Came To Rishikesh For The Yoga, Stayed For The Journey Of Transformation And Healing It Led Me To

I have vague memories of visiting Rishikesh as a child, and the only two visuals my memory could conjure up from the family trip was gingerly walking on the rickety Laxman Jhula and eating the 3-feet long dosa at Chotiwala — both of which still exist but in a very different form now. But back in the early 90’s, there was no way I’d have foreseen that 30 years later I’d call this obscure holy town in the foothills of the Himalayas, home.

I came to Rishikesh after a career burnout and loss of one of my dogs. Back in Bangalore, I quit my job, packed my apartment up, and moved bags, barrels and dogs in a train to do an immersive Yoga course or a (Yoga Teacher Training/ TTC as they call it) in Rishikesh, and then see what later.

Even though zeroing down on a yoga school in Rishikesh was quite the task given the staggering number of available TTCs, filtering by a non-residential option got me down to just one place that made sense, the famous World Peace Yoga school. And so it began.

Every day, I’d wake up at 5am, walk the 900 meters almost in near darkness to my yoga school, begin the day doing Ashtanga yoga, understanding yoga philosophy and come noon, dozing off through yoga anatomy, and then calling it a day with an energizing class of Hatha yoga before heading back home — an apartment in the uber-busy Tapovan area. Living in the yoga school is the preferred way to do a Yoga TTC for a truly immersive experience, but having dogs ruled that option out for me, as is par for the course.

Yoga student by day, Digital Nomad by evening

I also freelanced a digital marketing job at the same time so used the evenings to work despite rather sore muscles from all the yoga. All said, this life was quite perfect really. Waking up early, having wholesome, nutritious food served on a platter three times a day, and doing 3-4 hours of yoga everyday, while still working and spending time with family in a new place. On weekends, we’d explore a new cafe, (they say there’s over 400 cafes in Tapovan alone out of which I personally may have been to 35!), attend an event, or simply travel out of Rishikesh since so many great places are within a bus ride away. (I traveled to Manali, Dharamkot, and did the Valley Of Flowers trek while in Rishikesh.)

Everyday life in Rishikesh now

I’ve now updated the post to reflect on my second stint in Rishikesh, after a year’s gap in which I lived in Rajasthan, only to come back ‘home’.

In my ‘Rishikesh Season 1’, I lived in Deecon Valley, Tapovan — an apartment complex that comes closest to being a perfect blend of modern amenities while still nestled amidst the foothills of the Himalayas, close to all the action of Tapovan and yet comfortably tucked away. However this time around, seeing the spate of hyper development and the ensuing noise in Tapovan, I decided to put up in the Laxman Jhula area – right opposite Tapovan, divided by the Ganga, but united by that same, familiar and comforting inexplicable Rishikesh energy.

While in the previous season, I lived with my partner and most activity meant doing things ‘together’ — we met new people, attended Kirtans, hosted vegan brunches, made day trips out of the Chilla dam, ambled into random streams and quaint cafes as we walked around endlessly — this time, I’m going it alone.

It almost feels disorienting to think of it, but in a strange way, the lack of a schedule without a job has been replaced with one for this semi-retired life.

Almost everyday, I pack a bag with a mat and some essentials to ‘go out’, plonk myself and my dog at the sprawling ghat or a cafe 5 minutes away from my house. While I try to cook at home and walk the tight rope between living a productive and healthy life and ‘chilling too much’, the lure of all the amazing cafes in Rishikesh, each with their unique ambience, views, and the menu makes it hard to stay cooped up in the house.

Living in Rishikesh has also been an exercise in minimalism — from someone who lived in a 1700-sqft 3 bedroom apartment with wardrobe-full of clothes and shoes and a kitchen kitted out with every equipment and finest ceramics my then-fancy job could buy, I’ve gone on to living out of two backpacks and a sorry excuse for a kitchen with just the basics to drum up a tea and some basic meals.

But what I’ve lost in comfort creatures and all the other trappings of what they’d call an urban elite, I’ve gained in the accessibility and availability of nature, peace, and experiences — both observational and lived.

Interspersed with the routine of the everyday is the opportunity for interesting, even strange things to happen everyday.

There’s no dearth of things to do in Rishikesh. There’s always a workshop here, an ecstatic dance there, a live music gig, or some other kind of spiritual or conscious event that’s hardly ever seen elsewhere in India. (Side note: So much so, that along the way, I ended up building a whole website for discovering yoga schools and spiritual events in India, while based in Rishikesh!) In fact, ‘in season’, there are so many events that it’s hard to choose which one to go to!

And even if there’s nothing else, there’s always the cafes and the ghats where the ‘locals’ and the ‘outsiders’ and the in-betweens like me contribute to a collective, almost a routine-like performance on the daily. Someone’s reading a book, someone’s playing music on their own speaker, someone’s quietly practising their sound bowls, there’s the selfie takers and the vloggers trying to find that elusive rare angle to another piece of overdone Rishikesh coverage, there’s little kids flitting about, there’s dogs (and amongst the most prominent one is mine!) playing an unending game of tag. There are also the daily Aartis, the rambunctious rafters in the background, and a curious “hobo lady” in orange robes who yells at everyone for no reason thrown in for good measure. Just sitting at the ghat or with a view of it is an exercise in observing, noticing, being surprised, almost in a routine, nonchalant way.

