How to Reach Auli: Every Way In, by Road, Bus, Rail and Air

by Nav & Vandana Sharma · Published 25 September 2026 · Figures last verified 16 September 2026

We've come up to Auli two ways. Twice we drove ourselves, in our Baleno from Aligarh in October 2024 and in our Thar from Greater Noida in January 2026. In June 2025 we took the bus from Delhi to Jyotirmath, the town most signs still call Joshimath, and then a shared jeep up the last climb, and we stayed at GMVN at the top.

We've never flown into Dehradun or come by train to Rishikesh or Haridwar for Auli. For those, and for the buses we haven't been on, we went through the Airports Authority of India's flight schedule, Uttarakhand Transport Corporation's route table, the published train services and the Chamoli district administration's own figures in September 2026.

None of them gets you to Auli itself. Flights stop at Jolly Grant, trains at Rishikesh or Haridwar, and no bus we could verify climbs to Auli, so the last part is always by road. The real question is how much of that road you hand to someone else.

Which Auli are you trying to reach?

For snow, the ski slope or the Nanda Devi view, the Auli you want is in Chamoli district, Uttarakhand. It sits on a climb of 11 to 16 km of road above Jyotirmath, depending on the route, on the highway to Badrinath. Every mode on this page is about that Auli.

The other one is a real village. Census 2011 lists an Auli in Nerua tehsil of Shimla district, Himachal Pradesh, with 113 people in 24 households. It isn't a resort, and nothing we found describes it as a place to visit, but route planners don't always know which one you mean. Rome2Rio's page for "Auli, Himachal Pradesh" is the one that turns up, and it sends you by train to Kalka.

So before you pay for anything labelled "Auli", a bus seat, a cab or a package, look for the word Joshimath or Jyotirmath on the booking page. A Himachal address, a Kalka or Shimla stop, or no mention of Chamoli at all means stop and check.

What are the ways to reach Auli, and which one should you pick?

Pick by how far away you start and whether you're driving. Within about a day's drive, in north India, go by road. From further away, fly or take the train as far as the plains go, sleep there, and give the mountains a day of their own. Nothing does it in one hop.

What the table can't show is the shape of the day, and that's where most plans break. Every scheduled bus up this valley that we found leaves in the morning: the private buses from Rishikesh have gone by 08:45, and the state buses from Haridwar and Dehradun leave at 05:30.

The hill road itself takes most of a day. On our January 2026 drive we had breakfast in Rishikesh at 08:00 and lunch in Srinagar at 13:30, and reached Jyotirmath at 17:45. Arrive at a railhead or an airport in the afternoon and the realistic way on that day is a hired car.

Then there's the clock at the other end. We found three night-driving rules for the road to Jyotirmath, and two of them belong to the Char Dham Yatra. The transport department's Green Card portal, written for commercial passenger vehicles on yatra routes, says not to drive before 4 am or after 10 pm. For the 2026 yatra season the Commissioner of Garhwal ordered passenger vehicles off the road in those hours. Neither says whether it binds a private car, or whether it holds once the yatra is over.

The third came from Tehri police. In October 2024 they said that from the next month the Rishikesh to Devprayag road would be closed to all but emergency vehicles from 10 pm until 5 am. We've found nothing on it since. Plan as though all three hold, in any month.

What is the nearest airport to Auli?

Jolly Grant Airport at Dehradun is the nearest airport to Auli, about 279 km away by the Chamoli district administration's figure. There's no airport at Auli, and from Jolly Grant it's a full day's drive. Pantnagar, the Kumaon airport, serves Nainital and the Kumaon hills and is the wrong side of the state for Auli.

The Airports Authority of India's August 2026 schedule for Dehradun names four airlines: IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express and Alliance Air. There's no Vistara, which merged into Air India in November 2024, and no Akasa.

Delhi is the busiest link, with daily arrivals at 09:50, 10:20, 13:00, 16:00 and 19:15 and more on some days. Lucknow and Jaipur fly in on set days, and the cities further away are in the table further down. The airport authority calls every time on the schedule tentative and tells you to confirm with the airline. It's also the summer schedule, running to about 24 October 2026, so a winter trip needs a fresh look once the airlines file theirs.

The landing time decides the day. The earliest daily Delhi flight lands at 09:50, and by then the last private bus from Rishikesh to Jyotirmath on the timetables we checked has already gone, at 08:45. So a flier either hires a car at the airport or sleeps nearby and catches a morning bus. The district administration says taxis and buses run from the airport towards Auli, but we found no published fare for that ride.

