Hotels in Auli: Which Ones Are at the Top, and What a Night Costs

Fewer than half the hotels sold as Auli are at the top: by the location each listing, or the property's own site, gives, one listing of 24 puts only 11 there, three of them tent camps. We've stayed in four places over three trips, and only one of them, GMVN in June 2025, was at the top. So read the address, not the name, and ask what heats the room and what happens to it when the power goes.

That's the trouble with hotels in Auli, Uttarakhand: the name runs a long way further down the hill than the slope does. This is the Auli in Chamoli district, above the town of Jyotirmath, which most maps and booking sites still call Joshimath.

The listings, rate cards and press reports here are research, which we read in September 2026 and checked again on 10 October 2026 wherever the source would open; the Sources give each one's date. Our own rooms and rates come from our trip sheets and booking confirmations.

Our four stays, and what each was like

Three of our four stays were below the top: one in Jyotirmath and two on the road up, and only GMVN, in June 2025, was at Auli itself.

Your rates will differ. These are dated examples of the town and the road in October, the top in June and the road in January. Two months at two different road properties don't add up to a seasonal multiple.

October 2024: a hotel in town, then a resort at Lower Auli

Kailasha Inn, on the Badrinath Road in Jyotirmath, was simple and comfortable, and handy for the market. That's how Vandana remembers it. We'd driven up from the plains that day, so the first night we fell asleep quickly; the next day we went out at an easy pace and rested in the room in the evening. She says the heater and the power backup kept the stay comfortable.

Auli Eco Nature Resort, at Lower Auli, felt more peaceful to Vandana than Jyotirmath. We left our bags in the room and went out walking and looking at the views. By evening a jacket over a sweater was needed. We had a hot vegetarian dinner and rested early, because we were leaving very early the next morning. The night with Auli in the name cost two and a half times the Jyotirmath hotel (the table has both), and it still wasn't at the top.

June 2025: GMVN at the top, in a brick room

Our one stay at the top was a brick room at the GMVN Tourist Rest House, as we know it, for two nights, 3 and 4 June, at the rate in the table above, from the booking confirmation. How we got up there, by bus and shared jeep, is on the page about the last climb.

Vandana remembers the room as simple: a bed, blankets and room for the bags. By day it was pleasant, and at night the blankets were welcome. In the morning there was hot water to get ready with. We ate dal, sabzi, roti and rice, and after walking about, a hot vegetarian meal hit the spot.

January 2026: Satopanth, near the TV Tower at Sunil

Satopanth calls itself The Auli Resort, and so does our trip sheet, but it's near the TV Tower at Sunil, on the road below the top. Its own contact page writes the address as "Auli Near TV Tower Sunil Joshimath". Our two nights came to Rs 16,286 with tax and fees, and the heater came with the room. We reached it at 01:20 after waiting in Jyotirmath for the road; that night is on the climb's page.

Vandana remembers the room's wooden finish, white bedding and a red runner, and that with the heater and the bedding it was comfortable. In the morning there was hot water, and we charged our phones in the room. In the dining room we ate a vegetarian thali, dal, sabzi, roti, rice, curd and salad, with snow outside the big windows. In the evening we played chess over tea, then put on jackets, caps and gloves and sat out by the bonfire.

Satopanth is on my list for our next winter trip. Vandana would suggest it to a couple, or to a family who like spending time at the hotel. Of the other three, she says Kailasha Inn was convenient for walking round town, Eco Nature had peaceful surroundings, and GMVN was simple, but in June she liked being up at the top and walking straight out to the meadow.

How many hotels are there in Auli, really?

Seven built properties plus GMVN's complex, going by the location each listing gives itself, and three tent camps on top of that. Every bigger number you'll see folds in the road below Auli, the town of Jyotirmath, or both.

The district press counts the same way, and adds the part the listings leave out. Amar Ujala's Chamoli reporting on 22 December 2025 put room for more than 1,000 people across GMVN and the private hotels at Auli, with huts and tents besides. The same report says there are also a large number of hotels below Auli, near Sunil and the TV Tower, and counts those separately without numbering them.

So there are two answers to "how many hotels are in Auli": a short list at the top, and a longer, uncounted string of places on the road that borrow the name.

Before you pay, look the address up on a map and ignore the name. TV Tower, Sunil, Lower Auli, Auli Road and Parsari are all on the climb. ITBP Road, near GMVN, near the chairlift or near the lake are at the top. If the listing gives only "Auli", ring and ask how far they are from the GMVN complex.

Which properties are actually at the top of Auli?

