Auli, Uttarakhand: Places, Snow, Costs and the Road Up (2026)

by Nav & Vandana Sharma · Published 25 September 2026 · Facts last verified 24 September 2026

We've been up to Auli three times, each time in a different season. In October 2024, after the monsoon, we drove up from Jyotirmath to a resort at Lower Auli. In June 2025, the green season, we came from Delhi by bus, rode a shared jeep up the last climb and stayed at GMVN. In January 2026 we reached Jyotirmath the day after that winter's first real snowfall and waited five hours for the road to open. We checked in at twenty past one in the morning, at a hotel by the TV Tower at Sunil.

Auli is smaller than its photographs. It's a ski area in Chamoli district, about an hour's drive above the town of Jyotirmath on a clear day. Up there you get a short ski slope, a meadow walk to Gorson Bugyal, a snowmaking reservoir and a ridge that faces Nanda Devi.

Where is Auli, and how high is it?

Auli is in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand, in the Garhwal Himalaya, up the hill from the town of Jyotirmath on the road to Badrinath. Jyotirmath and Joshimath are the same place: the tehsil was formally renamed Jyotirmath in 2024, but every booking site, bus board and map still says Joshimath, so this page uses both.

The Chamoli district administration gives Auli's elevation as 2,500 m to 3,050 m (about 8,202 to 10,007 feet). Ski databases measure the run itself, from a base of 2,702 m to a top of 3,069 m. Use those to judge the skiing; the district's range is the one to quote for Auli.

Don't picture a hill station. There's no market up there, no main street and hardly anyone living there year round. The town is Jyotirmath, well below at about 1,875 m. Auli is also spread out along the road up, so a hotel with Auli in its name can be well below the slopes. If you're still working out how to get there, routes in from every direction are compared on their own page.

The ropeway is closed, and has been since January 2023

Land subsidence damaged the ground near tower one of the Jyotirmath to Auli gondola in January 2023, and it was shut on safety grounds. It was still shut in June 2026, when Auli traders publicly asked for it back, and still shut when the state reviewed its ropeway projects in September 2026. There's no fare, no timetable and nothing to book, whatever another page tells you. It closed before our first trip, so we've never ridden it.

Auli has three separate lifts and almost nobody separates them, which is why you'll meet people who insist the ropeway was working when they went. The 4.15 km gondola from the town is the closed one.

The 800 m chairlift inside Auli is a different machine, last reported carrying riders on 25 January 2026, at Rs 500 per person: GMVN raised it from Rs 300 in February 2019, and we've found no revision since. The third is a small surface lift on the ski slope. The gondola's history, the old fares people are still quoted and the replacement that won't be running for the 2026-27 season are on the Auli ropeway page.

Jyotirmath itself is open, whatever you've heard. It's a working town on the Badrinath highway. You just can't ride up from it any more.

Getting there, and the last climb from Jyotirmath

Whichever city you start from, you finish on the same climb out of Jyotirmath (Joshimath), and that's the stretch of road that shuts in snow. The climb is 11 to 16 km. More than one road goes up and they differ in length; the district's official 16 km sits at the top of that range.

Where we haven't found a figure from a source we trust, the cell says so rather than borrowing one from a cab site.

In clear weather an ordinary car manages the climb: our Baleno, a hatchback, took an hour to Lower Auli in October 2024. In deep snow, get a driver with a 4x4 and chains, and check the road the morning you leave, not the week before.

In the last week of January 2026, the week of our third trip, the road closed outright, reopened for four-wheel drives only, and then turned tourist vehicles back above the TV Tower when frost formed at Sunil and Kichad Bend. We couldn't find a published order for any of it. The page on the last climb has that week day by day.

The nearest airport is Jolly Grant at Dehradun, about 279 km out, and the nearest railhead is Rishikesh at about 250 km. Either way there's still a full day's drive after it. Airport, train and bus options are set out side by side.

The long road in carries its own risk. A 2024 survey of the Rishikesh to Jyotirmath corridor counted 309 road-blocking landslides, about 1.25 for every kilometre, and 80 percent of them happened after January 2022. One closure of the Badrinath highway took 58 hours to clear. Keep a spare day before any flight home.

Which months work, and for what?

Most Auli guides are written for winter, but the green months are the bigger season. More people look Auli up for May and June than for December, January and February combined.

Month by month, with snow probability and room rates: the best time to visit Auli.

Will there be snow when you go?

If you're skiing, this is the whole question, and the record isn't kind. The national snow sports championship has failed to run at Auli in at least seven winters since 2012: the reporting names 2012, 2013, 2015, 2016, 2021 and 2023, and in 2025 it was postponed twice. The sources don't agree on what they're counting, and the best-time guide sets that disagreement out in full. Either way it is closer to a coin toss than to a one-in-three risk.

