The Valley of Flowers Is 87.5 Square Kilometres, Only a Fifth of It Meadow, and Its 2026 Season Runs Until 31 October

Valley of Flowers National Park, in Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, opened for the 2026 season on 1 June and, according to Forest Range Officer Chetna Kandpal as quoted by All India Radio, stays open until 31 October. Visitors walk in from Govindghat through the village of Ghangaria, about 13 km by PTI’s count, and then 3 to 4 km more.

The International Union for Conservation of Nature, which evaluated the park for UNESCO in 2005, gave its area as 8,750 hectares, or 87.5 square kilometres. From satellite imagery it found that 73 percent of the park is perpetual snow and ice, 21 percent alpine meadow and 6 percent forest. We checked what follows on 8 October 2026.

Dates, fees and hours for 2026

All India Radio reported on 1 June 2026 that the valley had been opened to tourists that day, and on 2 June it quoted Kandpal saying the valley will stay open until 31 October. That is a radio report of an officer’s statement, not the department’s notice. The park’s official portal, valleyofflower.uk.gov.in, would not load for us, so we could not read the notice or check for an early closure. In 2024 the valley closed at about noon on 31 October because of winter and snow, ETV Bharat reported.

Fees are reported two ways. In June 2024 All India Radio quoted B. B. Martoliya, divisional forest officer of Nanda Devi National Park, giving a trek fee of Rs 200 for Indian citizens and Rs 800 for foreign citizens. Esquire India repeats those figures for 2026, while Outlook Traveller gives Rs 150 and Rs 600. We found no official 2026 fee notice, so confirm at the Ghangaria counter or on the portal.

Outlook Traveller says a permit lasts three days, entry is allowed from 7 am to 2 pm and everyone must be out of the park by 5 pm. It also says camping and overnight stays are banned. On the first day of the 2025 season, PTI reported, four of the 83 visitors had permission online and 79 got it in the usual way.

The walk from Govindghat

PTI puts the climb from Govindghat to Ghangaria at about 13 km and Ghangaria to the park entrance at about 3 km. Outlook Traveller says 4 km. Ghangaria, at 3,072 m, is the nearest settlement and is occupied only in summer, IUCN reported in 2005. It added that mules are not allowed inside the valley and that most visitors keep to the 5 km of trail along the valley floor and return the same day.

For the altitude, the state health department’s Char Dham Handbook 2026, written by AIIMS Rishikesh doctors, does not name this valley. Its advice for high ground in general is: “Acclimatising for 2-3 nights at 8,000-9,000 ft (2,450-2,750 m) before ascending to higher elevations effectively prevents acute mountain sickness (AMS).”

Which height, which area

IUCN’s 2005 table gives the park an altitude range of 3,350 to 6,708 metres and says it became a national park on 6 September 1982. A footnote says the government’s nomination wrongly cited Ghori Parbat, the highest peak, at 6,590 m and the range as 3,200 to 6,675 m. The 6,675 figure still circulates. The middle of the valley, IUCN said, lies at about 3,500 m and covers some 1,000 hectares.

Other pages differ. All India Radio’s 2024 piece says 12,995 feet (about 3,960 m) and about 3 square kilometres. ETV Bharat the same year says 12,500 feet (about 3,810 m) and 87.5 square kilometres.

UNESCO lists the park inside a two-park property, Nanda Devi and Valley of Flowers National Parks, of 71,210 hectares with a buffer zone of 514,857. Nanda Devi National Park was inscribed in 1988, and on 14 July 2005 the World Heritage Committee, meeting in Durban, extended the site to take in the Valley of Flowers.

Smythe, Holdsworth and a name from 1931

Frank Smythe wrote in The Valley of Flowers, first printed in 1938, that after he and five other British mountaineers climbed Kamet in 1931 they crossed the Bhyundar Pass, 16,688 feet, in sleet and rain. The expedition’s botanist, R. L. Holdsworth, called Smythe’s attention to the first splashes of blue, which were primulas, and lower down Smythe found that “it was impossible to take a step without crushing a flower.” They camped two days in the valley, he wrote, “and we remembered it afterwards as the Valley of Flowers.”

