Adi Badri is a cluster of sixteen stone temples in Chamoli district, standing about seventeen kilometres beyond Karnaprayag on the road that runs toward Dwarahat in Kumaon. Seven of the sixteen shrines are dated to the late Gupta period, between the fifth and eighth centuries CE, and those seven carry the flat roofs typical of the group. Local tradition assigns the foundation of the complex to Adi Shankaracharya, although the Gupta-era masonry itself predates the eighth-century reformer by several centuries.
In earlier centuries, when snow closed the approach to Badrinath for much of the year, pilgrims who could not reach the high shrine came here to worship Vishnu instead. Revenue records also name the settlement Helisera, and the Adi Badri tehsil headquarters now serves the villages around the temple group. The Archaeological Survey of India protects the site, recorded as the Remains of the sixteen Adi Badri Group of Temples among the Monuments of National Importance in Uttarakhand.
