Landslides hazards are serious concerns for the mountainous regions in the Indian Himalayas specially for the rural areas where many of them go under the radar. The study focuses on assessing the vulnerability of mountainous households under landslides by combining GIS and participatory approaches. The methodology is composed of three components of vulnerability i.e. exposure, sensitivity, and capacity. These components include a total of 23 indicators covering environmental, social, economic, and physical attributes of the households. The vulnerability assessment is carried out through a case study of Garhwal Himalaya of India which covers 313 households at seven landslide-prone sites. We have introduced relative effect score method for analyzing the impact of indicators on increase or decrease of vulnerability in individual sites. Further, the role of indicators on the dispersion of vulnerability is analyzed by using the entropy method. The result shows that the households in Tapla and Budwali are most vulnerable due to high exposure and sensitivity but low capacity. On contrary, Sumari is comparatively less vulnerable due to low sensitivity and high capacity. The method is flexible and applicable elsewhere for rapid decision making.