Revisiting India - Blog Post 11

Rishikesh: Yoga Ashrams

During the taxi trip from Haridwar train station to the smaller city of Rishikesh I noticed the quick change in nature and landscape since we left Agra. While Agra lays on an open plain next to the large Yammuna river, quite similar to Delhi, Haridwar and Rishikesh are clinging to the valley side of large mountain ridges. This was also the first time we saw the Ganges river, which runs through the state of Uttarakhand, snaking its way past both Rishikesh and Haridwar towards the more populous plains of Uttar Pradesh further downstream.

One of the more famous things to ever come out of India is their Yoga traditions. In the West a version of Hatha yoga has become dominant, with its stretching, physical fitness positions training, and stress relief exercises. Older Indian yoga traditions focus more on meditation, contact with spirituality and states of mind. Yoga played a part during the founding of Buddhism and Jainism, for the 6th century ascetic movement and is even mentioned in the ancient Vedic texts.

A picture of the iconic walk bridge across the Ganges in Rishikesh.

Rishikesh is quite famous for its numerous Yoga ashrams. A yoga ashram is a school or community offering up their knowledge in the spiritual and technical traditions of a particular style of yoga. Famously the Beatles members spent some time staying at one of Rishikesh’s many ashrams. Boye and I were going to spend the next two weeks staying at such an ashram located in Upper Tapovan, located at the outer edge of Rishikesh and upstream along the Ganges.

Our yoga guru is instructing us in how to properly stretch.

We quickly got settled in our new surroundings and the relaxing atmosphere in the ashram suited us, after keeping a high pace throughout Rajasthan and Agra. Many of the next days were spent doing yoga classes, both physical exercises but also meditation and lectures with different topics. Outside the classes we spent quite some time mingling with the other people living in the ashram. There were people from across the world here, a New Zealander, several people from South America, several Europeans from different countries, Indians from Bangalore, Delhi and other parts of the country, and people I don’t know or remember their origin countries.

Our yoga guru is sitting in his chair waiting for people to show up for the yoga class. In this hall we would train 3 times a day, with yoga poses called stuff like "mountain", "dog" and "river position".

Sometimes we were not training but rather listening to lectures about philosopohy and stories from the Vedic texts, ayrvedic diet and healing, what is the purpose of meditation and other related topics.

The training was hard at times, and the yoga gurus (teachers) pushed us, but Boye and I eagerly partook in these activities. It all felt quite invigorating in some way, although I remember our bodies feeling quite sore and tapped of energy by the end.

The food in the ashram consisted of only things approved according to Ayurvedic dietary traditions, and were thus quite simple. The core principle of an ayurvedic diet is to preserve the environment of the gut, and only specific types of food stuff are recommended. The food we were served consisted of plant based dishes, for example a lot of ghee, rice and fruits.

I think this first picture taken while walking down from Upper Tapovan towards central Rishikesh, captures the natural beauty of the Rishikesh valley very well.

I don’t have as vast an amount of pictures from these two weeks, so I’ll be using more pictures showing off what we did which were documented. We had a nice trip walking from Upper Tapovan down to central Rishikesh, which afforded me some nice pictures.

A few pictures taken while crossing the famous Rishkesh suspension walk bridge (Ram Jhula).

After we had crossed the suspension bridge we walked around Northern Rishikesh and got to really see the place. Most of the city is built along one long main road, and from that road many small, often really crammed, side roads run off. Most of the city is built on the West side of the Ganges, but there are also houses on the East side, and the now touristified Beatles ashram is also located on the East side.

The walk along the riverfront back towards Upper Tapovan was quite lovely with an interesting scenery.

On the weekend we also got a break from the yoga practice and lectures, which mostly filled up our days during the week. The first weekend we drove by car on a getaway 2 hours North East of Rishikesh. We went together with several of the other students at the ashram, to a spot that our yoga guru had recommended to us. Here we took a bath and relaxed along a pleasant stream.

It was quite crowded at the bottom of the stream, near the parking lot, so we walked far enough up that its was not so crowded anymore.

It is lovely looking back at these pictures and thinking of all these interesting and joyful individuals we befriended in our two weeks staying at the ashram. I don’t think my scarce selection of pictures really illustrates all that we experienced there very well. Rishikesh was both a time of reflection and ayurvedic healing, but also more than anything a social experience with people, their stories and memories to cherish.

Boye and I had told Omer how we felt stiff from all the training, and one morning a masseuse showed up, and gave us quite the massage. We felt well attended to during this stay, and the activities, although challenging at times, were all in all invigorating. We had also been on the move every 3-4 days so far in our journey, and just staying put in Rishikesh for 2 weeks was good for us I believe.

I have more things to tell about our time in Rishikesh, but I’ve decided to divide this up in two parts. Next time we will talk about other activities we did in Rishikesh and also in Haridwar. We will raft in the Ganges and partake in a major Hindu festival in Haridwar.

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