Pilgrimage destinations in Uttarakhand were hit far harder by the Covid-19 pandemic than their recreational counterparts, yet the reasons remain poorly understood. Drawing on a balanced panel of 28 tourist destinations over 2001 to 2024, a Difference-in-Differences framework is applied with destination fixed effects to isolate the causal effect of the pandemic on religious tourism. Major Himalayan pilgrimage sites form the treatment group, while the remaining recreational destinations serve as controls. Religious destinations experienced a considerably larger decline in tourist arrivals, with the differential impact symmetric across both domestic and foreign visitors. This symmetry points to the cancellation of mass pilgrimage events, rather than international travel restrictions, as the primary mechanism of disruption. A placebo test and panel causality analysis confirm the robustness of the findings.