Here the two of us plan differently. Nav says take the 09:50 from Delhi, have a car waiting when you land, and you're in Jyotirmath the same night: two days become one. For him the flight isn't the problem, the landing time is. Land at ten with a driver and it works; land at four and you're racing the 10 pm cutoff on the worst part of the road, which he wouldn't do.

Vandana's point is what that day costs you: an early flight, then a whole day of hairpins, and you arrive tired and in the dark at nearly 1,900 m, with another climb the next morning. She'd sleep in Rishikesh and start fresh. Where we agree: a morning landing, two adults and a booked car can go the same day. An afternoon landing, children, anyone older or a winter date means a night in Rishikesh or Dehradun and a start at first light. Either way, spend the first mountain night in Jyotirmath rather than at Auli, for the altitude.

Is there a Dehradun to Auli helicopter?

There's no scheduled Dehradun to Auli helicopter, and no seat to Auli or Jyotirmath you can buy, in any source we found. What exists, on paper at least, is a service from the Sahastradhara helipad in Dehradun to Gauchar, a Chamoli town far down the same highway, below Karnaprayag.

Pawan Hans launched it on 7 November 2024, six days a week, about 50 minutes, at Rs 3,600 after an introductory fare. Heritage Aviation was reported restarting it on 6 December 2025, and a private travel portal still listed a Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule at about Rs 4,856 in July 2026. No operator's own page we could find in September 2026 said it was flying.

Even when it runs, it lands at Gauchar, with the upper half of the highway and the climb still ahead. The other helicopter sold from Gauchar in 2026 is a Badrinath pilgrim shuttle, which Amar Ujala priced at Rs 22,000 return in April 2026, and it flies to the temple. Private charters to the helipad at Auli do exist, sold by the whole aircraft, and we won't quote an undated price for one. Our view: skip the helicopter. It saves the easy half of the journey and leaves you the hard half.

What is the nearest railway station to Auli?

Rishikesh is the nearest railway station to Auli, so reaching Auli by train means Rishikesh or Haridwar and then the road. The Chamoli district administration puts Rishikesh about 250 km from Auli on one line of its Auli page, and 253 km from Joshimath on another. Those two don't square, since Auli sits above Joshimath on the same road, and either way the whole mountain still waits after the platform.

The long-distance trains we checked end at Yog Nagari Rishikesh, the newer station that opened in January 2021 and that's set to become the start of the line up the valley. The Kalinga Utkal Express runs to it daily from Puri, and the Yoga Express daily from Sabarmati in Ahmedabad.

Haridwar is the other realistic railhead, about 277 km from Joshimath on the district's figures, and the daily Bandra Terminus to Haridwar Express from Mumbai ends there after about 32 hours. Several guides call Haridwar the nearest station to Auli; on the district's own numbers, Rishikesh is nearer.

Dehradun works if a train or a flight puts you there, but on the district's own numbers it starts you 298 km from Joshimath, the longest of the three. Kathgodam, the railhead for Nainital, is a Kumaon approach. It joins the Badrinath highway at Karnaprayag by way of Gwaldam, on a road one Outlook Traveller account called very poor beyond Gwaldam, and it isn't the way we'd send a first-timer.

The railway will change this, though not soon. The completion date for the 125 km Rishikesh to Karnaprayag line has moved twice. It went from December 2026 to December 2028, a date the Railway Board's chairman was still giving in April 2026, and a report of 15 September 2026 now puts it at December 2029. Don't plan a trip around it.

Coming from Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad or further?

From Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad or further, fly to Jolly Grant or take a train to Rishikesh or Haridwar, then treat the mountains as a separate day. No city outside the north has a direct link any closer, and a flight, the whole highway and the climb don't fit into one day.

Look at the landing times. Apart from Mumbai's two morning flights, the flights in this table land at noon or later on most days, which on this road means a night in Dehradun or Rishikesh before anything else. Build that night into the plan from the start.

Can you reach Auli by bus?

You can reach Jyotirmath by bus from Haridwar, Rishikesh or Dehradun, then make the climb by shared jeep or taxi. It's how we came in June 2025, from Delhi, but we kept no log on that trip, so the times and fares here are from the timetables and the papers, not from us. Whether any bus goes up to Auli itself is something we couldn't settle.

Uttarakhand Transport Corporation's route table, when we checked it on 16 September 2026, listed a Haridwar to Auli service at 05:30 and an Auli to Haridwar at 04:30. Amar Ujala's Haridwar edition reported on 6 September 2026 that the depot runs its Auli route on one bus where two are needed. Neither says where it stops. The table gives route names and times but no stops, so "Auli" could be the slope or the stand in Jyotirmath. Book it, but ask at the counter where it ends, and plan for the climb in case the answer is Jyotirmath.

