How the Char Dham project turned journey to Uttarakhand’s holy sites deadly

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Four of the holiest shrines for Hindus lie high up in the Uttarakhand Himalayas. Travelling to the Chardham – as the shrines are collectively called – always meant braving some risk.

But an expert committee warned in 2020 that the risk would multiply if the government went ahead with its plans to widen the existing roads into double-lane highways, which would leave the mountains unstable.

The Modi government ignored the warning.

And now, the fallout is being felt on the ground, with an increased number of landslides being reported along the Chardham route.

Over 300 km, driving between Rishikesh and Badrinath, we used a GPS app to tag the location of every landslide that we encountered. The number of landslides we recorded was startling – as were the stories of loss and damage we collected along the way.

Music attribution:
Constance - The Descent by Kevin MacLeod is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...

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