Adi Kailash Parikrama Run 2026 at Gunji, 24 to 26 October, and the permit pause

Adi Kailash Parikrama Run 2026: the dates, in one place

The organiser's schedule runs from 24 to 26 October 2026: the long races on the 24th, the short ones on the 25th, the mountain-bike race on the 26th.

The October normals put Gunji's average night at 0°C, and the 30-year normals give the month 14 frost nights. That is the week a running event has been put into, for its second edition.

Until mid-October the pages you landed on printed different spreads. The three versions as they stood on 28 September 2026, with who stated each:

• 24 and 25 October 2026: The Northern Gazette, reporting on 31 July 2026, and the government tourism listing for the run.
• 24 to 25 October: the entry listing's own race-dates block, which puts the closing ceremony on 25 October.
• 24 to 26 October: the organiser's social posts, with the closing ceremony on 26 October.

By 20 October the organiser's own entry page had settled it: three days, 24 to 26 October, with the mountain-bike race on the last. The Northern Gazette's report of 8 October puts the full marathon on the 25th. The organiser's schedule keeps it on the 24th, so go by the organiser.

Which race runs on which day

The organiser puts the 70 km ultra and the 42 km on 24 October, the 21 km, 10 km and 5 km on 25 October, and the MTB race on 26 October.

Riders were asked to report at Gunji by 24 October, two days before their race. The runners' reporting dates come earlier still, and they are in the travel-days section below.

Why the 2025 date of 2 November still shows up in search results

The first edition ran on 2 November 2025, so ticket pages and race calendars from that year still carry a November date.

The Northern Gazette announced that first edition for 2 November on 29 September 2025, and reported on the run the day it was held. Ticket PDFs and trail-race directories from then have not all been updated since. A page showing 2 November is describing last year, not this one.

The races: distances, start points and cut-off times

The entry listing for 2026 names a 70 km ultra from Jolingkong to Gunji, 42 km, 21 km, 10 km and 5 km runs at Gunji, and two MTB rides.

The places the listings name all sit along the valley above Gunji: Jolingkong, Parvati Kund, Kuti, Nabidang and Kalapani. The long race starts at Jolingkong and finishes at Gunji. Every other run starts and finishes at Gunji. There's no course map published yet, so don't build a route in your head out of the place names.

The 70 km ultra: 70 km or 60 km?

The 2026 entry listing gives the flagship ultra as 70 km from Jolingkong to Gunji, while two other pages still call it 60 km.

The distance is the organisers' to confirm. What we hold is the road: Gunji to Jolingkong measures about 36 km on OpenStreetMap, climbing from 3,200 m to about 4,500 m. Enter on the distance the entry page prints on the day you pay, and ask the organiser for the course before you train for a number.

42 km, 21 km, 10 km and 5 km at Gunji

These four begin and end in the same village, so bib collection and the finish line are in one place and family knows where to stand. The cut-offs published for the short races look tight to a plains runner, an hour for the 5 km and two hours for the 10 km.

The MTB challenge: 25 km and 50 km

The rides share the same ground. Both turnaround points sit on the valley road that carries yatra traffic through the season. What each of those villages actually is, and how the valley is ordered, is in Gunji and the road above it.

Open, 40+, 50+, 60+ and under-18: who runs in which category

The entry listing splits each race by age and gender, with an Open group, 40+, 50+ and 60+ bands, and an under-18 group. Which bands are offered in which distance is set out race by race on the entry page. Read your own category there rather than assuming the ultra and the 5 km are divided the same way.

How do you register for the Adi Kailash Parikrama Run?

Entries for 2026 closed on 10 October. More than 1,300 runners had registered by 17 October, The Northern Gazette and Amar Ujala reported.

First, plainly. Adi Kailash Explore does not organise this run, sells no entries and cannot register anybody. The entry listing names the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board as organiser, and another listing names Sportive, so the two do not agree. The government tourism listing credits ITBP and the border villages with support on the ground.

Where entries were taken, and when they closed

Entries were taken on the organiser's entry platform and through the QR codes in its social posts, and they closed on 10 October 2026.

Entries shut on 10 October, and the first reporting date at Gunji was 20 October. So runners committed to travel well before they ran. The race itself is the short part of that calendar.

What an entry costs

The lowest entry on the 2026 listing was ₹800 before GST and platform fees, and each category printed its own fee. Those are the organiser's fees and have nothing to do with any price of ours.

Missed the entries?

Entries for 2026 are closed. The next edition would be the third, and no date for it has been announced.

Watch the organiser's own channels for the next edition, and pay nobody else for an entry.

Who is allowed to enter: qualification, medical certificate and ID

The entry listing requires a qualifying finish for the 70 km and 42 km, a doctor's certificate dated within 15 days, and photo ID at bib collection.

