Old Tehri, capital of Tehri Garhwal

01A new capital after the Gorkhas

For twelve years Garhwal lay under the Gorkhas, after Raja Pradyumna Shah was killed fighting them at Khurbura in 1804. His son Sudarshan Shah allied with the East India Company, and when the Gorkhas were beaten in 1815 he got back only the lands west of the Alaknanda; the Company kept the east, with the old capital Srinagar. Sudarshan Shah chose the meeting of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilangana, known as Ganesh Prayag, and built his new capital there. The raja of Tehri kept his old place in the worship of Badrinath, and Garhwalis called him Bolanda Badri, the Badrinath who speaks.

02Palace, jail and Praja Mandal

The town grew round the Purana Darbar, the old palace, with its bazaar, clock tower and temples along the two rivers. Narendra Shah built a new seat at Narendranagar above Rishikesh and moved the court there in 1919, but Tehri stayed the chief town of the state. In the 1940s the Tehri Rajya Praja Mandal demanded a responsible government. Its young leader Sri Dev Suman was jailed in Tehri and died there on 25 July 1944, on the 84th day of a hunger strike. In 1949 Raja Manabendra Shah signed the merger with India, and Tehri Garhwal became a district of Uttar Pradesh, and in 2000 of Uttarakhand.

03Under the lake

The Tehri dam was planned at the confluence from the 1960s, and its building drew long protest, with Sunderlal Bahuguna fasting on the river bank against it. The dam, 260.5 metres high, is the tallest in India. When its diversion tunnels were closed in 2005 the water rose, and by 2006 old Tehri was gone: the palace, the bazaar, the clock tower and the temples of Ganesh Prayag all lie under the reservoir, with dozens of villages of the valley. The people were moved to New Tehri, built on the ridge above, and to settlements as far as Dehradun and Haridwar. When the lake is drawn down in early summer, a few roofs of the old town are sometimes seen.

The life of this place