Tehri Dam — India's tallest dam, the lake behind it and the town beneath
What it is
The Tehri Dam is a rock and earth-fill dam on the Bhagirathi in Tehri Garhwal district, 260.5 m (855 feet) high and 575 m long at the crest. By Wikipedia's count no dam in India is taller, and only twelve in the world are. Behind it lies the Tehri Lake, a reservoir of about 52 km², and above both stands the new district town of New Tehri.
Photos: Yogendra singh negi (CC BY-SA 4.0) · Lingaraj, G. J (CC BY 2.0) — via Wikimedia Commons, resized.
The town under the water
Old Tehri stood at the meeting of the Bhagirathi and the Bhilangna, a place once called Ganeshprayag. Work on the dam began in 1978 and was slowed for years by money, by the land and by the people who lived on it: the environmentalist Sundarlal Bahuguna led protests against it from the 1980s until 2004. When the dam was finished in 2006 the reservoir filled over the old town, and more than 100,000 people were moved, most of them up the hill to New Tehri.
The dam as a battery
The complex produces 1,000 MW of hydropower, and it also stores energy. Its pumped-storage plant has four 250 MW units that can run both ways. With spare power on the grid they pump water from the lower reservoir behind the Koteshwar Dam, 22 km downstream, back up into the Tehri lake; when power is needed, the water falls through the turbines again.
Seeing it
The road from New Tehri reaches the dam area in about 37 minutes on our routing, and the lake's boating point is close by. We have no verified rules for visiting the dam itself; it is a working power plant, so follow the signs and ask before you photograph.
Combine it with
The one-day plan pairs the dam with a boat on the lake. Read how to reach Tehri and the best time to go.
Plans that include this
All 2 plans that stop here →
Nearby places
All of Tehri →
Nearby destinations
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Questions people ask
How tall is the Tehri Dam?
260.5 m (855 feet). By Wikipedia's count no dam in India is taller, and only twelve in the world are. It is a rock and earth-fill embankment on the Bhagirathi, 575 m long at the crest. Construction began in 1978 and the dam was completed in 2006, after long delays.
What happened to the old town of Tehri?
The old town stood where the Bhagirathi met the Bhilangna and was once called Ganeshprayag. The dam's reservoir submerged it entirely, and its people moved to New Tehri on the hill above. Wikipedia says more than 100,000 people were relocated from the area, after years of protest led by Sundarlal Bahuguna.
Why is the Tehri Dam called a battery?
Besides its 1,000 MW of ordinary hydropower, the complex has a pumped-storage plant of four 250 MW units. When the grid has power to spare it pumps water back up from the Koteshwar reservoir downstream, and when power is needed the water runs down through the turbines again.