Enthusiasm alone will not get you a bib here, which is fair for the ground it is run on. Everything below is the entry listing's own wording as it stood when this page was written.

Qualifying runs for the 70 km and the 42 km

The 2026 entry listing asks 70 km entrants for a certified 42 km finish within 10 months, or two 21 km finishes within 6 months, or a Niti Xtreme finish.

• 70 km: a certified 42 km finish in the previous 10 months, or two 21 km finishes in the previous 6 months, or a finish at Niti Xtreme.
• 42 km: a 21 km finish at high altitude in the previous 6 months, or two half marathons in the previous 10 months.

Keep those certificates and result links where you can reach them in a hurry. A qualification you cannot show at bib collection counts for nothing.

The medical certificate: who signs it and how recent it must be

The entry listing repeats in every category that the certificate must come from an MBBS doctor and be dated within 15 days before the race.

Fifteen days is a narrow window, and it falls while you are packing or already on the road. Get examined at home before you leave rather than hoping to find a doctor on the way up. It is a separate paper from the fitness certificate the district asks for with the permit.

Bib collection at Gunji: what you carry

Bib collection is in person at Gunji, with identity verified there: Aadhaar or a driving licence, as the listing puts it. The same ID is checked again on the road above Dharchula.

Do runners need an Inner Line Permit for Gunji?

Yes. Nobody reaches Gunji and the Vyas valley without an Inner Line Permit: filed online on the Pithoragarh district portal, collected at Dharchula.

Gunji stands in a border valley, and the permit is what lets a visitor past the checkpoint. Since 20 February 2025 you file the lot online, on the district's own application, and the SDM's office at Dharchula hands out what comes of it. A bib exempts a runner from none of this.

What the permit is, and who files it for participants

A search summary of the event says participant permits are processed through the tourism department. We have not seen the organiser put that in writing anywhere, so ask the event desk what they file for you and what stays your job. Whatever they handle, the papers in your own bag and the checks on the road are yours.

Documents to have ready

On 25 September 2026 the district was asking for a fitness certificate from a doctor on the register and a self-declaration, with formats to download. Requirements change with the season, so read the list against your own dates. Passport-size photographs and a government-issued photo ID go in the same folder.

Where the permit is checked between Dharchula and Gunji

Above Dharchula, papers are checked en route. Our Inner Line Permit guide walks through the documents, the cost and the waiting, in the order the counter asks for them.

Ask us on WhatsApp what the Dharchula permit counter is asking for in the week you travel.

When you must reach Gunji, and how many travel days that takes

The 2026 entry listing sets reporting at Gunji on 20 October for the 70 km, 21 October for the 42 km and 22 October for the shorter runs.

No entry page can do this arithmetic for you. A reporting date at Gunji is not like reporting at an airport: it comes at the end of two days of driving up from the plains, on a road the authorities can hold for weather or for work at any hour of the day.

Reporting dates by category

• 70 km: at Gunji by 20 October, four days before the race.
• 42 km: by 21 October.
• 21 km, 10 km and 5 km: by 22 October.
• MTB, 25 km and 50 km: by 24 October.

Delhi, Haldwani or Pithoragarh: the days to Gunji

Gunji lies about 648 km from Delhi and about 168 km from Pithoragarh, which works out as two driving days from the plains and one from Pithoragarh.

Our own trips show the shape of it. Adi Kailash from Delhi sleeps at Pithoragarh on day 1 and reaches Gunji on day 2, with the permit done that morning. From Haldwani, Adi Kailash & Om Parvat works the same way in 5 days. A 70 km entrant reporting on 20 October therefore wants to be leaving Delhi on the 18th, and the 17th is the version that survives a landslide or a vehicle held at a barrier. For the hours each leg takes, read how to reach Adi Kailash.

Gunji to Jolingkong: getting to the ultra start

Jolingkong, where the ultra starts, is about 36 km above Gunji by road, a climb from 3,200 m to about 4,500 m.

On an ordinary yatra day that stretch is driven up from Gunji at first light and back down the same evening. For a race that starts up there, ask the event desk about their transport when you collect your bib. What moves on that road on a race morning is theirs to decide, not ours.

Where supporters and family can wait

Gunji is the finish for every run, so it is where family will wait. Two things to plan for. Supporters need the permit as much as runners do, and Gunji is a small village at the head of a long road. Count everyone who is coming into the permit and the vehicle from the start.

How high the course goes, and how cold Gunji is in late October

Gunji stands at 3,200 m, Kuti at about 3,820 m and Jolingkong at about 4,500 m, so every race here is run above 3,000 m.

