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136-metre-long, 1.8-metre-wide wooden walkway fixed to the face of a vertical granite cliff above the Jadh Ganga river. It was built roughly 150 years ago — by Peshawari Pathan stonemasons brought in for their cliff-chiselling expertise, working alongside Jadh locals — as a trade route between the Indian subcontinent and Tibet. Closed after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, neglected for 59 years, restored in traditional style, and reopened to visitors in August 2021.
Walking Gartang Gali takes about 20 minutes. Getting to it requires a 2.5km uphill trek through conifer forest from Lanka Bridge. The views from the walkway — the Jadh Ganga canyon below, the Nelong Valley opening beyond, the Tibetan plateau-like terrain ahead — explain immediately why traders used this route for a century.
The Austrian mountaineer and author of Seven Years in Tibet used this exact route — the Gartang Gali cliff walkway and the Nelong Valley beyond — to escape from British India into Tibet during World War II. Harrer had been interned as an enemy alien in Dehradun when the war began. He escaped the internment camp in 1944, crossed the Himalayas via this route, and walked into Tibet. The Hollywood film based on his book starred Brad Pitt. The route he used to make that escape is the same 136 metres of wooden planking you are now crossing.
Pahadi Wilson — the British deserter who became the dominant commercial figure in Harsil valley in the 19th century — used Gartang Gali to travel clandestinely into Tibet, which was forbidden territory for foreigners. Research has placed him on this route multiple times. The man whose apple orchards you saw in Harsil was walking this same cliff face for the same reason everyone used it: it was the only way through.
Once you cross Gartang Gali, the Nelong Valley opens ahead. It is closed to general visitors and requires a special permit from the SDM of Uttarkashi district plus a fitness certificate. Most visitors turn back at the end of the walkway. The few who go further enter a restricted zone of cold-desert terrain that is geographically closer to the Tibetan Plateau than to anything else in Uttarakhand.
What you walk on is a 2021 restoration built in the traditional style — new timber, the same technique, the same iron supports fixed into the same channels cut into the cliff face in the 19th century. The structure is original; the wood is recent. This is worth knowing before you romanticise the antiquity of the planks underfoot.
Since reopening, entry to the Gartang Gali area requires a fitness certificate from a registered doctor and payment of an entry fee. This is not bureaucratic friction — it is a functional safety system for a trail above a deep canyon at high altitude. Check current requirements before visiting as permit systems in restricted border areas can change without broad notice.
You step onto the walkway and the canyon drops away immediately below you.
The Jadh Ganga is maybe 300 metres below, green and fast. The cliff face you are attached to is vertical granite. The walkway is 1.8 metres wide, which is comfortable in theory and narrow in practice when you look down. You put your hand on the wooden railing, which is solid, and you walk.
The mountains above the canyon are enormous. The Nelong Valley is visible ahead — wide, dry, completely unlike the green Bhagirathi valley you drove through this morning. The Tibetan Plateau is in the same direction. Somewhere beyond that, Heinrich Harrer was walking in 1944.
It takes 20 minutes. When you reach the far end you sit on a boulder and look back at the cliff face and the walkway and it looks more improbable from this side than it did from the other.
You walk back. The return direction shows you things the approach hid. The canyon below looks different going east. You hear your own footsteps on the wood.
This walkway has been here for 150 years.
Peshawari Pathan stonemasons chiselled the horizontal groove into the cliff face by hand. Jadh traders loaded with Tibetan salt and wool walked it toward Uttarkashi's markets. Frederick Wilson crossed it on his way to deals that foreigners were forbidden to make. Heinrich Harrer crossed it in 1944 to escape a British internment camp and walk to Tibet, where he spent seven years and wrote a book that became a film.
Then the 1962 war closed it. The wood rotted for 59 years. In 2021 it reopened.
You cross it in 20 minutes. Below you, the Jadh Ganga runs through a canyon that has not changed since the Pathan stonemasons first looked down at it. The Nelong Valley ahead looks like Ladakh, or like Tibet, which is the direction it has always pointed toward.
What strikes you — walking those 136 metres above the canyon — is that most of the world has never heard of this place. That the route Harrer used is still there. That the groove in the cliff was cut by hand. That the trade it was built to carry died in a war nobody in this valley started.
It was here before you arrived. It will be here after you leave — just not quite like this.
— Almanac Field Notes
Uncharted Garhwal
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ALMANAC · INNER CIRCLE
Gartang Gali is one of 32.
The rest are waiting.
almanacindia.com
ALMANAC · INNER CIRCLE
Gartang Gali is one of 32.