Smythe came back in 1937 with four Tibetan porters hired through Darjeeling, planning six weeks alone before and during the monsoon to collect seeds, bulbs and plants. Dr J. Macqueen Cowan of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, who identified the specimens, wrote to The Times that Smythe had brought back some 250 plants, and Smythe quotes the letter in the book. IUCN says the valley’s reputation among botanists eventually made it India’s first national park created specifically to conserve plants.

Joan Legge, 4 July 1939

Lady Joan Margaret Legge, a daughter of the sixth Earl of Dartmouth, died in the Bhyundar Valley in July 1939. A Reuter report, transcribed on a blog from a 1939 newspaper, says she fell from a hillside while picking flowers and was buried in the valley, 16 miles from Badrinath. It adds: “She was collecting specimens for the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew at the time.” The Birmingham Mail of 15 July 1939 said she had gone to the Himalayas for six months after an illness. We found no second contemporary source for who sent her.

The headstone, as the same blog transcribes it, gives her dates as 21 February 1885 and 4 July 1939 and a verse about lifting one’s eyes to the hills. The blog says her sister had the memorial built a year after her death, a claim it prefaces with “it is said.” The original stone broke and was replaced by an outdoor company from Pune.

How many plants, and when they flower

The often-quoted 500 matches the 499 flowering species that IUCN’s 2005 table credits to Kala and colleagues in 1998. Other counts in the same table are 253 species of flowering plants and conifers plus 9 ferns for Smythe and Holdsworth in 1931, 613 species for the Botanical Survey of India in 1987 and 600 flowering species plus 30 ferns for the Forest Research Institute in 1992. The 1987 survey ran down to Govindghat at 1,800 m, beyond the park.

A 2018 paper in Phytotaxa by Monika Bisht and colleagues recorded 614 taxa, made up of 609 species, 3 subspecies and 2 varieties, in 277 genera. Of these 31 are threatened and 72 were new to the park’s flora. The Forest Department figure All India Radio gave on 1 June 2026 is “more than 300 species of flowers.”

Chandra Prakash Kala’s 1999 study monitored transects in the park and at Hemkund every 30 days, found 95 flowering species and reported July and August as the peak flowering months. Esquire India puts the peak at late July to mid-August, while PTI’s 2025 report says the flowers peak by September. IUCN describes conditions as cool, wet and misty from late June to early September, with the park partly shielded from the full force of the southwest monsoon by its east-west orientation. Our explainer on how the monsoon works covers the rains themselves. IUCN says the valley is snowbound from November or December to April.

Wildlife and visitor numbers

IUCN recorded 10 mammal species in 2005. The Asiatic black bear, Himalayan tahr and serow are threatened, and the Himalayan musk deer is near threatened. Local people reported that snow leopard, common leopard, brown bear and blue sheep are also present. UNESCO’s 2005 listing text names the black bear, snow leopard, brown bear and blue sheep. ETV Bharat quoted forest officer Chetna Kandpal in 2024 on five camera traps and a list that includes guldar (leopard), snow leopard, monal, musk deer and black bear. We could not find the park’s management plan online.

IUCN counted about 4,000 visitors a year in 2005, over 90 percent of them Indian, with up to 50 a day. ETV Bharat reported 19,436 in the 2024 season, 330 of them foreigners. Where Bhutan rations visitors by price, as our piece on its tourist fee explains, the park’s published rules are a daily entry window and a camping ban. Esquire India says numbers are capped, but we found no official daily figure.

The 2013 flood, the 2025 bridge and the ropeway

The park opened on 1 June 2013 and closed on 16 June after rain set off landslips that destroyed the bridge over the Pushpawati river linking the valley to Ghangaria, and 3 km of path beyond it. A report credited to The Hindu quotes Sarvesh Kumar Dube, sub divisional officer of Nanda Devi National Park, saying it would otherwise have stayed open to the end of October. Only 487 tourists got in, against about 7,000 expected.

On 5 March 2025 a landslide brought down the Govindghat-Ghangaria motor bridge, Garhwal Post reported, and Chamoli’s district magistrate, Sandeep Tiwari, confirmed the cause. The park still opened on 1 June 2025.

On the same day, the Union Cabinet approved a 12.4 km ropeway from Govindghat to Hemkund Sahib at Rs 2,730.13 crore, including a 10.55 km stretch to Ghangaria. The Press Information Bureau release says it would also serve Valley of Flowers visitors. It describes the current walk to Hemkund as a 21 km uphill trek. We found no report on construction progress as of 8 October 2026.