Roopkund Trek Is Back: Supreme Court Lifts the 8-Year Ban

If you’ve searched “Roopkund Trek status” recently, you’ve probably landed on at least one page telling you the trek is closed, and another telling you it’s fine. Here’s the actual timeline, and why both of those pages might have been right — at different points in time.

The 2018 ban, in short

In August 2018, the Uttarakhand High Court ruled on a public interest litigation filed by a local bugyal conservation group, ordering a statewide ban on overnight camping in alpine and sub-alpine meadows — bugyals — including Aali Bugyal and Bedni Bugyal, the two meadows the classic Roopkund route depends on. The court also capped daily visitor numbers and ordered the removal of permanent structures. The ecological reasoning was sound: years of unregulated tent pegs, campfires and waste had visibly damaged fragile, slow-growing meadow turf that takes decades to recover once disturbed.

For operators, though, it was close to a full stop. Bedni Bugyal in particular sits in the middle of the route as a key acclimatization camp — without an overnight stay there, the trek couldn’t be run safely at all. Most established operators paused or cancelled their Roopkund departures rather than risk running an illegal or unsafe itinerary.

What changed on 20 July 2026

The Uttarakhand government had been contesting the High Court order in the Supreme Court for years. On 20 July 2026, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court’s ruling and lifted the ban on overnight stays in high-altitude bugyals — ending an eight-year restriction. Local news coverage out of Chamoli described it as major relief for the villages along the route, where homestays and guesthouses in Lohajung, Wan, Didna and Kuling had lost a meaningful part of their income during the restriction.

In practical terms: the classic Aali Bugyal–Bedni Bugyal–Patar Nachauni route is trekkable and campable again, and operators — FirstTrek included — are running batches through the rest of the 2026 season.

What this means if you’re booking

• The full classic route is running: There’s no need to look for a workaround route or an “Ali Bedni Bugyal without Roopkund” substitute trek — the original itinerary is back.
• Double-check any “status” page’s date: Some pages online (particularly ones last updated before July 2026) still say the trek is closed or restricted. Cross-check the publish or update date before trusting a “status” page on this topic.
• Permits are still required: Regulation didn’t disappear — visitor-number limits and no-permanent-structure rules from the original order are still expected to apply in some form. A responsible operator handles this through your forest permit; you shouldn’t need to think about it.

Why the meadows were protected in the first place

It’s worth understanding the ecological side of this, because it shapes how the trek should be run going forward, not just whether it’s legal. Bugyals are high-altitude grasslands that form above the treeline, generally between 10,000 and 14,000 feet, and they’re ecologically slow — the turf, the wildflowers and the topsoil that hold these meadows together take decades to establish and only a season or two of heavy, unmanaged footfall and tent pegging to visibly scar. Ali Bugyal and Bedni Bugyal had both seen a sharp rise in trekking traffic through the 2000s and 2010s as Roopkund’s popularity grew, and the petitioners who brought the original 2018 case argued, with reasonable evidence, that unregulated camping was degrading terrain that couldn’t simply regrow the way a forest trail can.

That’s part of why this reversal isn’t really a story about the ban being “wrong” — it’s a story about the balance shifting from an outright prohibition to a regulated-access model. The years in between weren’t wasted from a conservation standpoint: they forced the entire industry, FirstTrek included, to get serious about group-size limits, waste management and designated tent zones in a way that wasn’t consistently happening before 2018.

What responsible trekking here should look like now

• Visitor caps are likely to persist: Expect headcount limits per day at Ali and Bedni, even though the blanket ban is gone — treat any operator promising unlimited, unregulated access with some skepticism.
• No permanent structures: The original order’s push against permanent tent platforms and fixed camping infrastructure is a sensible one regardless of the ban’s legal status, and most serious operators will keep following it voluntarily.
• Carry-out waste policy: Everything you carry in — packaging, wrappers, batteries — comes back down with you. This is the single biggest factor in whether Roopkund stays open long-term.

If you’re comparing operators for your Roopkund booking, it’s a fair question to ask directly: how do they handle waste and campsite rotation at Ali and Bedni. The honest answer should sound like a system, not a shrug.

What’s likely next

Uttarakhand’s forest department is expected to formalize updated guidelines for high-altitude camping in the wake of the Supreme Court order — permit caps, designated zones and possibly a seasonal cap on total trekker numbers per bugyal. None of this changes whether you can book a Roopkund Trek today; it just means the fine print may shift over the next year or two. We’ll update this page if and when that happens, which is more than most of the still-outdated “trek is banned” pages floating around right now are doing.

Where to book Our own Roopkund Trek itinerary, cost and August–October 2026 departure dates are all live.