Nanda Devi is a 7,816-metre peak locked inside a ring of mountains, and nobody is allowed in. The wall around it is almost unbroken — a rampart of summits, a dozen of them above 6,400 metres, enclosing an inner basin called the Nanda Devi Sanctuary. The one break in it is the Rishi Gorge, a slot so deep and steep that it took climbers fifty years to force a way through. They got in, and then the door shut: the sanctuary has been closed to all visitors since 1983, and the basin behind the wall has gone back to being ground almost nobody walks on. It is the highest mountain standing entirely inside India — Kangchenjunga is taller but sits on the Nepal border. The name means bliss-giving goddess, and she is worshipped across Uttarakhand as a guardian mother.
For a traveller, Nanda Devi is a mountain to look at rather than approach. It shows itself from the pine and oak ridges above Auli, from the trail over the Kuari Pass, and from the open meadow of Bedni Bugyal. On a clear morning the two summits — the main peak and the lower Nanda Devi East — lift above the forest, with the three points of Trishul finishing the skyline. At first and last light the snow flares pink and gold, the top lit while the valleys are still dark. The window is short: the glow lasts minutes and cloud usually closes in behind it. In early summer wildflowers spread across the lower meadows while ice still holds the heights. Down in the villages she is a living goddess rather than a legend, honoured with offerings all year.