What happened
The Char Dham Yatra 2026 opened on April 22 and promptly broke every previous attendance record, with 11 lakh pilgrims arriving in the first 23 days — roughly 50,000 per day flooding into mountain passes designed for fewer people and substantially more patience. On May 12, a traffic jam at Sonprayag stranded thousands of pilgrims on the roadside for hours, including elderly devotees and small children, because the road can accommodate only so many vehicles and none of them were willing to be last. A viral video from Kedarnath showed the situation's logical conclusion: devotees vaulting over barricades mid-pilgrimage, still technically on a spiritual journey. Uttarakhand has deployed disaster response teams, the IMD has issued orange alerts for high-altitude snowfall, and state officials have confirmed that the record will almost certainly be broken again next year. The infrastructure, for its part, has made no such commitment.