Destination Profile
Uttarakhand Motorcycle Tour — The Himalayas Without the Ladakh Crowds
What Draws Riders to Uttarakhand
Riders who have done Ladakh and want to go back to the Himalayas without the altitude sickness often end up in Uttarakhand. The riding sits between 6,000 and 12,000 feet for most of the good routes, which means you sleep properly and wake up functioning. The terrain is greener than Ladakh — pine forests, rhododendrons at altitude, rivers running through carved valleys. It looks like what most people imagine when they picture the Himalayas before they discover how bare Ladakh actually is. Kumaon, the eastern half of Uttarakhand, is where the roads get genuinely interesting. Munsiyari sits at 7,200 feet in the Johar Valley near the Tibetan border and is surrounded by a wall of peaks — Nanda Devi, Panchachuli, Rajrambha — that are close enough to feel present rather than distant. The road to Munsiyari from Pithoragarh is three hours of proper hill road with very little traffic. The Milam Glacier track starts above Munsiyari and goes further into the mountains than most visitors get. Chopta in the Garhwal region is a meadow at 8,000 feet that is buried under snow from November to April and completely open to the sky in May and June. The road to it from Ukhimath is one of the best pieces of tarmac in the Himalayas — recently laid, no trucks, spectacular exposure. The trail from Chopta to Tungnath temple is the highest motorable temple in the world by some counts, though the road stops a few kilometres below and the last section is on foot.
When to Ride Uttarakhand
May, June, and then September through early November. July and August bring the monsoon into the hills — the roads stay passable but landslides are a genuine risk above 7,000 feet and the views disappear into cloud for weeks at a time. April has a pre-season emptiness to it that some riders prefer — the pilgrim routes have not opened yet, the dhabas on the roadside are just firing up after winter, and the rhododendrons are finishing their season. The Char Dham pilgrimage season (May to June, September to October) affects traffic on the main Garhwal routes toward Kedarnath and Badrinath. We route around this while it is running.
What a Kumaon or Garhwal Expedition Covers
A Kumaon circuit over 10 days rides from Kathgodam into the hills through Almora, Binsar wildlife sanctuary, Munsiyari, and back via Pithoragarh. The roads are consistently good, the traffic is minimal past the first day, and Munsiyari in clear weather is one of the finest viewpoints in the Indian Himalayas. A Garhwal version goes through Rishikesh into the hills toward Chopta and the Kedarnath valley, with the option to extend toward the Tibetan border at Mana village — the last inhabited place in India before Tibet — if the pilgrimage season allows. We also combine Uttarakhand with Himachal Pradesh for riders with three weeks, which gives a continuous Himalayan traverse from the Kumaon to Spiti without doubling back.
- Route information verified by our team on the ground.