December is the real problem. In three of the four seasons from 2022-23 to 2025-26, December left Auli short of snow, each time differently. December 2022 had none at all. Christmas and New Year 2023-24 ran on two-week-old degrading snow. December 2025 and the first week of January 2026 were dry, and people who'd booked New Year arrived to bare brown slopes. The exception was 2024, when tourists were skiing on fresh snow on Christmas Day.

Then the 2025-26 season turned, late. The first usable snow fell on 23 January 2026, and the Shitalkin Winter Carnival and National Skiing Championship went ahead from 13 to 16 February, with no cancellation recorded. One good season doesn't cancel the record, and three bad Decembers in four don't mean the snow has gone for good.

So if you're coming to ski, book within two or three weeks of a confirmed snowfall, not months ahead. Call a Jyotirmath hotel and ask what the slopes look like that day, or scroll recent Auli geotags. If your dates can't move, plan a trip that still works on a brown hill.

What is skiing in Auli like?

If you've never skied, it's a cheap, sensible place to start. If you already can, you'll find it small: about 3 km of slopes, roughly 83 percent graded easy and none of it graded difficult, with a vertical drop of 367 metres. We haven't skied there ourselves; those figures come from the ski databases.

What Auli does well is cheap, structured teaching from a state operator that publishes its prices. GMVN's 2025-26 rates for an Indian visitor with lodging start at Rs 8,900 for the three-day course, and an adult ski set is Rs 800 a day; the skiing page has the full fees, operators and gear. Rs 500 is what the chairlift costs, and what one private operator charges for a day on its lifts; it isn't the price of hiring skis.

Nav's advice if you've never skied: don't buy the long course on day one. Take a single day, find out whether you enjoy falling over in the snow, then commit.

Places to visit in Auli, and the ones to skip

There isn't a long list of things to tick off at Auli, which is fine, as long as you don't plan three days around it. There are four: the ridge, Gorson Bugyal, the artificial lake and the slopes.

Gorson Bugyal is the walk to plan your day around. It's a high meadow at about 3,056 m, roughly 3 to 4 km each way from the top of the slopes, three to five hours return, free, and it needs no guide in clear weather. The chairlift, when it runs, takes out the bottom third of the climb.

The artificial lake takes twenty minutes. It's a reservoir built for snowmaking, and the "world's highest man-made lake" line has no engineering source behind it.

The view is the reason to come. On a clear morning the ridge looks at Nanda Devi, Kamet, Dronagiri, Trishul and the Hathi Ghoda pair. Cloud tends to build through the day, so for photographs go up in the morning.

Two to skip. Nanda Devi National Park, which some listing sites put at the top of Auli's attractions, is closed to independent entry. And snow tubing, zip lines and ATV rides appear in operator marketing with no evidence they run. For a second day, leave Auli: the Narsingh temple and the Kalpavriksha walk in lower Jyotirmath, then Badrinath and Mana village.

Where to stay: Auli or Jyotirmath?

We don't fully agree on this one, and the closed ropeway changed the answer in January 2023.

Nav says Jyotirmath, unless you're skiing. It's cheaper, and it has more rooms and a real choice of places to eat. In October 2024, off season, our hotel on Badrinath Road in Jyotirmath was Rs 2,399 a night, and the resort at Lower Auli, still below the slopes, was Rs 5,999.

Vandana's point is the road. Stay in Jyotirmath and you're in a taxi up the climb and back every day, on the one stretch that shuts in snow; in January 2026 we spent a whole evening in Jyotirmath waiting for it to open. Where we agree: if you're skiing or travelling in deep winter, stay up at Auli and pay the difference, because the road isn't guaranteed. Off season or on a budget, stay in Jyotirmath and go up for the day.

The property count is inflated. One booking site heads its list "55 Hotels in Auli" and files Jyotirmath hotels inside it. On the one listing that says where each property is, 11 sit at the top, counting the GMVN complex and three tent camps. Most of the rest are on the road below or in Jyotirmath, some at Sunil and the TV Tower, where the frost formed in January 2026.

Our own stays show it: both hotels we booked under an Auli name, at Lower Auli and at Sunil, were below the top, and the only time we've slept at the top was at GMVN, in June 2025. The hotels page sorts out which properties are really at Auli, and what they cost.

Heating decides a winter night, and you usually pay for it separately. In five guest reports from two properties, the dated ones from 2020 to 2022, heaters come up as a chargeable extra, one of them "strictly depends on availability". One property on the road just below Auli prices the room at Rs 3,500 and the heater at Rs 1,000 a night on top.

Power is the other half. In every review we read, good or bad, not one describes a generator keeping the heating on. A guest in February 2023 wrote that the lights went off in snowfall and "we all panicked as we thought we will freeze now due to cold and no heater"; staff brought hot water bags to bed.

The Auli Meadows says on its own site that power backup "should be confirmed before booking". And in February 2022 Jyotirmath's Nagar Palika chairman petitioned the DM, saying even a little rain or wind collapses the town's supply, and that it had been that way for years.

