The mini-Switzerland of Uttarakhand — the highest Shiva temple in the world at Tungnath, rhododendron forest meadows, and Chandrashila's 360° Himalayan panorama
Chopta is a small meadow settlement in the Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctuary of Rudraprayag district, Uttarakhand — at 2,680m, 26km from Ukhimath and 205km from Rishikesh, at the edge of the high alpine zone where the tree cover gives way to open meadows (bugyals) below the Tungnath ridge. The area is called the 'mini-Switzerland of Uttarakhand' in Indian travel writing; the comparison is imprecise but the landscape — rhododendron (burans) and oak forest at 2,500–3,000m, then open meadows of green grass and wildflowers at 3,000–3,500m, with snow peaks directly above — is genuinely extraordinary. T…
The Tungnath Temple (believed to be over 1,000 years old; the current structure is attributed to Adi Shankaracharya's 8th-century establishment of the Panch Kedar circuit) is one of the five temples comprising the Panch Kedar pilgrimage — the Mahabharata narrative describes Shiva taking the form of a bull and disappearing into the earth at Kedarnath to avoid meeting the Pandavas, with different body parts appearing at different locations: the hump at Kedarnath, the arms at Tungnath, the face at Rudranath, the navel at Madhyamaheshwar, and the hair at Kalpeshwar. The Kedarnath Wildlife Sanctua…