Lord Curzon Trail

Almost every Kuari Pass trek page tells you the same thing in one line: this is the Lord Curzon Trail, named after the Viceroy of India who walked here in 1905. Then it moves straight on to the itinerary.

We wanted to know what sits behind that line. Who actually walked this route, and why? Did Curzon really cross the pass? And how did an old mountain path between two Garhwal valleys end up as one of the best-known winter treks in India?

Some of the answers are well documented. Some are stories that have been repeated so often they now read like fact. This is the history of the Kuari Pass route, with the two kept apart.

Developer: make each line a jump link to its H2.

Lord Curzon in Garhwal, 1905: The Story Everyone Tells

The version you'll hear at the campsite goes like this. In 1905, Lord Curzon, the Viceroy of India, set out to see the high country of Garhwal for himself. His party took the old path up from the Nandakini and Birahi valleys towards the pass, with the idea of crossing over to Joshimath and the Dhauliganga valley.

Then things went wrong. Somewhere on the way up, the party disturbed a nest of wild Himalayan bees. The bees attacked, the march fell apart, and the Viceroy's grand tour of the pass never happened. In some tellings he came back later and finished the walk. In others he never returned at all.

Either way, the name stuck. The path became the Curzon Trail, or the Lord Curzon Trail, and it is still sold under that name more than a century later.

What the Record Actually Shows

Here's the honest part. We could not find a primary source for Curzon's 1905 journey: no diary entry, official tour record or contemporary report that places him on this trail. The story appears in trekking guides, operator pages and trip reports, but none of them cite where it comes from.

The accounts also disagree with each other. One long-running trekking site says Curzon walked here in 1905 and his party abandoned the climb to the pass after the bee attack, then adds that he apparently got there later. A 2002 trip report describes his expedition as one that never made it across the pass at all. Other operator blogs say he crossed from Ramni over Gorson Bugyal to Auli. They can't all be right.

The year is a puzzle too. 1905 was Curzon's last and most difficult year as Viceroy. He was caught up in a bitter dispute with Lord Kitchener over control of the Indian Army, he resigned that August, and he left India in November. A trek into the Garhwal hills isn't impossible in that year, but it doesn't fit neatly either.

So the fairest way to put it is this: the Lord Curzon Trail is a real name with a long history, attached to a story that may be partly true, partly embroidered, or remembered in the wrong year. We'd rather tell you that than repeat the legend as fact.

Who Was Lord Curzon?

George Nathaniel Curzon was Viceroy of India from 1899 to 1905, one of the most powerful and controversial men to hold the job. He is remembered for the partition of Bengal in 1905, for his restoration work on monuments like the Taj Mahal, and for the Victoria Memorial in Kolkata, which he championed.

He was also a serious traveller. Before he became Viceroy he had journeyed through Persia, Central Asia and Afghanistan, and in 1894 he travelled into the Pamirs looking for the source of the Oxus river. Years later he served as President of the Royal Geographical Society. He did all of this with a chronic spinal problem that left him wearing a back brace for much of his life.

That background is probably why the story has lasted. A Viceroy with a taste for remote mountain country, setting out on a hill route in Garhwal, is easy to believe. Whether he did it in 1905, on this exact path, is the part nobody has pinned down.

Kuari Pass History Before Curzon: Traders and Shepherds

Whatever Curzon did or didn't do, the path was here long before him. Kuari Pass sits on a ridge between two worlds: the lower, farmed valleys of central Garhwal to the south and the Dhauliganga valley to the north, which leads up towards Niti and the Tibetan border.

For centuries, routes through this country carried trade between the Garhwal hills and Tibet, over high passes like Niti and Mana. Wool, salt and borax came down. Grain and other goods went up. A crossing like Kuari Pass let people move between the Pindar, Nandakini and Birahi valleys and the Joshimath side without a long detour along the rivers.

Shepherds used it too. The high meadows on both sides of the pass, the bugyals, are summer grazing grounds, and families from the villages below still take their sheep and goats up in the warmer months. Many of the paths trekkers walk today were first worn in by flocks.

The name itself is local. In Garhwali a pass is a khal, and older maps and accounts often call it Kuari Khal. Local guides link "Kuari" to kunwari, an unmarried girl, through a story about the goddess Parvati meditating near here before her marriage to Shiva. Like the Curzon story, it's a legend, but it's one that belongs to the people who live below the pass.

The Original Curzon Trail Route: Gwaldam to Joshimath

The historical Curzon Trail was much longer than the trek most people do today. In its fullest form it ran from Gwaldam, on the edge of Kumaon, across a series of Garhwal valleys and over Kuari Pass to Joshimath. Older trek accounts describe it taking ten days or more.