The heights printed elsewhere do not agree. One page gives 15,000 ft, or 4,570 m, at Parvati Kund; a search summary says roughly 4,600 m; another prints a range of 10,300 to 15,000 ft for the course. None of them carries a source we can follow, so they are left as they are. These are the figures our own data holds for the places named: Gunji 3,200 m, Nabi about 3,290 m, Kalapani about 3,600 m, Kuti about 3,820 m, Jolingkong about 4,500 m.

The acclimatisation days built into the schedule

Read the reporting dates again and you can see what they are for. The 70 km field is asked to be at Gunji four days before the race, the 42 km field three. That gap is the acclimatisation the organiser has built into the schedule, and arriving late spends it.

Late October at Gunji: temperature, frost and snow in the 30-year normals

The October monthly normals, 1991 to 2020, give Gunji 11°C days and 0°C nights with 14 frost nights, and Jolingkong is colder again.

Read the Jolingkong row before you decide about the ultra. A start line where the average October night sits well below freezing, with frost almost every night of the month and snow days in the normals, is a different thing from a cold morning in the hills.

What runners are told to carry

The kit list that counts is the organiser's, printed with each category on the entry page. Another guide to this run gathers its own list under late-October sub-zero racing, and the normals in the table above are why cold is the thing to plan for. For the traveller's side of packing, month by month, see what the valley asks you to carry.

Altitude sickness: the event's rule, and who should not start

The event's own safeguard is the MBBS doctor's certificate dated within 15 days of the race, alongside the acclimatisation days set by the reporting schedule.

There is no altitude protocol from us on this page, because personal advice belongs with a doctor and not with a website. Two rules stand that nobody can soften: the event's medical certificate, and the fitness certificate the district requires before a permit is issued at all. Beyond those, the person to ask is a doctor who knows your history.

If you are under treatment for your heart, your lungs or your blood pressure, this is not the race to test it on. The same goes for recent surgery, and for a pregnancy. A race at this height is the wrong place to learn how your body answers. General altitude questions about the driven route are answered in our travel FAQ.

If you are not running: what race week means for an Adi Kailash trip

Inner line permits for travellers are on hold from 19 to 26 October 2026, by the Dharchula SDM's order, and the district's permit portal says so.

Plenty of people reading about this run will never enter it. They hold dates in late October, a family trip planned around this drive, and a headline about a race at Gunji. So: what the record says, and where the record stops.

The 2026 permit pause, and the 2025 one

The Dharchula SDM, Ashish Joshi, ordered that no inner line permits go to travellers from 19 to 26 October, The Northern Gazette reported on 28 September 2026. The district's permit portal shows applications on hold for those days. That week the SDM's office issues permits only to runners and their support staff, at Dharchula (Amar Ujala, 17 October 2026). It is the second year running: in 2025, permits for the yatra were stopped for the first edition too (The Northern Gazette, 24 October 2025).

Beds and vehicles at Gunji in race week

Gunji is a village. Your bed here is a guest house or a homestay room at Gunji or Nabi, not a hotel with a hundred of them. Runners and officials all report at the same village across those four days, and it is the beds that look tight, not the road. How much is held for the event, and what is left over, is not something anyone can tell you from a desk in September.

Travelling just after the run

The SDM's advice is plain: travel before 19 October or after 26 October. The yatra itself runs on. Its second phase began on 20 September and was expected to last into November, weather allowing (The Northern Gazette, 20 September 2026), and fresh snow had already fallen at Adi Kailash by 10 October (Amar Ujala).

Should you move your dates?

If your dates fall between 19 and 26 October, they have to move: travellers' permits are not issued that week. Our Adi Kailash from Delhi trip runs 6 days at ₹30,300 a person and reaches Gunji on day 2, so it is the permit day, not the start day, that has to clear the pause.

If your dates fall between 19 and 28 October, send them over, and we'll tell you where the permits and the road stand that week.

The first edition, 2 November 2025: what happened

The first Adi Kailash Parikrama Run was held on 2 November 2025 with 763 or more runners from 22 states, in severe cold, flagged off by the Chief Minister.

The first edition tells you more about this race than any course map could. The Northern Gazette announced it for 2 November on 29 September 2025, then reported afterwards that hundreds ran in severe cold, at altitude, in a valley whose road otherwise carries yatra traffic.

How many ran, and from where

The government tourism listing puts the field at 763 or more runners from 22 states across five categories, flagged off by the Chief Minister, with ITBP and the border villages supporting it.

Results and prize money: what is published

No prize purse and no result sheet for the first edition appear in any listing we could read, and inventing one is not on offer. If a prize structure is announced for 2026, the organiser's entry page and channels are where it will show first. Until it does, treat any figure you see elsewhere as unsourced.