Villages and halts along the Nanda Devi Raj Jat route

By the Nanda Devi Raj Jat editors · Published 5 October 2026 · 4 min read

The Raj Jat is, above all, a walk from village to village. Our survey data records 17 official halts and 46 other named places along the main route, and most of them are ordinary hill villages that become, for a few days, part of one of India’s great processions. This page is a guide to how that chain fits together.

A route that does not go straight

Nauti and Waan are only about 40 km apart in a straight line, yet the route from one to the other takes roughly 113 km of recorded walking over Days 3 to 13, which is nearly three times as far. The reason is that the procession does not take the shortest line. It visits a sequence of villages, each with a role in the tradition, following ridges and river valleys rather than crossing them. By the time it reaches Waan, the last village before the high meadows, it has looped across a large part of the district.

The official halts

The table lists the 17 halts in the order our map numbers them. “Day” is the day whose recorded route ends within 2 km of the halt; where no route ends close by, we do not guess. Names are spelled as in the survey files, and several differ from other spellings in use (see below).

Villages the booklet describes

Lohajang

The Raj Jat booklet says Lohajang lies a steep climb above Bakargad and that the views on the way make walkers forget the effort of the ascent. In our data Lohajang is recorded as a village and sits on the route where Day 12 begins. The booklet gives Lohajang and Baan as about 5 km apart; in our data the Lohajang point is about 8.5 km from Waan in a straight line, so one of those figures refers to something other than the points we have. We flag the mismatch rather than reconcile it.

Baan (Waan)

The booklet describes Baan as a village approached through tall birch, oak and deodar, inhabited by Palsi shepherds and farmers. It adds that Jasdhaval is believed to be an ancestor of the prince of Kansua, which is the origin of the custom of paying homage to him at this point. Our map spells the halt “Waan”; the booklet writes “Bann”, and older sources use “Wan”. All three are the same village, the point where the settled country ends and the climb to the meadows begins.

Pattar Nachoniya

Beyond Bedni Bugyal the booklet places Pattar Nachoniya, a place of legend rather than of record. According to the legend it tells, King Jasdhaval had courtesans dance here, which angered the goddess, and the dancers became the field of rocks that gives the place its name. It is a legend, not a historical record, and we present it as such. Our data carries it as Patar Nachaunia, a halt without an assigned day.

Spelling: why one place has three names

The same place appears under several spellings across the survey files, the booklet and everyday usage: Waan, Wan and Bann; Ida badhani and Idabanani; Kulshari and Kulsari; Chepudi and Chepdyun; Sutol and Suthol. Most differences are down to transliteration from Devanagari. Our data note on this is blunt: one source in the Day 3 label read “Nauto”, which was a transcription slip for Nauti and has been corrected. We keep each place’s source spelling on the map next to the standard one so that you can match it to whichever source you are using.

How to use this with the map

On the interactive map, halts are numbered pins and the other places are coloured by a category we derive from the name (village, pass, temple, lake, river, bugyal). Those categories are our interpretation: in the source files all 46 places are typed simply as villages. See How this map was made for the reasoning, and the day-by-day article for how far apart the halts are.

Sources and notes

• Halt order, day assignment, categories and distances: surveyed GeoJSON files behind the map.
• Descriptions of Lohajang, Baan and Pattar Nachoniya: a printed Raj Jat booklet, paraphrased. Legends are reported as legends.