Gadu Ghada: The Sacred Sesame Oil Ritual That Opens the Gates of Badrinath

Every April, before the portals of Badrinath Dham open for the yatra season, a quiet ceremony takes place inside a palace in the hills above Rishikesh. At the Narendranagar Rajmahal — the old court of the erstwhile Tehri Garhwal royal family — married women gather around traditional stone crushers and extract oil from sesame seeds by hand. This oil is then poured into a silver pitcher called the Gadu Ghada, which begins a ceremonial journey of several hundred kilometres to the high Himalayan shrine. The Gadu Ghada ritual is not a public spectacle. It is one of the older continuous traditions connected to Badrinath Dham, and it carries the opening of the temple’s season on its shoulders. Without the Gadu Ghada reaching Badrinath, the formal opening sequence cannot begin.

What Is the Gadu Ghada Ritual?

The Gadu Ghada (गाडू घड़ा) is both the name of the pitcher and the name of the tradition surrounding it. “Gadu” refers to the oil, and “Ghada” means the vessel or pot. Together, the term describes a specific ritual pitcher of sesame oil that is prepared exclusively for Lord Badri Vishal and carried to the temple each year before the portals open.

The full name of the associated procession is the Gadu Ghada Tel Kalash Yatra (तेल कलश यात्रा) — the sacred oil-pitcher journey. It is the ceremonial act that formally signals the beginning of the Badrinath Dham season. The moment the Gadu Ghada departs Narendranagar, the temple-opening process has begun in the eyes of tradition, even if the portals themselves open days later.

Why Sesame Oil for Lord Badrinath?

Sesame (til, तिल) holds a distinct place in Hindu ritual. It appears in everything from death rites to harvest festivals, from daily puja to major temple abhishek. In the Puranas, sesame is described as having sprung from the body of Lord Vishnu and is therefore considered especially dear to him. Offering sesame — whether seeds, oil, or prepared sweets — to a Vishnu form is one of the oldest prescriptions in Vaishnava ritual tradition.

Lord Badrinath is a form of Vishnu, worshipped at the northernmost Vishnu dhama in the Char Dham circuit. His idol, a shaligram murti, is anointed with oil throughout the season as part of the daily and seasonal abhishek cycle. Sesame oil is specifically chosen because it is believed to keep the deity cool, counterbalancing the cold of the Himalayan environment with oil that has a naturally cooling quality when applied to stone. The same property is cited in general Vishnu worship: til oil abhishek reduces heat and maintains the sanctity and appearance of the stone idol over time.

The oil extracted at Narendranagar is not a symbolic quantity. It is the actual oil used for the abhishek of Lord Badri Vishal for the entire six months the temple remains open — from the opening on Akshaya Tritiya until the closing around Diwali. The ritual preparation of this oil, by the hands of married women using traditional methods, is what makes it fit for divine use according to the tradition.

The Ceremony at Narendranagar Palace

Narendranagar is a small hill town about 16 km from Rishikesh, perched above the Ganga valley at roughly 1,000 metres. The Rajmahal — the old palace of the Tehri Garhwal dynasty — still stands here, now partly converted into a heritage hotel but retaining its ceremonial function for traditions like the Gadu Ghada. The palace has been the seat of this ritual for generations.

On the appointed day, a puja and archana (ritual invocation) are performed in the palace. The married women of the royal family and the Dimri community gather in traditional auspicious attire, commonly described as yellow — a colour associated with purity, auspiciousness, and devotion in Garhwali tradition. They work at traditional stone ghani (crushing apparatus) and also extract oil by hand, pressing the sesame seeds carefully into wooden or stone vessels.

The extraction is done with concentration and sanctity — no shortcuts, no machine pressing. The method matters as much as the result. Ritually extracted oil is distinct in the tradition’s framework from commercially extracted oil: the intention, the prayers, the identity of the women performing the task, and the environment in which it is done all contribute to its ritual fitness. The entire process is overseen by Dimri family priests and the senior women of the royal household.

The Tehri Royal Family’s Role

The royal family of Tehri Garhwal has been the custodian of this tradition for as long as recorded accounts of the ceremony exist. The Tehri Garhwal kingdom was one of the hill principalities of the Garhwal region, and its rulers held a special relationship with the Badrinath shrine — both as religious patrons and as protectors of the pilgrimage routes into the high Himalayas.

After the merger of Tehri Garhwal with the Indian Union in 1949, the royal family lost its formal political status but retained its ceremonial roles at several Garhwali religious institutions. The Gadu Ghada ritual is among the most visible of these retained responsibilities. The ceremony is led by the senior woman of the family — in 2022, it was conducted under the leadership of Rajya Laxmi Shah and her daughter Srija Shah. Mala Rajya Laxmi Shah, who has also served as a Member of Parliament from the Tehri constituency, has in several years personally participated in the ceremony.

The royal family’s role is not merely symbolic. They provide the palace as the ceremonial site, oversee the ritual proceedings, and dispatch the Gadu Ghada with formal honours. The family’s continued involvement connects the living ritual to centuries of unbroken tradition, maintaining a thread between the old religious governance of the Garhwal hills and the temple’s annual cycle.

The Dimri Priests: Custodians of the Ritual

Alongside the royal family, the Dimri community plays a central role in the Gadu Ghada tradition. The Dimris are the hereditary priests of Badrinath Dham, belonging to the Brahmin community of Garhwal. Their ancestral village, Dimmer, sits on the route between Rishikesh and Badrinath, and the Tel Kalash Yatra stops there — at the Lakshminarayan Temple of Dimmer — as one of its significant halts.

