hillside moves, most often in the monsoon, and there is exactly one road. Plan around that rather than around a photograph. See when to go.
The BRO road that changed everything
Until 2020 the final approach was a trek. What replaced it is a single, documented piece of engineering, and the primary source is worth reading in full.
- What was built
- The 80 km road from Ghatiabagarh to Lipulekh Pass, an extension of the Pithoragarh–Tawaghat–Ghatiabagarh road.
- Who built it
- The Border Roads Organisation.
- Inaugurated
- 8 May 2020, by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh.
- What it climbs
- From about 6,000 ft to 17,060 ft.
- What it replaced
- A 90 km high-altitude trek.
- What the Government said it changed
- The Press Information Bureau stated that the road puts 84 per cent of the Kailash Mansarovar journey on Indian roads and 16 per cent in China, cutting the yatra to about a week.
The primary source is the PIB release of 8 May 2020. If you read one government document about this route, read that one — it is where almost every secondary account ultimately comes from, usually without saying so.
The second piece is the 36 km Gunji to Jolingkong spur, which is what made Adi Kailash itself a drive rather than a walk: blacktopped by the BRO in about 15 months at roughly 200 crore rupees, 3.75 m wide, at around 14,000 ft, reported complete in December 2024. The effect on the state corporation’s own programme is the clearest measure of it — see the KMVN comparison.
The Bundi to Garbyang tunnel: proposed, not built
A 5.4 km tunnel from Bundi to Garbyang has been proposed. It would bypass the Chhiyalekh hairpins altogether and shorten the route by 22 km. 137 crore rupees has been allocated for land acquisition, of which about 60 per cent had been disbursed.
As of 31 October 2025 the detailed project report was still in final approval and construction had not started — that is the Union Minister of State, Ajay Tamta, speaking on the record.
We are flagging it because several travel pages describe this tunnel as though it exists or is being dug. It is neither. Do not build a plan, a timetable or an expectation around it. If it is built it will change this route materially, and we will rewrite this page when that happens.
Altitudes — and the places the sources disagree
Altitude figures on this route are messier than any travel site admits. Below is what the sources actually say. Where they conflict, we show the conflict instead of picking a winner.
| Place | What we publish | The state of the evidence |
|---|---|---|
| Dharchula | 940 m (3,080 ft) | High confidence. Some itineraries say 915 m. This is the last low place on the trip. |
| Tawaghat | Approximately 1,100 m | Low confidence — blog-level sources only. We found no government figure. Treat it as an approximation, not a datum. |
| Narayan Ashram | 2,734 m | High confidence — official Pithoragarh district figure. Remember it is on a side road, not on the main line. |
| Gunji | ~3,200–3,220 m | The district route table gives 3,220 m; a self-drive traveller logged about 10,500 ft. One blog’s 3,595 m we reject. |
| Kalapani | Approximately 3,600–3,700 m | A genuine conflict, not sloppiness. Commonly cited at 3,600 m; the district table shows 4,246 m; Wikipedia puts the springs at 4,330 m and the territory between 3,650 m and 6,180 m. |
| Nabhidhang | ~4,000–4,270 m | KMVN’s 2018 brochure says 4,260 m, another source 4,266 m, one blog 3,856 m. See the note below about the figure we will not reproduce. |
| Jolingkong | Approximately 4,500 m | Sources spread from about 4,380 m to 4,770 m. A single figure here would be false precision, so we publish the round number and say why. |
| Adi Kailash | ≈5,945 m | Four sources, four numbers: PeakVisor 5,945 m, Wikipedia 5,925 m, KMVN’s 2018 brochure 6,191 m. We publish the range 5,925–6,191 m. |
| Om Parvat | 5,590 m (18,340 ft) | Consistently cited. Coordinates 30°11′48″N 81°01′57″E. |
| Lipulekh Pass | 17,060 ft (≈5,200 m) | The PIB figure, from the release on the road, and therefore the one we use. Other sources give 5,115 m or 5,334 m. Not open to ordinary tourists. |
One figure we will not reproduce, even though it is on a government domain.
The Pithoragarh district administration’s own Om Parvat page states that Nabhidhang Camp sits at 5,900 m. It almost certainly does not. Every other source we found puts the camp somewhere between roughly 4,000 m and 4,270 m, and 5,900 m is within a few hundred metres of the peak figures — which is what an error of that shape usually looks like.
We are saying so openly rather than quietly copying a .nic.in number, because a
figure being on a government website is a reason to trust it, not a reason to stop
thinking.
Where the road ends
Two dead ends, and it is worth being clear about both.
- Beyond Nabhidhang lies Lipulekh Pass. That is the top of the BRO road at 17,060 ft, it is ITBP-controlled, and it is not open to ordinary tourists. Nabhidhang is where a traveller’s road stops.