A 2002 trip report gives a good sense of how it used to be done. That party took a bus to Nandprayag, a jeep up the Nandakini to Ghat, and then walked for about ten days through Ghuni, Ramni, Pana and Dakwani before crossing the pass and dropping down to Khullara and Tapovan, where they caught a jeep to Joshimath.

The Mountaineers Who Crossed Kuari Pass

If the Curzon story is hard to pin down, the next chapter isn't. In the 1930s, Kuari Pass was the walking route of choice for British expeditions heading to the big peaks of the Garhwal Himalaya, and several of them wrote about it.

1931: The Kamet expedition

The expedition that made the first ascent of Kamet came this way. Their own report in the Himalayan Journal records that after a fifty-mile drive from Ranikhet and about two weeks of marching, they crossed Kuari Pass on 28 May 1931 and got a superb view of the Badrinath range. A few weeks later, Frank Smythe, Eric Shipton, R. L. Holdsworth and Lewa Sherpa stood on the summit of Kamet.

1934 to 1937: Shipton, Tilman and Smythe

Eric Shipton came back through the area on his 1934 journey with Bill Tilman to explore the Nanda Devi Sanctuary, and in his book Nanda Devi he describes reaching the pass at dawn and getting the clear view he had hoped for. Tilman crossed again with the 1936 Anglo-American Nanda Devi expedition, which made the first ascent of the mountain that August. He was less lucky: cloud hid almost everything, and he saw only Hathi Parvat.

Frank Smythe walked the route in 1937 on his way to the Valley of Flowers, and wrote about huge rhododendron trees, a brown bear cub and a violent thunderstorm on the way up. He caught his view of Dunagiri, now usually written Dronagiri, from a clearing just below the pass.

These are the crossings we can actually date and source. For anyone who loves Himalayan history, they're more interesting than the Curzon legend anyway: the same ridge, the same peaks, written about by the people who opened up this part of the range.

Kuari Pass Timeline at a Glance

How the Old Trail Became Today's Short Trek

For a long time, crossing Kuari Pass meant committing to the full walk from the south. That changed as roads crept further into the hills. Once vehicles could reach Joshimath, Auli and the villages above them, the pass came within a few days' walk of the road on its northern side.

That's the trek most people do now. Instead of ten days from Gwaldam or Ghat, today's Curzon Trail trek usually starts near Joshimath, climbs through forest to Khullara at the treeline and goes up to the pass from there. Some operators cross over and finish at Auli. TrekYaari runs it as an out-and-back from Tugasi village. For the trail as it's walked now, our map guide shows how today's route runs, segment by segment.

The southern half of the old Curzon Trail still exists, through Ramni, Pana and Dakwani, and a few teams still walk it. But it sees far fewer people than the short northern approach.

Walking Through History on the Lord Curzon Trail Today

Very little on the trail today dates back to Curzon. The stone-paved stretches you'll walk on were laid much later, mostly as forest and trail work, according to the guides who've walked here for years. The campsites are modern. So is the gear.

What hasn't changed is the reason everyone came. Stand on the pass on a clear morning and you look out at the same peaks the Kamet team saw in 1931: Dronagiri, Hathi Parvat, Kamet and the Badrinath range, with Nanda Devi rising to the east. It's worth knowing which peaks you can pick out from the top, Nanda Devi included, before you go, so you can name them the way Shipton and Smythe did.

And the walk up still has the same rhythm: forest, then meadow, then open ridge. If you'd like a sense of what the trail feels like day to day, our trek diary covers it. If you're carrying a camera, our photography guide shows where to stand for the best sunrise shots, which is when the view Shipton described is at its clearest.

Walking the Curzon Trail With TrekYaari

TrekYaari runs the Kuari Pass Trek (Lord Curzon Trail) from Joshimath, with batches from January to May and October to December. Every batch is led by a BMC or AMC certified trek leader who knows the trail in all seasons, and our leaders are happy to talk you through the history at the top, including the parts that are still a mystery.

A Name, a Legend and a Very Old Path

The Lord Curzon Trail is a good name for a trek, even if the man behind it may never have reached the top. What makes the route special is everyone else who walked it: the traders and shepherds who wore the path in, the 1930s climbers who crossed it on their way to Kamet and Nanda Devi, and the trekkers who now climb to Khullara and the pass each winter and spring.

When you reach the top, take a minute with the view before you turn round. It's the same one the Kamet team wrote about in 1931, and it's still the best reason to walk this way.