And when you sail through the waters of the Bhagirathi near the Tehri Dam, after the thrill of water sports and the rush
of Himalayan winds, there comes a moment, a strange pull. As if the wind itself is urging you to look beneath the surface, where the ghost of Old Tehri sleeps. Submerged and silent, its crumbling clock tower still keeps time in dreams, its hands calling you to peer through the ripples and remember what was left behind.
In case you have had the road to New Tehri, skipping Chamba (route to Koti), you would have welcomed some pristine pines and a zigzag of innumerable hairpin bends. The winds of the Himalaya may have bussed your window with ancient chatter.
Let’s talk about the story of old tehri
Here I passed much of my boyhood—attending school at All Saints Convent School and now and again doing the Chamund hairpin turns with the engine off, merely to have the fun of it. New Tehri is beautiful; there is no denying it.
But this town sleeps in the silence of another. An undercurrent is the presence of a phantom-like form of a town, Old Tehri, which was covered by rising waters as the new town started to emerge towards the late 1990s. A town that dwells In shards, in legend, in the turbulent currents far down below.
Old Tehri was warm, unlike New Tehri, which was cool both weather-wise and in nature. The town peacefully resided at the holy meeting point of the Bhagirathi and Bhilangna rivers, which used to be called Ganeshprayag. It was hidden away in the bosom of the Himalayas. and in it lay the pulse of the Ganges and Yamuna, thousands of whose most distant sources attracted pilgrims.
The founder of this place is Sudarshan Shah, and the final ruler of the throne was Manvendra Shah. Uttarakhand had not yet been carved out of Uttar Pradesh, and in that neighbourhood, the town showed some of that mixing-up of pahadis and plainsfolk and of local rhythm and foreign ways.
It was a hymn to wake in the morning, that the mornings started with the gentle chiming through the lanes and byways. School kids marched in ranks, and in the heart of the town was the Pradarshini Maidan, a nucleus of tales. The convent school—there was no such organised one in New Tehri—was humble and had a tin shed with a green colour and laughter bursting round the rusted edges.
Old Tehri was a thing with soul, and you could hear it—if you were willing to walk slowly—touch the bougainvillaea with your shoulder like a forgotten friend, who is just ready to frame a story that you forgot to tell.
And the mela, the fair, was a yearly thing. A grand and colourful building, the giant wheel could be viewed up the slopes of far-away hills and attracted children and tourists in remote villages. Beside the Bhagirathi, the market buzzed, and huge trucks would groan and crawl through, choked with cement, machines, and men with plans in their pockets.
However, what were they constructing?
They had to construct a dam. Brick by brick, festival by festival, Old Tehri was, in the darkness, sunk step by step into the very building of her deathbed.
You might know this place from the highest dam in India—the Tehri Dam. A wall of power, steel, and stone, rising from the river like a monument to modernity. People speak of it with awe. Photographs are taken. Kayaks skim across its surface. But rarely does anyone ask what lies beneath.
Because beneath it hides a ghost town.
The water, which now glints in the Himalayan sun, once flowed wild and sunlit, its banks bordered by a town that had rhythm, breath, and a melody of its own. Old Tehri. A name now spoken in the past tense. A town that was offered up in exchange for electricity, for irrigation, for a dream called development.
The vision to tap the Bhagirathi’s strength was seeded decades ago. Maps were drawn, hills marked, reports typed, and signatures passed from one desk to another. But these were just files. To the people of Tehri, it was home. Where temple bells greeted the dawn. Where hats were bought on market mornings. Where bougainvillaea leaned over old walls like gossiping grandmothers. Where Pradarshini Maidan echoed with children’s laughter during fairs. And the green-roofed convent watched over the seasons as they slipped by, quietly, like a diary being written in the background.
In the 90s, the change began. Surveyors arrived with their theodolites. Then bulldozers came. And finally, the language of compensation and rehabilitation. Families packed away their lives. Courtyards with mango trees that had witnessed three generations were left behind. Some stayed longer than others—not from denial, but from love. It isn’t easy to abandon a window that has framed sunsets for years.
And then the waters came.
Not like a flood—but inch by inch. Gradually. Quietly. Streets turned to streams. Marketplaces mirrored their own dissolving selves. Hills now stand where homes once did. And the hills are quieter now.
By 2006, the reservoir was full. Schools, temples, stories, memories—submerged. More than a hundred thousand displaced, it’s said. But numbers can’t record the loss of a child who wakes up one day and cannot find the neem tree he grew up waving to.
Today, the Tehri Reservoir shimmers in brochures. Jet skis glide. Boat festivals are organised. Folk dances are performed on artificial stages. Tourists marvel at the scale. The town beneath? It’s rarely mentioned. As if it had never existed.
Yet memory persists. Tehri
Each year, when water levels recede slightly, a few old residents gather in New TehriThey share stories. They speak of submerged streets and lost echoes. Of temples whose bells still seem to ring beneath the waterline.
A bridge now connects what was once torn apart—the Dobra-Chanti Suspension Bridge. New Tehri stands above, carefully planned and drawn out with rulers and software. But its roads do not wind with the same warmth. It’s a breeze carries less memory.
And when you sit on the edge of the dam or you cross its surface in a boat, you know there is something in the air that changes. Not always. But sometimes. A hush in the breeze, a break in the sunshine, as though the Bhagirathi recalls. Not that it is not quite as silent as it was with the water, but there is a sound of something that was there in the depths of the water.
I have heard some of them say they heard it just as faint as it could be, the ringing of a bell, but nobody saw it. Others speak of the gleam of something like a clock tower down somewhere below the surface, which possessed the time in its submerged chest. And sometimes there will be the sound of a boy laughing–sharp, sporadic–like one riding downhill with his engine, not that he has to do so, but because he wants to do so.
The town actually got drowned. Wait now. Not to rise again—there is no such thing promised—but to be remembered.
The next time you come to Tehri, you do not just stare at the dam or the brochures. Spend some time at the water. Make the pause lengthen. May the wind blow you. You may hear something on careful listening. Not loud. But enough.
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