GMVN's complex, Mountain Rover, Casa Himalaya, Clifftop Club, Blue Poppy, Shail Shikhar Heritage, Snow City and The Auli Resort, plus three tent camps. Here is what each one publishes about price and heat.

Read that price column as a band. A listing's "starting from" is the cheapest room in the cheapest week, with no date on it, so expect the quote for your dates to be at it or above it, and well above it at New Year.

Watch the names in that table too. The Auli Resort, next to GMVN, is a different place from Satopanth The Auli Resort, where we stayed, down the road at Sunil. Its listing says it belongs to the Dronagiri hotel in Jyotirmath.

What does a room in Auli cost, and how does it change by season?

At the top, listed starting prices ran from Rs 1,650 at GMVN, on an undated listing, to Rs 14,900 on ITBP Road when we checked in October 2026. The one property near Auli that publishes a full seasonal card charges Rs 3,000 to Rs 3,800 a night for a cottage. What we paid is in the table of our own rooms above. Every other figure on this page is somebody's listing or rate card, and each one says whose.

That card is Blackberry Cottages', on the road below the top, so read it as the shape of a season at one place. A winter night there costs Rs 500 more than a September one, and the New Year fortnight another Rs 300 on top.

May and June are priced exactly like winter: the card treats the green season as peak. The New Year premium is small on the cottage, Rs 300, and bigger on the premium room, Rs 700. Those dates are fixed months in advance, so what you're paying for is the calendar, whatever the weather does.

The card puts the property on the road, 3 km before main Auli. No property at the top that we checked prints a card for every season; Blackberry prints that, the heater charge, and a plain statement that it's below main Auli.

Rooms go early, often before the weather is known. GMVN's Auli rooms were fully booked for Christmas and New Year in both December 2024 and December 2025, while the private hotels were at about 60 to 70 per cent, so book that week early.

What does the room rate leave out?

Often the heat and the food, the climb from Jyotirmath, and at New Year a package price. This is where Auli bills add up.

Heat. At the three places where our record shows a heater, it came with the room. Elsewhere it may not: Blackberry's electric heater, Rs 1,000 a room a night on top of the room, is a third of a September cottage and just over a quarter of a New Year one, and guests at other places describe heaters as a chargeable extra too. Ask whether the heater is in the rate.

Food. At the three places where we have the detail, the food was on top of the room. Up at Auli there are hotels and food shops but no market, Amar Ujala reported in March 2026; for medicine or shopping you go down to Jyotirmath. Ask whether your hotel's kitchen serves dinner. Rate cards quote EP, room only, as the headline, so check what breakfast (CP) and half board (MAP) cost before you compare two places on the room price; in Diwali week, at Christmas and New Year, and around Republic Day, Mountain Rover and Casa Himalaya sell only half board. On a walk up top, Vandana found it took a while to reach anywhere to eat, so carrying snacks and water helped. If you want restaurants and a market, stay in Jyotirmath, which has both.

New Year. Satopanth sells New Year 2026-27 as a two-night package, 30 to 31 December or 31 December to 1 January, at Rs 32,500 a couple with meals and a gala dinner, and a Christmas package at the same price; its New Year 2025 package cost the same. A package like that is priced on the date, and the snow is extra luck. Why that week is the most expensive of a month that's usually short of snow is in the guide to Auli in December. If snow is the reason for your trip, skip the package: you'd pay peak for a week that was thin or bare in three of the last four years, and the four-winter snow record shows which weeks delivered.

The climb. If your own car can't go up, the transfer from Jyotirmath was fixed at Rs 1,500 one way and Rs 2,500 for a same-day return on 29 December 2024, five passengers to a vehicle, and we found no newer official figure in October 2026. The caveats are with the climb's fare record.

Cash and fuel. Two travel guides say there's no ATM or fuel pump at Auli itself. For cash, Jyotirmath has ATMs (Discover with Dheeraj, updated 9 October 2026). For fuel, fill up in Jyotirmath or before: TrekGo (August 2026) names Jyotirmath and Pipalkoti, while Dheeraj says the nearest pumps are in Chamoli town, about 40 km earlier.

Do Auli hotels have heating, and what happens when the power goes?

Most properties that say anything about heat list a heater, several charge for it, and in the guest reviews we collected every heater that worked was an electric one. So the question that matters is what happens to the heater when the supply drops, and at Auli the supply drops.

Where the power comes from. Auli hangs off the Jyotirmath block's supply. On 31 August 2025 both lines into the block failed together, and the whole of it went dark. The December outage figures for the district's rural feeders are on the December page.

