Char Dham Yatra Registration 2026: Step-by-Step Guide

Char Dham Yatra registration (or “4 Dham registration”) is mandatory for every pilgrim, at every age, before you start for Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath or Badrinath. The official home is the Uttarakhand government portal, registrationandtouristcare.uk.gov.in, covering all four dhams plus Hemkund Sahib on one registration. It costs nothing — anyone quoting “registration charges” is charging you for a free government service. Walk away.

For 2026, online registration opened on 6 March, weeks before the temples: Yamunotri and Gangotri on 19 April (Akshaya Tritiya), Kedarnath on 22 April, Badrinath on 23 April. The daily per-dham pilgrim caps were removed in March 2026, so ignore any guide still printing a “Kedarnath: 12,000 per day” table. Registration stays mandatory; it exists so the state can find every pilgrim in an emergency, a system built after the 2013 Kedarnath floods.

How to register on the portal, step by step

1. Create an account with your name, mobile number, email and password. An OTP comes to the mobile, so use a number travelling with you.
2. Log in and create a tour: travel dates, number of pilgrims, which dhams, and dham-wise visit dates.
3. Add every pilgrim individually (name, age, gender, mobile, country), each with a government photo-ID upload. The name must match the ID letter for letter.
4. Submit. Each pilgrim gets a Unique Registration Number (URN) by SMS and email.
5. Download each Yatra Registration Letter, a per-pilgrim PDF with a QR code; print one for every member.

If the OTP won’t come (the “OTP nahi aa raha” problem), wait a few minutes before resending, try off-peak hours in an updated browser, and check My Registrations: sometimes it went through and only the SMS didn’t. Assume you can’t edit after submitting; if plans change, call 1364 first.

What documents do you need?

• One government photo ID per pilgrim, plus the mobile number from step 1. Aadhaar is the standard for Indians; Voter ID, PAN, passport and driving licence are also accepted. Foreign nationals and NRIs use a passport; carry printed copies.
• An emergency contact: someone staying home the system can call.
• Offline counters also ask for a passport-size photo.

Keep ID scans small and sharp: the portal rejects heavy or blurry uploads, and the limit its help pages quote runs anywhere from 10 to 150 KB. Children need their own registration too. No medical certificate is asked for online; health screening en route is advisory, with medical camps on the yatra routes. All four dhams sit near or above 3,000 m, and anyone with a heart, blood-pressure or asthma history should see a doctor before booking.

Can you register on WhatsApp, the app, or offline?

Yes. Four channels, one URN:

Channel	How it works
Web portal	registrationandtouristcare.uk.gov.in, as above
Mobile app	“Tourist Care Uttarakhand” on Android and iOS
WhatsApp	save +91 83948 33833 (the number publicised for 2026), send “Yatra”, follow the prompts
Offline counters	Haridwar, Rishikesh, Dehradun, and base towns along each route (Barkot, Uttarkashi, Sonprayag, Joshimath, Govindghat)

The helpline is 1364 (toll-free). Don’t plan around the counters. “We’ll register when we reach Haridwar” costs people a day of their yatra: in 2026 the counters only opened around 15 April, and with tens of lakhs registering each season, queues of one to three hours are normal.

Is registration enough for darshan, poojas or the helicopter?

It’s needed for all of them and books none of them: rooms, darshan slots, poojas and heli seats each live on a separate system with its own login. The expensive version: a pilgrim books a pooja on the BKTC site, gets a confirmation, and assumes the yatra part is done. It isn’t; the two logins don’t know about each other.

System	What it actually gets you	Where
Yatra registration	Legal permission to be on the yatra; free, mandatory	registrationandtouristcare.uk.gov.in
Darshan queue token	Your slot in the queue at the shrine	Token counters at the dham (the portal names them; no official page explains the process)
Pooja booking	Specific poojas at Kedarnath and Badrinath	badrinath-kedarnath.gov.in (BKTC, separate login)
Green Card + Trip Card	Clearance for the vehicle and its passenger list	greencard.uk.gov.in, scanned at RTO checkposts
Kedarnath helicopter	A heli seat, if you’re skipping the 16 km trail	IRCTC HeliYatra; book only after you have your URNs

(Adi Kailash runs on a different system: no portal, and registering is the Inner Line Permit, as our opening-date guide explains.)

What gets pilgrims stopped at the checkposts

Verification on the ground is a QR scan of that Yatra Registration Letter — the same document people call the e-pass, yatra parchi, or registration slip. Staff scan it at police checkposts on each approach road (Sonprayag for Kedarnath, say), trek start points, and temple gates; the scan typically takes under a minute — don’t count on registering on the spot. The state’s advisory since May 2024 is blunt: pilgrims without registration are to be turned back, and you’re expected to travel on the dates you registered.

The reasons that recur are a name that doesn’t match the ID, one group member nobody registered, travel on different dates than the slot, or a QR that lives only on a phone. Expect no mobile signal at Jankichatti and Gaurikund, so carry printed copies and treat the SMS on your registered number as a fallback.

Booked a package? Ask who does the registering

Operators must check registration before departure, and the portal has tour-company fields for registering groups. Yet many packages only “assist” with registration or skip it entirely, so read the inclusions line before you pay. On our 10-day Char Dham circuit, registration for the whole group is an inclusion: you send documents, our team files everything, and Day 1 ends with a registration check at the Barkot evening briefing. Paperwork is fixable there, the evening before the Yamunotri trail. It isn’t at Jankichatti at dawn. Our Do Dham yatra carries the same inclusion for both shrines, and on the Kedarnath-only trip our team completes registration before you travel; partial circuits need registration too.

The portal is free, and the five steps above are the whole job. If you’d rather never touch it, tell us on WhatsApp which month you’re travelling, how many pilgrims, and whether anyone already holds a URN; the uploads and printed letters stop being your problem.