- Beyond Jolingkong there is nothing to drive to. Jolingkong is the Parvati Sarovar (Parvati Kund) basin with the Shiva–Parvati temple, and the darshan point for Adi Kailash. The peak itself is a mountain, not a destination — it has never been summited.
For the Om Parvat spur in detail, including the honest point about whether the Om will be visible when you get there, see the Om Parvat page. For the permit that decides whether you get past Gunji at all, the Inner Line Permit guide. If you are joining the road at Dharchula rather than Kathgodam, the Dharchula to Adi Kailash page covers the short version.
Ask us about a specific stage of this road
If a plan you have been sent shows Narayan Ashram between Tawaghat and Gunji, or Om Parvat and Adi Kailash on the same afternoon, send it to us and we will tell you what is wrong with it — whether or not you book with us.
Common questions
What is the correct route to Adi Kailash from Kathgodam?
Kathgodam or Haldwani to Pithoragarh, Dharchula, Tawaghat, Ghatiabagarh, Malpa, Budhi, Chhiyalekh, then Garbyang, Nabi and Napalchyu to Gunji. At Gunji the road forks: north-east through Kalapani to Nabhidhang for Om Parvat, north-west through Nabi and Kuti to Jolingkong for Adi Kailash.
Is Narayan Ashram on the way to Adi Kailash?
No, and this is one of the most common errors in published itineraries. Narayan Ashram is at 2,734 m, 14 km from Tawaghat and 136 km north of Pithoragarh, on a side road. It is an optional detour, usually taken on the return leg or as a separate excursion, not a waypoint you pass through on the way to Gunji.
How long is the Ghatiabagarh to Lipulekh road?
80 km. It was built by the Border Roads Organisation and inaugurated by the Defence Minister on 8 May 2020, climbing from about 6,000 ft to 17,060 ft and replacing a 90 km high-altitude trek. The PIB release states it puts 84 per cent of the Kailash Mansarovar journey on Indian roads.
Which parts of the Adi Kailash road are dangerous?
Tawaghat to Gunji. Five points are named for how often they slide: Malghat, Kulagad, Garbadhar, Malpa and Elagad. Expect overhanging boulders, drops of about 1,000 ft to the Kali, a waterfall that falls across the road, and 27 near-vertical hairpins on the Budhi to Chhiyalekh climb.
Is the Gunji to Jolingkong road paved?
Yes. The 36 km spur was blacktopped by the BRO in about 15 months at roughly 200 crore rupees, with a 3.75 m carriageway at around 14,000 ft, and was reported complete in December 2024. Travel time fell from about two and a half hours to under one.
Is the Bundi to Garbyang tunnel open?
No. It is proposed. The 5.4 km tunnel would bypass the Chhiyalekh hairpins and shorten the route by 22 km, and 137 crore rupees has been allocated for land acquisition. But as of 31 October 2025 the detailed project report was still in final approval and construction had not started. Do not plan around it.
How high is Gunji?
About 3,200 to 3,220 m. The Pithoragarh district route table gives 3,220 m and a self-drive traveller logged roughly 10,500 ft. One blog figure of 3,595 m circulates widely and we reject it.
What happened at Malpa in 1998?
A landslide killed around 205 people, including about 60 Kailash Mansarovar pilgrims. Malpa is still one of the five named slide points on the Tawaghat to Gunji stretch, and the disaster remains the defining event of this road.
Can you drive beyond Nabhidhang to Lipulekh Pass?
Not as an ordinary tourist. The road continues to Lipulekh at 17,060 ft, but the pass is ITBP-controlled. Nabhidhang, the Om Parvat viewpoint, is where a traveller’s road ends.
Sources and further reading
Where this page states a fact about roads, permits or public information, these are the sources it relies on. Anything we could not verify, we have said so.
- PIB, Government of India - Ghatiabagarh to Lipulekh road inaugurated by the Defence Minister, 8 May 2020
- Pithoragarh district administration - Chota Kailash route stages
- Pithoragarh district administration - Narayan Ashram (2,734 m, 14 km from Tawaghat)
- Pithoragarh district administration - Om Parvat (source of the Nabhidhang figure we do not reproduce)
- Amar Ujala - the 72 km road from Dharchula to Gunji, named slide points, hairpins and the 1998 Malpa landslide
- Amar Ujala - Baluwakot to Tawaghat widening, 29 of 35.6 km complete, 25 February 2026
- ETV Bharat - Bundi to Garbyang tunnel, DPR still in final approval, 31 October 2025
- Wikipedia - Dharchula (92 km north of Pithoragarh, 940 m)
- Wikipedia - Gunji, Uttarakhand (the two motorable routes from Gunji)
- Wikipedia - Kalapani territory (the altitude conflict)
- PeakVisor - Adi Kailash elevation