What the reviews say. In the dated guest reviews we collected, good and bad, the heaters that kept rooms warm were oil column heaters, blowers and electric blankets. Nobody describes a generator running the room heaters through a cut. One guest who asked found there was no generator at all.

What our own stays add. At both places we stayed in October 2024, Hotel Kailasha Inn in Jyotirmath and Auli Eco Nature Resort at Lower Auli, there was power backup and the room heater was set up to run on it. At Satopanth in January 2026, Vandana says, the heater and the bedding kept the room comfortable, and Satopanth's own site lists 24-hour power backup. But none of these is at the top, and we have no power cut on record at any of them, so it says nothing about the resorts at the slope or GMVN. It does show the question has a real answer that a property can give you.

Read the backup column carefully. "Partial" is doing work in Clifftop's sentence, and "scheduled" in the ITBP Road group's two listings: Mountain Rover's says its generator runs at scheduled timings only, which is not the same as whenever the power goes. A genset "during cuts" at Blackberry doesn't say whether it runs the Rs 1,000 heater or the lights. And the most useful line in the table comes from a resort telling its own customers to check before they book.

Never sleep with a fuel-burning heater in a closed room. Clifftop's listing names kerosene radiators, and coal braziers (angithis) are common in the hills. In January 2026 two people died in closed rooms with an angithi in Uttarkashi district, one of them a hotel worker, ETV Bharat reported; the district disaster officer's advice was to put it out before sleeping and keep a window open. We know of no such case at Auli, but the rule is the same everywhere.

What Vandana would ask on the phone before booking:

• What kind of heater the room has, and whether it costs extra.
• Whether there's power backup.
• What times there's hot water.
• How far it is from the car to the room, and how many stairs.
• Whether there's vegetarian food, and what time dinner is.
• What happens if you arrive late at night.
• If snow stops you getting there, whether the booking can be moved, and what the cancellation rule is.

For the room itself in winter, she'd pack warm nightwear and slippers; her full winter list is on the page about the last climb.

Which Auli hotels take guests in winter?

We couldn't find a list of which properties shut for winter, in English or in Hindi, so the next best thing is named places with dated proof that they had guests in a named winter month. Proof for a past winter isn't a promise for the next one: GMVN was full at Christmas in 2024 and 2025, the ITBP Road resorts and two road properties have guest reports from the last four winters, and we stayed at Satopanth in January 2026.

Notice what that evidence can't tell you. A rate card for November to February says the owner intends to open. A guest report says somebody slept there that month. Neither says the kitchen is running in the week you want, or that the road to the door is open. So ring the week before you travel and ask two things: is the kitchen cooking dinner that week, and how will they get you to the door if tourist vehicles are restricted on the climb. Treat a vague answer to either as a no.

A booked room can be emptied, too. On 3 March 2025, after the avalanche at Mana and an alert for snow and avalanches in Chamoli, the guests staying at Auli's hotels, lodges and homestays were sent down and their bookings cancelled; Auli reopened on 4 March, ETV Bharat reported. So ask what the property refunds if the administration closes Auli.

GMVN Auli: what are the state's rooms like, and how do you book them?

GMVN, the Garhwal Mandal Vikas Nigam, the state's tourism corporation, runs three places at the top of Auli. They fill first at Christmas, and the room type you get decides whether you're warm. GMVN's booking system names them Auli Ski Resort, Nanda Devi Eco Tourist Resort and Cloud End. Amar Ujala calls them the Ski Resort, Nanda Devi and Cloud Inn guest houses, and ours, in June 2025, was the one we know as the GMVN Tourist Rest House.

The one thing to ask for is a brick room. Ours, in June 2025, was one. A guest in December 2018 described GMVN's cheapest rooms as "basically aluminium cabins", where "the room heater provided may not be very effective", and like "a deep freezer at night". The same guest found the semi-deluxe brick rooms "quite cozy". That review is nearly eight years old, and nothing in GMVN's own material addresses the difference, so don't accept "deluxe" as the answer when you book. Ask whether the room is brick or a cabin, and get it written on the confirmation.

Getting there. GMVN sits at the chairlift base, at the far end of the climb. A Team-BHP member who went up in February 2024 was told no shared cab runs to the GMVN resort and paid Rs 1,000 for a private drop, and our own shared jeep set us down where the shared vehicles stop, so we walked up with our bags. The short road from the main road to GMVN's guest house, about 500 to 600 m, has long been in poor shape; repairs began in March 2026 and the Army stopped them on 1 April 2026, saying the land is its own, Amar Ujala reported. The fixed fare and what people pay are on the transfer page.

