Bamboozling Rishikesh

After an overnight train (with more of my lovely Lucknow kindness with a family who gave me a Shirdi Sai Baba bookmark and feed me the best Indian Thali I have enjoyed…now there is a claim for a home cook, and even gently woke me up “Excuse me Miss, we are now in Haridwar, this is you I believe” from the 11 year old boy) and a hairy hour long local bus ride, I arrived in Rishikesh. 

"cake peaked" Temples of Rishikesh

I had imagined it to be a place filled with Europeans looking languid nestled in quiet spot along the Ganges where you would find inner strength and the serenity would be worthy of your best Zen like Yoga Pose. After all, Rishikesh is the home of Yoga. And jeep horns, pilgrims, begging baba’s and well any kind of yoga retreat you could dream up. So dizzying is this place in 35+ heat that I didn’t last long to take in a Yoga Ashram (live-in Yoga retreat) with so many to choose from I was bamboozled.

Getting down with my Yoga Gurus
George, John, Paul and Ringo

Instead I enjoyed a couple of classes at the guest houses resident yoga school where the teacher corrected us and I felt all my aches and pains…I really need a serious stretch session. @holly_golite lets book a session! I languished by the Ganges sipping on Lemon Nanas (lemon mint slushies’ ideal in the heat!) where I ran into a fellow Lukla stranded passenger Frank who. We arranged to go to the abandoned Ashram where it is believed The Beatles wrote the White Album. It is a decent stretch down the Ganges to the Ashram where we paid the resident guard a sneaky INR50 to enter. He directed us up to the upper sections of the Ashram (he lived with his solar panel in the lower building). We walked through the ruins – and by ruins I mean 15 years of Indian monsoon growth of trees and vines brittle in the pre-monsoon heat. There tens of buildings which inspired my entrepreneurial brain to revive. Finally we reached a yoga studio crumbling and caved in with a recent graffiti exhibition in ode to the famous guests of the Ashram. We then walked across to the Ashram buildings itself which we calculated would have housed at the least 500 students where the solid stone buildings had quotes of songs and had been defaced during times used as a squat.

The buildings are now owned by the State Forestry Department so there is little chance that a novelty Beatles Ashram will be revived – but you never know ah….

Classic tourist talking to Babas

My advice with tackling Rishikesh would be to engage in recommendations from Yoga going friends from home, or on your travels, And avoid it over the Indian summer season. Its very hot and air conditioned rooms are rate to find and expensive....and the pilgrims are a handful!