Harsil is a village and a cantonment

Cantonment

A cantonment is a temporary or semi-permanent military or police quarters. The word cantonment is derived from the French word canton meaning corner or district, as is the name of the Cantons of Switzerland. In South Asia, the term cantonment also describes permanent military stations...

 area, on the banks of Bhagirathi River

Bhagirathi River

The Bhāgīrathī is a turbulent Himalayan river in the state of Uttarakhand, India, that is the source stream of the Ganges—the major river of the Gangetic plain of Northern India and the holy river of Hinduism.-Etymology:...

, on the way to Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 pilgrimage, Gangotri, in Uttarkashi district of India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

n state of Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand

Uttarakhand , formerly Uttaranchal, is a state in the northern part of India. It is often referred to as the Land of Gods due to the many holy Hindu temples and cities found throughout the state, some of which are among Hinduism's most spiritual and auspicious places of pilgrimage and worship...

 ).

Situated at a height of 7,860 ft (2,620 metres.) from sea level, Harsil lies 73 km. from Uttarkashi

Uttarkashi

Uttarkashi, meaning Kashi of the north, is a holy town in Uttarakhand, India. It is the district headquarter of Uttarkashi district. Uttarkashi is situated on the banks of river Bhagirathi at an altitude of 1352 m above sea level. Uttarkashi is home to a number of ashrams and temples and also to...

, and 30 km away from Harsil, lies the Gangotri National Park

Gangotri National Park

Gangotri National Park is a national park located in Uttarkashi District Uttarakhand, India. The size of this national park is about 1,553 square km...

, spread over 1,553 square km.

Geography

Delhi-Hardwar

Hardwar

Hardwar is a 1998 science fiction flight simulation computer game developed by The Software Refinery and published by Gremlin Interactive. In the USA, the game was distributed by Interplay under license...

-Harsil Ridge (DHHR), the basement ridge is a northerly extension of the Aravalli Mountain Belt, which also trends in a NNE-SSW direction and stretches from Amba Mata-Deri (Gujarat-Rajasthan

Rajasthan

Rājasthān the land of Rajasthanis, , is the largest state of the Republic of India by area. It is located in the northwest of India. It encompasses most of the area of the large, inhospitable Great Indian Desert , which has an edge paralleling the Sutlej-Indus river valley along its border with...

) to Delhi

Delhi

Delhi , officially National Capital Territory of Delhi , is the largest metropolis by area and the second-largest by population in India, next to Mumbai. It is the eighth largest metropolis in the world by population with 16,753,265 inhabitants in the Territory at the 2011 Census...

 via Ajmer

Ajmer

Ajmer , formerly written as Ajmere, is a city in Ajmer District in Rajasthan state in India. Ajmer has a population of around 800,000 , and is located west of the Rajasthan state capital Jaipur, 200 km from Jodhpur, 274 km from Udaipur, 439 km from Jaisalmer, and 391 km from...

 and Jaipur

Jaipur

Jaipur , also popularly known as the Pink City, is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Rajasthan. Founded on 18 November 1727 by Maharaja Sawai Jai Singh II, the ruler of Amber, the city today has a population of more than 3.1 million....

.

http://i180.photobucket.com/albums/x231/shailonso/HarsilP.jpg The Horns of Harsil

Demographic

Over the years, a small number of Jadhs, an ethinic group of the Bhotiya

Bhotiya

The Bhotiya are groups of ethno-linguistically Tibetan people living in the trans-Himalayan region that divides India from the People's Republic of China, and were originally a hill tribe. Their name, Bhotiya, derives from the word Bod , which is the Classical Tibetan name for Tibet...

s, have settled here, and speak a language closely resembling Tibetan

Tibetan language

The Tibetan languages are a cluster of mutually-unintelligible Tibeto-Burman languages spoken primarily by Tibetan peoples who live across a wide area of eastern Central Asia bordering the Indian subcontinent, including the Tibetan Plateau and the northern Indian subcontinent in Baltistan, Ladakh,...

.

Pilgrimage

The idol of the Hindu

Hindu

Hindu refers to an identity associated with the philosophical, religious and cultural systems that are indigenous to the Indian subcontinent. As used in the Constitution of India, the word "Hindu" is also attributed to all persons professing any Indian religion...

 River Goddess Ganga (Ganges) is brought down from the shrine at Gangotri in the upper Himalayas after Diwali

Diwali

Diwali or DeepavaliThe name of the festival in various regional languages include:, , , , , , , , , , , , , popularly known as the "festival of lights," is a festival celebrated between mid-October and mid-December for different reasons...

 and kept at 'Mukhba' village near Harsil. It remains there throughout the winter when Gangotri is snowbound and inaccessible.

Defence Agricultural Research Laboratory

A detachment of the Defence Agricultural Research Laboratory run by the Defence Research and Development Organisation

Defence Research and Development Organisation

The Defence Research and Development Organisation is a agency of the Republic of India, responsible for the development of technology for use by the military, headquartered in New Delhi, India...

 (DRDO), was established here in May 1973.

History

Harsil was popular for the legend of ‘Pahari’ Wilson, or Raja Wilson. Frederick E. Wilson, an adventurer, deserted the British Army just after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. He escaped into Garhwal and met the Raja of Tehri seeking refuge.
But the Raja was faithful to the British and refused to accommodate Wilson. Wilson moved into the mountains to escape detection. Fate landed him in Harsil, a remote beautiful village on the banks of the Bhagirathi river, with dense deodar slopes on either side. Wilson married a very beautiful pahari girl by the name of Gulabi. Then Wilson entered into a contract with a London-based company and built a fortune out of the export of skins, fur and musk. This was the time the British were building the Railways in India and there was great demand for quality wooden sleepers for the rails. Wilson cashed in on this and sent huge cut deodar trees floating down the river to the plains.

Initially, Wilson had not taken permission from the Raja of Tehri-Garhwal for his logging business. But later, he acquired a lease from the Raja, giving him a share in the profits. It is said that the revenue of the Raja of Tehri went up tenfold. Little wonder that Wilson was a welcome guest. It is said that in course of time, Raja Wilson, as he was known by then, minted his own currency and as late as the 1930s, his coins were found with the local people. According to some historians, the timber trade had made Wilson so wealthy and powerful that the local Raja of Tehri-Garhwal was unable to protect his subjects, whom Wilson brutalised and used as slaves.

Raja Wilson seemed to have been a sort of architect and built, what is known today as Wilson’s Cottage, a huge mansion, now in ruins. He also built the Charlieville Hotel in the hill station of Mussoorie, which now houses the Government of India training institute for the Indian Administrative Service recruits.

According to journalists Hugh & Colleen Gantzer, Wilson built a double-storeyed mansion in the village of Harsil on a deodar trunk frame filled with roughly dressed stones. But the ghost part of Wilson, comes with his building a swing bridge across the Bhagirathi. Wilson’s bridge has long since collapsed, but traces of it still remain. It was never rebuilt and today pilgrims walk down and cross a small footbridge on their way to Gangotri. But according to the locals, on moonlit nights one can still see the courageous Raja Wilson galloping down the area, where the bridge had been, in order to make the unwilling pilgrims have faith in his (alas) long vanished creation. Today a 410-feet iron bridge spans the river Jadganga.