The Shri Badrinath Dimri Religious Central Panchayat organises the logistical and ritual aspects of the yatra. The Dimri priests accompany the oil pitcher from Narendranagar to Badrinath, performing prayers and rituals at each stop along the route. Their presence ensures the sanctity of the yatra is maintained throughout the journey — the pitcher is not merely transported, it is ceremonially accompanied.

The Rawal (chief priest) of Badrinath, the Dharmadhikari, and the Vedapathis (Vedic chanters) meet the Gadu Ghada at Pandukeshwar — the last major stop before Badrinath — for a night halt at the Yogdhyan Temple. This meeting of the oil and the temple’s senior priests at Pandukeshwar is itself a significant moment in the sequence, bringing together the two streams of the ritual: the royal-civil tradition from Narendranagar and the priestly tradition from Badrinath.

The Tel Kalash Yatra: Route and Stops

After the oil is extracted and poured into the Gadu Ghada at Narendranagar, the pitcher is dispatched with formal ceremony in the late afternoon or evening. The yatra moves through the major towns of the Garhwal region over several days, receiving devotees and blessings at each stop.

At each stop, the silver pitcher is received with traditional honours. Devotees offer flowers, incense, and prayers to the oil — not because the oil itself is the deity, but because it is about to serve the deity in the most intimate way possible: in direct contact with the divine murti of Lord Badri Vishal. The yatra moves at a pace that allows communities along the route to witness and participate, maintaining the tradition’s social dimensions alongside its religious ones.

Arrival at Badrinath and the Abhishek

The Gadu Ghada reaches Badrinath Dham on the evening before the temple’s portals open. Its arrival is ceremonially received by the temple establishment — the Rawal, priests, and temple staff. The oil is then used in the formal consecration sequence that begins the new season.

On the morning of the portal opening (kapat udghat), after the formal puja sequence that includes the singing of the Vedas and the traditional rites conducted by the Dimri priests and the Rawal, the first abhishek of the new season is performed on the idol of Lord Badri Vishal using the sesame oil from the Gadu Ghada. This is not a cursory ritual — the abhishek is a careful, extended ceremony in which the oil is applied to the shaligram murti with specific mantras and in a specific sequence prescribed by the Agama shastra followed at Badrinath.

From this point forward, the same oil continues to be used for the daily and seasonal abhisheks of the deity throughout the six months the temple remains open. The oil extracted by the women of Narendranagar in April will thus be in contact with Lord Badri Vishal until the portals close in November.

The Akhand Jyoti Connection

Beyond the abhishek of the deity, the sesame oil from the Gadu Ghada serves a second sacred purpose: it fuels the Akhand Jyoti — the eternally burning flame inside Badrinath Temple. “Akhand” means unbroken or continuous; “Jyoti” means flame or light. The Akhand Jyoti at Badrinath is said to have been burning without interruption for thousands of years, with the oil replenished through each season.

This is one of the reasons the Gadu Ghada carries such weight in the tradition. It is not merely carrying oil for a single ceremony — it is carrying the fuel that keeps the sacred flame alive for the entire season. The flame connects the current season to all previous seasons and, in the tradition’s understanding, to the time of the temple’s mythological origins. The new oil from Narendranagar becomes part of this continuity the moment the lamp is lit with it at the start of the season.

The 2026 Ceremony

In 2026, the Gadu Ghada Tel Kalash Yatra commenced from the Narendra Nagar Raj Darbar on April 22. The oil was extracted by the married women of the royal family following the traditional method with wooden mortars and by hand. The ceremony was attended by the Dimri priests and members of the Shri Badrinath Dimri Religious Central Panchayat.

The Gadu Ghada reached Rishikesh the same evening, where it was placed for public darshan at Chela Chetram Dharmshala. Over the following days it moved through the Garhwal towns, stopping at Dimmer, Karnaprayag, Joshimath, and Pandukeshwar before arriving at Badrinath on April 23. The portals of Badrinath Dham opened that day, with the abhishek of Lord Badri Vishal performed using the oil that had just completed its journey from Narendranagar.

Spiritual Significance for Pilgrims

Most pilgrims who visit Badrinath during the yatra season are unaware that the oil used to anoint Lord Badri Vishal comes from a ceremony performed weeks before their visit, hundreds of kilometres away, by women of an old royal family. The Gadu Ghada ritual works quietly in the background of the pilgrimage experience, but its significance is considerable for those who know the tradition.

It represents a kind of distributed devotion: the pilgrimage to Badrinath does not begin only when a devotee boards a bus in Rishikesh. In one sense, it begins in April in a palace courtyard, when women crush sesame seeds with their hands and pour the oil into a silver pot. The journey of that oil — through the valleys of Garhwal, past the temples of Joshimath and Pandukeshwar, to the shrine above 3,100 metres — is itself a form of yatra that precedes and enables all other yatras to the shrine that season.

For the Tehri royal family and the Dimri priests, the ritual is a living obligation — not something performed for show, but a responsibility transmitted across generations. For the communities along the yatra route, the passage of the Gadu Ghada is a seasonal marker, the moment when the Himalayan shrine comes alive again after winter. And for devotees who encounter the pitcher at Rishikesh or Joshimath, touching the ground near it or offering a flower to it is an act of connection to the same Lord Badri Vishal they intend to see at the summit of the circuit.

Frequently Asked Questions

The Gadu Ghada ritual is one of those traditions that most visitors to Badrinath pass by without knowing it exists. But it is embedded in the structure of every darshan at the shrine — in the sheen of the anointed murti, in the light of the Akhand Jyoti, in the formal opening of the portals each spring. Before the crowds and the buses and the helicopter queues, there are women in a palace courtyard pressing sesame seeds by hand so that a silver pitcher of oil can begin its journey north. That journey, and the devotion behind it, are part of what makes the darshan at Badrinath something more than a destination.