The same table has a Dehradun to Tapovan Joshimath bus at 05:30, and Rishikesh and Haridwar to Badrinath buses that run through Jyotirmath. Private operators sell Rishikesh to Joshimath seats too. When we checked two booking sites on 8 September 2026 the first bus left at 04:00 and the last at 08:45, and the journey times they listed ran from nine to eleven hours.

The Delhi to Joshimath bus tickets we looked at online were two vehicles: an overnight coach to Rishikesh and a smaller vehicle from there. The operators' own stop names say so, and the Delhi journey, leg by leg sets it out.

From Jyotirmath to the top it's a shared jeep or a taxi. The last time an official named a fare was December 2024: Rs 1,500 one way and Rs 2,500 there and back in a day, up to five people in the vehicle. None has been published since, and the rest is on the last climb from Jyotirmath, fare and all.

Driving to Auli yourself: the one mode that goes all the way

Driving is the only way to reach Auli without changing vehicles, and it's how we made two of our three trips. From Rishikesh it's one national highway, NH-7, along the Ganga to Devprayag and then up the Alaknanda through Srinagar, Rudraprayag and Karnaprayag to Jyotirmath. From Delhi most people should plan on two days. We've driven up from the plains in a single day both times, and they were long days. It took fifteen hours from Aligarh to Joshimath in October 2024, and in January 2026 we started from Greater Noida at half past one in the morning.

Three things make a self-drive plan hold together. Start early enough to clear the hill section by nightfall, and treat the night rules above as if they covered you. Fill the tank and draw cash in Jyotirmath at the latest, since Auli has neither a fuel pump nor an ATM. And from December to March, assume the last climb may be limited to four-wheel drives.

Our two drives show both sides of that last point. In October 2024 we took our Baleno, an ordinary hatchback, up to our resort at Lower Auli. In January 2026 we waited five hours in Jyotirmath, until 23:00, for the road up to open, then drove the Thar up in the dark. Reports from that day say the road had reopened to four-wheel drives only, so our night climb tells a sedan driver very little. A hired taxi from Rishikesh or the airport follows the same road, with someone else's hands on the wheel.

What stops working in winter?

In winter, the climb from Jyotirmath to Auli is what fails first. In the last week of January 2026, the week of our own trip, the road from Jyotirmath to Auli closed after the season's first snow and reopened to four-wheel drives only. It tightened again on frost and was among seven blocked roads in the district. We couldn't find a published order for any of it. What the road did each day that week is in the Jyotirmath climb's road log.

Below Jyotirmath we know less than we'd like. The Rishikesh buses are listed, but no booking site we tried would take a January date for them, so we can't say whether they run all winter, and Jolly Grant's winter flight schedule isn't out yet.

What works in winter is a four-wheel drive or a local taxi, a spare day and a phone call. Ring your hotel or the taxi stand in Jyotirmath the morning you plan to go up and ask what the road did overnight. When there's likely to be snow at all is a question for deciding when to go.

Can you still take the ropeway to Auli?

No. The 4.15 km Joshimath to Auli ropeway stopped carrying passengers in January 2023 after land subsidence near its first tower, and no reopening date has been announced. The state is planning a replacement line rather than a repair.

A lot of "how to reach" advice still lists the cable car as a way up. One guide recommends it for winter, the one season it would be of most use, and even the website of Satopanth, the hotel we stayed at in January 2026, describes a cable car ride to Auli. Take it out of your plan entirely. The chairlift inside Auli is a separate, much shorter lift and doesn't connect to the town. The paper trail and what the replacement looks like are on the ropeway's full story.

Which route page should you read next?

Where you start changes the whole first day. Here's how far the main starting points are, as the Chamoli district administration publishes it, and what each figure is measured to.

From the capital, start with Delhi to Auli distance, which covers the expressway, the NCR starts and the two-vehicle bus. From the corridor towns the drive is shorter: Haridwar, Rishikesh, the shortest of the rail starts, and Dehradun, the airport city.

The hill-station starts take longer to explain. Mussoorie means coming down to the corridor first, and Nainital means the Kumaon side, which works differently. Chopta crosses over rather than coming up the valley, and Badrinath is the one start above Jyotirmath rather than below it.

Wherever you start, you finish on the same climb. Where to sleep at the end of it is in our guide to Auli's hotels, and everything else about the place itself is in our guide to Auli.

How to reach 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 trips to Auli: the drives in October 2024 and January 2026, and the bus from Delhi and shared jeep up in June 2025. We've never flown in or come by train, so the flights, trains and bus timetables are from our research, each checked against the office or publication that issued it and dated in the sources below.

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. If we've got something wrong about your site or your business, the same address reaches us.