Booking it. Use gmvnonline.com, or ring the numbers on that site. In December 2025 its Auli rooms for 25 to 31 December were sold out by the 8th, so for that week book early or don't count on GMVN. Its ski courses with lodging put you in a dormitory, and what that course costs is on the GMVN course ladder.

Should you stay at the top of Auli, on the road, or in Jyotirmath?

Skiing or deep winter: the top. A tight budget or a market: Jyotirmath. The road in between is good value in clear months and the least convenient in snow.

The old advice was to stay in Jyotirmath and ride the cable car up in minutes. The Joshimath to Auli ropeway hasn't carried a passenger since January 2023, and no restart date had been announced when we checked in October 2026, so a base in town means the 11 to 16 km of winding road each way. The record is on the ropeway's status page, and the full town-against-slope argument is in our Auli guide.

The road properties are real value in a clear month. A Rs 3,000 September cottage on the road against a listing from Rs 11,500 on ITBP Road is a big gap, and in a clear month the road up is simply a road. In snow the arithmetic turns over. On 25 January 2026, our day up there, the frost points named were Sunil, TV Tower and Kichad Bend, all on that stretch, and above the TV Tower only four-wheel drives and local vehicles were let through. Our hotel was at Sunil. A room on that stretch leaves you a drive to the chairlift on exactly the road that's giving trouble, so for skiing, or anything that needs the chairlift in January and February, pay for the top.

How we'd choose, by the kind of trip:

• A couple who want views and a quiet evening: I'd say the top or Lower Auli. Vandana, for the two of us, would pick a stay with a view.
• A family, with children or older parents: I'd choose by the walk to the room, the stairs, the heating and the food. Vandana would look first for an easy walk to the room, few stairs, heating, and meals on time.
• A tight budget: I'd stay in Jyotirmath and go up to Auli for the day.
• December: Vandana would stay in Jyotirmath or somewhere at Lower Auli that's easy to reach, and go up by day.

For the stay itself, next winter I'd want to reach the hotel in daylight, not after midnight.

Where should you stay at the end of the drive from Delhi?

In Jyotirmath, at about 1,875 m. It's a sensible intermediate stop for the altitude, it's where the ATMs and the food are, with fuel close by, and it's below the part of the road that shuts.

Auli starts at roughly 2,500 m. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's travel guidance says anyone not acclimatised who sleeps at 2,450 m or higher is at risk of altitude illness, and advises against going from low altitude to above 2,750 m in a single day; a night in Jyotirmath first breaks the climb. We didn't break it in January 2026: we went straight up to a hotel below the top and felt only tiredness the next morning. This is general information, not medical advice, and the detail is on the climb's page.

The winter reason is our own January night, when we reached our hotel below the top at 01:20 after the wait for the road. So book the first night in Jyotirmath, and make it one you can cancel late. If you get in with daylight and the road is clear, you can still go up. If you arrive after dark in winter, you already have a bed. The whole drive, leg by leg, is on the Delhi to Auli route page.

Staying close to the slope: which properties are nearest the chairlift?

GMVN's complex is beside the chairlift base, and the ITBP Road resorts are a short walk from it. Nothing on the road below is walkable to the lift.

By their own listings, Casa Himalaya is a "200 mtr walk" from the base "chair car station", which is their name for the chairlift, and Mountain Rover is at "400 mtr walking distance" from it. A Goibibo listing sells a property next to GMVN as "Auli Resort (10m walk from ChairCar)", which may be The Auli Resort in the table above.

Clifftop Club, up by the lake, is reached by the chairlift, which its Goibibo listing says runs until 3 pm, or by a 4 km military-controlled road that needs a four-wheel drive. Ask Clifftop how your bags reach the door in January.

Hotels in Auli: FAQ

Nav & Vandana Sharma

I'm Nav, and with my wife Vandana I run WCTO from Greater Noida. I've been travelling across India since 2015 and do the routes, costs and logistics; Vandana joined the road in 2020 and writes the stays, food, comfort and safety.

This page draws on all three of our Auli trips and our four stays: two nights in Jyotirmath and one at Lower Auli in October 2024, two at GMVN at the top in June 2025, and two at Sunil in January 2026. The rates are from our trip sheets and booking confirmations. The counts, rate cards, heating claims and press reports are our research, each checked against the listing, property or paper that published it.

Corrections: [email protected]. Tell us the page and what is wrong, and we'll fix it and date the change in the log below.