Guru Nanak Dev Ji's Four Udasis, Explained

Udasi is the term used for the long missionary journeys undertaken by Guru Nanak Dev Ji, the founder of Sikhism, roughly between 1500 and 1521. Sikh tradition usually groups them into four major tours — east, south, north, and west — though some accounts add a fifth, shorter journey within Punjab toward the end of his life. Dates vary between traditional sources by a few years in either direction, so treat any specific year here as the commonly cited estimate rather than a settled fact.

The journeys are commonly said to have covered upward of 28,000 kilometres over roughly two decades, mostly on foot. His constant companion for much of this was Bhai Mardana, a Muslim rabab player from Talwandi (Guru Nanak's birthplace) — Bhai Mardana is well attested across early sources, including the writings of Bhai Gurdas. A second companion, Bhai Bala, appears in one popular tradition (the Bala Janamsakhi), but most historians now treat that particular account as a later, less reliable text — its language dates from long after Guru Nanak's lifetime, and its portrayal of people close to him doesn't match earlier, more contemporary sources. We've tried to flag which stories below rest on firmer ground and which are simply well-loved tradition.

The first journey took Guru Nanak eastward from Punjab through Delhi and Ayodhya toward Varanasi, one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world. Tradition holds that he arrived in Varanasi around Shivratri in 1507 and paused in a garden known locally as Guru Ka Bagh, where he held a long discussion with the scholar Pandit Chatur Das — who, the story goes, expected to test the Guru's learning and instead became a follower. A marble shrine, Gurdwara Guru Ka Bagh, marks the spot today.

From Varanasi the route is said to have continued into Bengal and Assam before turning back. Along the way, Ayodhya also has its own small cluster of Sikh memorials — Gurdwara Brahmakund, on the Saryu riverbank, marking not just this visit by Guru Nanak but later ones by Guru Tegh Bahadur and a site associated with Guru Gobind Singh as a child.

The second Udasi turned south, passing through the Deccan and Tamil Nadu on the way toward Sri Lanka. In Kanchipuram, one of Tamil Nadu's great temple towns, tradition recounts a sharp exchange between Guru Nanak and a Jain ascetic over ritual versus substance — no shrine marks the spot today, but the story is still told locally.

The most concrete stop on this leg is Rameswaram, on the narrow island connected to the Tamil Nadu mainland. Guru Nanak is said to have stayed here for nineteen days in 1511 on his way back from Sri Lanka, and — finding the island's water too salty to drink — to have dug a spring that is still said to run fresh today. Gurdwara Guru Nanak Dham, built on the site, is one of the most tangible physical links to this entire journey anywhere in India.

The third journey went north into the Himalayas — through Kashmir, Ladakh, and on toward Tibet, with Mount Sumeru (Sumer Parbat) often named as a destination in traditional accounts, alongside Lhasa and, on some routes, as far as Tashkent. In Kashmir, the town of Beerwah in Budgam district is associated with a visit by Guru Nanak himself; the gurdwara there, Gurdwara Sri Guru Nanak Charan Asthan, is a modest, quiet building today — its original structure was destroyed in the 1948 floods and rebuilt in 1975.

This is worth separating clearly from Chatti Padshahi Gurudwara, Srinagar's largest gurudwara, which honours a different, much later visit — by Guru Hargobind, the sixth Guru, around a century afterward. Kashmir's Sikh heritage spans more than one Guru's lifetime, and it's easy to conflate the two if you're not looking closely.

The last of the four major journeys took Guru Nanak west, through what is now Pakistan and Afghanistan, toward Mecca, Medina, and Baghdad. The best-known story from this leg has him resting with his feet pointed toward the Kaaba — considered deeply disrespectful — and, when challenged by a custodian, replying by asking that his feet be turned to point wherever God's house was not, since God could not be confined to one direction. It's one of the more widely told Sikh stories precisely because it captures his core teaching in a single scene, though like much of this material, it comes down to us through oral and Janamsakhi tradition rather than a contemporary written record.

A memorial said to commemorate his stay reportedly stood in Baghdad for centuries. Some sources also point to a diary — the Siyahto Baba Nanak Fakir, attributed to a Haaji Taajudin Naqshbandi — as evidence he spent an extended stretch, well over a year, in the region; this manuscript's provenance is debated, and we mention it here as an interesting historical thread rather than settled proof.

A few stories that don't fit neatly into one leg of the journey but are worth knowing: at Tulamba, near Multan, Guru Nanak is said to have confronted Sheikh Sajjan, a man who ran a lodge for travellers by night and murdered and robbed them — the encounter is remembered as the moment Sajjan gave up the practice entirely. Further along, tradition tells of Kauda, a hermit from a cannibalistic ascetic sect, who is said to have captured Bhai Mardana before an encounter with the Guru changed his life as well.

One of the most physically vivid stories is set at Hasan Abdal (in present-day Pakistan): a local ascetic, Wali Kandhari, is said to have cut off Guru Nanak's water supply from a hillside spring out of pride, only for a new spring to appear where the Guru touched the ground — and, when Wali Kandhari hurled a boulder down the hill in anger, tradition holds the Guru stopped it with his palm, leaving a handprint. The site is Gurdwara Panja Sahib ("panja" meaning palm) — not one of our itineraries, but one of the most visited Sikh shrines in Pakistan today. Separately, Sikh tradition holds that Guru Nanak was present at Saidpur (today's Eminabad) during Babur's 1520 invasion and was briefly taken captive — an account that lines up, unusually, with hymns in his own hand: four compositions known as the Babar Bani, preserved in the Guru Granth Sahib, are read by scholars as a firsthand reaction to Mughal violence, whatever one makes of the surrounding legend.

Being honest about this matters more to us than a tidy story, so here's exactly how our itineraries line up. Our Kashmir: Valley & Sikh Heritage trip (5 days) touches the third Udasi, with a stop at Gurdwara Sri Guru Nanak Charan Asthan in Beerwah — alongside Chatti Padshahi Gurudwara, which is a later, sixth-Guru site, not part of Guru Nanak's own journey. Our Varanasi: Ganga Ghats & Sikh Heritage trip (5 days, including a day trip to Ayodhya) sits on the first Udasi, taking in both Gurdwara Guru Ka Bagh and Ayodhya's Gurdwara Brahmakund. Our Tamil Nadu: Temples, Coast & Sikh Heritage trip (7 days) follows the second Udasi south to Rameswaram and Gurdwara Guru Nanak Dham. And our Sikkim: High Himalaya & Sikh Heritage trip (7 days) follows the third Udasi to its far eastern end, well beyond Kashmir, at Gurdwara Nanaklama Sahib in Chungthang and the extraordinary Gurudongmar Lake.

One thing we won't do is stretch the connection where it doesn't hold: our Dehradun, Paonta Sahib & Rishikesh trip (4 days) is not part of any Udasi. Paonta Sahib is tied to Guru Gobind Singh, the tenth Guru, who lived there roughly a century and a half after Guru Nanak's journeys — a hugely significant chapter of Sikh history in its own right, just a different one. If it's specifically Guru Nanak's own footsteps you want to follow, Kashmir, Varanasi, and Tamil Nadu are the three to look at.