There is usually never a need of a vehicle — which couldn’t be a bigger contrast from my life in Bangalore where hailing auto rikshaws, Ubers and buses was the order of the day.  Rishikesh is also where humans across a spectrum of classes, regions and religions regularly intermingle with cows, monkeys, dogs and whatever other creatures in between – I hope – in some spirit of universal consciousness and oneness, making it an inclusive, evolved place.

It’s normal bumping into different people from walks of life — not just healers, tarot card readers, and of course yoga teachers, but also musicians, writers, former techies, former military officers, former convicts even — you meet a lot of “former” everything since most everyone seems to be on a journey of transformation and the bridge between their old and new lives here. It’s also normal to form deep friendships, fleeting as they are, sitting by the ghat or at an adjacent cafe, noons blurring into late lights but the flow of the conversation unending just like the river it happens in the backdrop of. While it’s rare in this side of the Ganga, there’s also a fair number of remote workers doing regular 9-5 jobs, well positioning Rishikesh as a digital nomad hub.

When I arrived in Rishikesh this time, rather comically on a bike taxi one bag in the front, my dog in the middle tumbling away and a backpack behind me, I’d planned to stay for days till the feelings of whatever I was trying to escape from went away. But instead, I ended up espousing the life I’d only considered a vacation as the new reality.

I remember someone I met at an event saying “There’s a different level of powerful energy in Rishikesh”, and her words have stuck with me ever since.

Almost everyone I meet here has almost the same feelings about Rishikesh. What is about the place that sucks you in and makes it hard to leave? The rational in me tries to put down the pull of Rishikesh to being “the perfect blend of nature, vibes and availability of a freshly brewed cappuccino in what really is a village”, but there’s something more to it. Something raw, metaphysical even. To quote my friend Max who seems to have coopted into what I call ‘being Rishikesh-ed’,”… here I was a month later, a classic case of being “Rishikeshed.” Initially brought here on my motorcycle, laden with the weight of past travels, my stay extended as days turned into weeks. The persistent flow of the Ganges echoed through my days, softening the sharp edges of my journey. Whether you believe in the mystic pull of places or not, there’s no denying the subtle healing that unfolds here.

Much as I try to stay connected to my ‘past’ life heading marketing at corporates, selling products, services and ideas I didn’t necessarily buy into myself, attending ‘startup mixers’ for fun, I can’t deny the pull of the mystic. Once in a while, I find myself swapping my Neil-Patel and Alex Harmozi cheatsheets for treatises on Kundalini, Ayurveda and more. And even though I’m not really a part of the healing-spiritual spectrum that probably most of the people in Rishikesh are there for, slowly, I’m beginning to open myself to it. How else do I justify turning into this person who’s happier sitting by the Ganga by myself, with my dog or a stranger, working just enough to not have to dip into my savings, than doing a 7-figure job and living a comfortable, well-settled domestic life? Have I…achieved…*shudders*..inner peace?

I wonder if Rishikesh turned me into a different person or it helped me peel away the layers from who I always was, but just playing a different, temporary role that seemed to cover the middle level of my needs in the Maslow’s hierarchy model.

I also wonder if coming to Rishikesh itself, almost two years ago, losing my dog here after losing another just few months before that, and then coming back here twice after leaving the first time, and now trying to turn it into a permanent base, was pre-meditated and I was ‘called’ all along.

I don’t have all the answers and maybe one doesn’t have to go that deep to justify this feeling for the place. Even practically speaking, Rishikesh personally fulfills most of my requirements as a contender for a place to settle down and live a location-independent lifestyle in India.

This is not to say this life is perfect. Every once in a while I’m hit with the feeling of not belonging here (but not elsewhere either.) I dread to find myself in a situation where I or my dog will need an emergency medical care. Also worrying is the nature of friendships and relationships made here, most everyone being transient and on the move. And of course, the lack of non-yoga related work and network opportunities make it hard to stay too ambitious and focussed on the world I come from. The only way to make sense of it all seems to be to accept the new reality, and find a new identity and purpose and “come into my own”. Although I’m not batting for Rishikesh to become the next Bali because the last thing we want is more traffic, more mindless development, and more honking and psy-trance in a place where once ragas, mantras, Oms and the waves of the river were the only sounds that reverberated in the fresh air. Despite the irony of saying this on a published blog, a part of me wants to gatekeep Rishikesh. (As if it’s a place only I know all the hidden gems in, a place I get to call home, and a place I could claim I now know better than any other I’ve lived in.

But a bigger part of me wants people to see Rishikesh as more than just a Yoga Capital (which it is) or a weekend party hub (which it shouldn’t be). But rather Rishikesh as the perfect bridge between the spiritually-oriented and those who like nature and slow living while having a reasonable source of income. What Rishikesh needs is people who love it back, take care of it, and help preserve its glorious and unique legacy.

The rickety Laxman Jhula from my childhood memories is still around even though a fancy ‘glass bridge’ is coming up right next to it anyday now. And perhaps that’s the perfect metaphor for Rishikesh.

The Ganga holding on it its timeless legacy while straddling the human development and progress it’s allowed in its shores.