Before you go up

• Auli has no listed, year-round place to eat. You rely on your hotel kitchen, and when the road shuts you eat whatever that kitchen already has. In the snow months informal tea stalls appear along the paths, but don't plan around them. Jyotirmath is where the market and the dhabas are, so eat properly before you go up.
• No ATM and no petrol pump at Auli either. Both are in Jyotirmath, so draw cash and fill the tank there.
• Spend your first night at Jyotirmath, not Auli. Driving from Rishikesh straight up to Auli takes you from the plains to above 2,500 m in one day, roughly the height where altitude illness becomes possible. Jyotirmath at about 1,875 m is a textbook intermediate stop. Watch for headache, nausea, breathlessness at rest and poor sleep. If those appear don't go higher; if they worsen, go down and get medical help. Being fit doesn't protect you. General information, not medical advice.
• Pack for the cold day out. Carry a thermos and something to eat when you go up for the day. Keep your phone and power bank in an inner pocket, because batteries die fast in the cold. And take a couple of zip-lock bags: when you walk in from below freezing to a heated room, the condensation forms on the bag instead of inside your phone.
• On a peak weekend the jam is on the road. The slope itself doesn't get crowded: Auli has few beds, and visitor numbers are well below their 2022 peak.
• The Joshimath subsidence sounds worse than what you'll find. People live in the town and it's open. The ground moves slowly and is being monitored, and it's badly reported almost everywhere. For a visitor, the one thing it has cost is the gondola.

What does an Auli trip cost?

Our January 2026 trip cost Rs 37,631 for the two of us, over four days from Greater Noida in our diesel Thar. Of that, Rs 18,904 went on hotels, Rs 9,477 on diesel, Rs 8,250 on food and Rs 1,000 on parking and small charges. We paid no toll only because we'd already bought an annual FASTag pass. Two nights at the hotel by the TV Tower, at Rs 7,200 a night before tax, were most of the hotel bill.

The last climb has a fixed taxi fare. On 29 December 2024 the SDM of Jyotirmath fixed the Jyotirmath to Auli fare at Rs 1,500 one way and Rs 2,500 for a same-day return, up to five passengers in the vehicle. It ran in Amar Ujala's Chamoli edition, in Hindi.

Every English guide we read said the last leg had no fixed price, and we only found this one once we went looking in Hindi. We rode a shared jeep up in June 2025 but kept no note of what we paid, so the SDM's order is the figure we can stand behind.

Before you quote that number to a driver, know three things about it. The two reports of the order word it differently, one per vehicle and one per head. Nobody has named a figure since, though the same office re-adopted the arrangement in December 2025 without putting a rupee value on it.

And it belongs to a peak-crowd traffic plan, in which cars are parked at Ravigram and people go on by taxi, rather than a standing rule: in January 2026 our own Thar went up once the road opened that night. The full working is on the page about the last climb and its fare.

The cab sites are where people overpay. National cab-booking sites price this short climb with an intercity formula. When we priced it on 8 September 2026 they quoted Rs 3,598 to Rs 3,800 for a sedan, and one of them Rs 8,959, having routed the climb as a 460 km drive. Another works from a distance of 10 km, shorter than any road up. Hold that against the administration's Rs 1,500, and against the Rs 1,000 a Team-BHP member reported paying a Jyotirmath shopkeeper for the drop in February 2024.

At the stand in Jyotirmath, shared jeeps run the climb, full cabs are negotiated, and rates move with the weather. In snow the question stops being the price and becomes whether your vehicle is allowed up at all.

Who should go, and who should skip it

Go if you want to learn to ski cheaply with real instruction and can travel at short notice once snow is confirmed. Go, too, if you want a Himalayan view and a meadow walk: any clear month works for that, and if you aren't skiing, October is the month we'd pick for most people. Two nights is about right, folded into a wider Garhwal trip rather than treated as a destination on its own.

Skip it if you need guaranteed snow on fixed dates, because nowhere in India can sell that. If you already ski beyond beginner level, look at Gulmarg instead, for its terrain rather than any promise about its snow.

With the gondola gone, the road is the only way up, so it's a hard trip if mobility is limited. And if you want cafes, markets and evenings out, Mussoorie or Landour will suit you far better, and one of the roads up from Dehradun runs through Mussoorie.

Auli FAQ

Nav & Vandana Sharma

We're a husband-and-wife travel team based in Greater Noida. Nav has been travelling across India since 2015 and does the routes, costs and logistics; Vandana joined the road in 2020 and writes the stays, food, comfort and safety.

This page draws on all three of our Auli trips: October 2024 and January 2026 in our own car, and June 2025 by bus from Delhi and a shared jeep up. We haven't skied at Auli, and we haven't been there in December. The snow record, the fares, the road reports and the hotel evidence are from our research, each checked against the source that issued it.

Corrections: hello@wctoindia.com. Tell us the page and what is wrong, and we'll fix it and date the change in the log below.