Rishikesh

A closer look at Rishikesh

Rishikesh sits twenty-five kilometres upstream of Haridwar and feels like a different country. Here the Ganga is still a mountain river — fast, cold and a startling green-blue — running between forested hills, and the town that has grown along its banks manages to hold ashrams, adventure outfitters, riverside cafés and international yoga schools in the same few square kilometres without any of them seeming out of place. It has been a meditation retreat for centuries and the yoga capital of the world since roughly 1968, when four musicians from Liverpool came to study transcendental meditation and inadvertently changed the town forever.

The two suspension bridges are the landmarks everyone knows. Ram Jhula and Laxman Jhula span the river near the ashram belt at Swarg Ashram, crowded with pedestrians, motorcycles, monkeys and the occasional cow, with views up and down the valley that make the pushing worthwhile. Around them are the big ashram complexes — Parmarth Niketan, Sivananda, Swarg Ashram — where the evening Ganga Aarti is smaller, more musical and considerably calmer than at Haridwar, often led by the ashram's students with everyone seated on the ghat steps.

The Beatles Ashram, officially Chaurasi Kutia, is now part of Rajaji National Park and is one of the more unexpectedly moving places in Uttarakhand: abandoned meditation domes and lecture halls in the forest, every wall covered in murals and lyrics painted by visitors over decades. Elsewhere, Triveni Ghat holds its own aarti and morning bathing crowd, Neelkanth Mahadev Temple is a scenic thirty-kilometre drive up into the hills, and the walk to Neer Garh waterfall makes a good hour on a warm afternoon.

For the more energetic, this is India's white-water capital. Rafting on the Ganga between Shivpuri, Marine Drive and Brahmpuri runs roughly from September to June with grades to suit both nervous first-timers and people who want to be thrown out of the boat, and we book only certified operators with proper safety gear and briefings. Bungee jumping, cliff jumping and forest camping are all available nearby. Families with no interest in any of this are equally well served — the ghats, the cafés and the temples make a gentle, scenic couple of days for absolutely any age.