The rest are waiting.
almanacindia.com
FIELD ALMANAC · No. 32
A L M A N A C
UNCHARTED GARHWAL · CLUSTER H
— 2 —
136-metre-long, 1.8-metre-wide wooden walkway fixed to the face of a vertical granite cliff above the Jadh Ganga river. It was built roughly 150 years ago — by Peshawari Pathan stonemasons brought in for their cliff-chiselling expertise, working alongside Jadh locals — as a trade route between the Indian subcontinent and Tibet. Closed after the 1962 Sino-Indian War, neglected for 59 years, restored in traditional style, and reopened to visitors in August 2021.
Walking Gartang Gali takes about 20 minutes. Getting to it requires a 2.5km uphill trek through conifer forest from Lanka Bridge. The views from the walkway — the Jadh Ganga canyon below, the Nelong Valley opening beyond, the Tibetan plateau-like terrain ahead — explain immediately why traders used this route for a century.
— 3 —
The Austrian mountaineer and author of Seven Years in Tibet used this exact route — the Gartang Gali cliff walkway and the Nelong Valley beyond — to escape from British India into Tibet during World War II. Harrer had been interned as an enemy alien in Dehradun when the war began. He escaped the internment camp in 1944, crossed the Himalayas via this route, and walked into Tibet. The Hollywood film based on his book starred Brad Pitt. The route he used to make that escape is the same 136 metres of wooden planking you are now crossing.
Pahadi Wilson — the British deserter who became the dominant commercial figure in Harsil valley in the 19th century — used Gartang Gali to travel clandestinely into Tibet, which was forbidden territory for foreigners. Research has placed him on this route multiple times. The man whose apple orchards you saw in Harsil was walking this same cliff face for the same reason everyone used it: it was the only way through.
Once you cross Gartang Gali, the Nelong Valley opens ahead. It is closed to general visitors and requires a special permit from the SDM of Uttarkashi district plus a fitness certificate. Most visitors turn back at the end of the walkway. The few who go further enter a restricted zone of cold-desert terrain that is geographically closer to the Tibetan Plateau than to anything else in Uttarakhand.
What you walk on is a 2021 restoration built in the traditional style — new timber, the same technique, the same iron supports fixed into the same channels cut into the cliff face in the 19th century. The structure is original; the wood is recent. This is worth knowing before you romanticise the antiquity of the planks underfoot.
Since reopening, entry to the Gartang Gali area requires a fitness certificate from a registered doctor and payment of an entry fee. This is not bureaucratic friction — it is a functional safety system for a trail above a deep canyon at high altitude. Check current requirements before visiting as permit systems in restricted border areas can change without broad notice.
— 4 —
You step onto the walkway and the canyon drops away immediately below you.
The Jadh Ganga is maybe 300 metres below, green and fast. The cliff face you are attached to is vertical granite. The walkway is 1.8 metres wide, which is comfortable in theory and narrow in practice when you look down. You put your hand on the wooden railing, which is solid, and you walk.
The mountains above the canyon are enormous. The Nelong Valley is visible ahead — wide, dry, completely unlike the green Bhagirathi valley you drove through this morning. The Tibetan Plateau is in the same direction. Somewhere beyond that, Heinrich Harrer was walking in 1944.
It takes 20 minutes. When you reach the far end you sit on a boulder and look back at the cliff face and the walkway and it looks more improbable from this side than it did from the other.
You walk back. The return direction shows you things the approach hid. The canyon below looks different going east. You hear your own footsteps on the wood.
— 5 —
This walkway has been here for 150 years.
Peshawari Pathan stonemasons chiselled the horizontal groove into the cliff face by hand. Jadh traders loaded with Tibetan salt and wool walked it toward Uttarkashi's markets. Frederick Wilson crossed it on his way to deals that foreigners were forbidden to make. Heinrich Harrer crossed it in 1944 to escape a British internment camp and walk to Tibet, where he spent seven years and wrote a book that became a film.
Then the 1962 war closed it. The wood rotted for 59 years. In 2021 it reopened.
You cross it in 20 minutes. Below you, the Jadh Ganga runs through a canyon that has not changed since the Pathan stonemasons first looked down at it. The Nelong Valley ahead looks like Ladakh, or like Tibet, which is the direction it has always pointed toward.
What strikes you — walking those 136 metres above the canyon — is that most of the world has never heard of this place. That the route Harrer used is still there. That the groove in the cliff was cut by hand. That the trade it was built to carry died in a war nobody in this valley started.
It was here before you arrived. It will be here after you leave — just not quite like this.
— Almanac Field Notes
Uncharted Garhwal
— 6 —
— 7 —
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