Bus from Delhi to Rishikesh: The bus from Delhi to Rishikesh was our first experience with long distance transit in India and what an experience it was! The bus arrived thirty minutes late to the stop – a highway in the middle of Delhi across from the actual bus station. Rather than stopping on the side of the road where there was a sidewalk, the bus stopped in the middle of the road on an on-ramp to the highway. Efficient and a definite experience for us to navigate across the busy road. During the first two or so hours, the bus made various stops to pick up passengers around Delhi. With each stop came a new cast of characters that entered the bus – multiple men selling chips and water, women begging for money, and other entrepreneurial Indians. The roads were great – much better than the roads in Nepal – which made the rest of the bus ride relatively uneventful. We tried to listen to Chuck Klosterman’s new book “The Nineties” for about four hours of the nine hour journey before resigning. We just couldn’t get into it or follow the narrative. We were dropped off outside of Rishikesh just as we were picked up – on the side of a busy highway. We found a nice Indian family to split a tuk tuk with into the city and off we were!

Beatles Ashram: One of the pull factors of Rishikesh outside of its serenity, natural beauty, and adventure activities is the fact that the Beatles spent a meaningful amount of time here. They studied transcental mediation and yoga under the guidance of Maharishi and developed songs for the White Album. As Beatles fans, we were quite excited to check out the place where they spent time – now known as the Beatles Ashram. Getting here was a bit of an adventure – there were conflicting pins on Google and Apple Maps as to where exactly it was located and no pin on maps.me. We took the unabridged Apple Maps route and later backtracked once we realized it was quite unabridged. Upon arriving, the ashram didn’t look like much. We saw a handful of meditation domes with neat graffiti and figured that was it. We walked for a few more minutes and quickly realized that the ashram was quite expansive. We wandered through at least ten abandoned buildings all decorated with amazing graffiti and paintings. Though completely abandoned outside of a few other tourists and signs that signified what each building used to be, the ashram was beautiful and quite peaceful. We could easily see how the Beatles spent so long here. We really enjoyed walking around and exploring the empty buildings and graffiti art with the sounds of the Ganges in the background

Whitewater rafting: Every time we mentioned that we were headed to Rishikesh after Delhi the person that we were speaking with replied “you have to check out the rafting”. So check out the rafting, we did! And it was a blast. We spent two hours rafting down the Ganges. We were the captains of the left side and the right side with four new Indian friends behind us and our fearless guide Vishal. The rapids were legit. We laughed, got soaked, and even got to float in the Ganges in a calmer part of the river (Rishikesh is close to the source so it’s very clean). Had we been in Rishikesh for longer, we probably would have gone a second time

Laundry: Though there wasn’t a ton of space in our room, we desperately needed to do some laundry. After washing about twenty articles of clothing in the sink, we used all of the available space in our room to hang up our travel clothesline and other articles of clothing that didn’t fit. Mid-way through, we realized that we could dry some of clothes overnight on our balcony – brilliant! On this particular night (or maybe on every night), it must have been windy because our clothes weren’t there in the morning. We recovered several pairs of underwear and shirts from the sides of our balcony and a few things from the ground, but two pairs of pants (our respective favorites) were nowhere to be seen. We only have two pairs of pants each, so these were pretty critical to our wardrobe. After some sulking, we resolved to buy temporary pairs of pants until we could get permanent replacements. We walked downstairs to start our day, when, much to our delight, we spotted our pants on the communal ping pong table! One of the staff members at our hostel had found them on the ground that morning – phew!

Veda5: Rishikesh is well known for its spa and yoga retreats with many instructors from around the world coming here to get different levels of certification. We didn’t have the time or desire to do a multi-day or week retreat, so we were excited when we learned that we could get a day pass to a nearby resort. Our shoes were wet from whitewater rafting (we only have one pair of shoes), so we each put on a pair of socks and headed out to the car picking us up for the retreat. Upon arriving, we were greeted by a ceremonial bell and a confused look from the woman showing us around “you didn’t bring any shoes?”. We shamefully explained our situation and she graciously provided us each with a pair of hotel slippers. Though our time at Veda5 was a bit confusing at times (we didn’t feel like we had the best idea on where to go or what to do), we had an amazing day full of yoga (Doug’s first time), lounging, Ayurvedic treatments, meditation, and even a honey tasting. It was a great way to spend a day in Rishikesh and just chill. We would come to appreciate this day much more during our hectic travels around India 

Waterfall hike: Rishikesh is located at the foothills of the Himalayas, so there are many naturally beautiful places to explore in the area. We decided to spend part of the day at the top of a nearby waterfall where there was a campsite and organic cafe. After a steep and fast 30-minute hike to the top of the waterfall, we reached paradise! We settled on a teepee-esque structure for the afternoon with an amazing view of the Himalayan foothills and nearby forest. It was so quiet and peaceful. We spent the afternoon chilling, chatting, and enjoying food from the organic cafe. We made friends with a lovely mother-daughter duo from the UK traveling around India and decided to hike and share a cab back to Tapovan with them when the sun started to go down. They basically planned our evening for us, recommending that we go to the aarti and a nearby ashram for dinner (huge thanks again for the recs if you happen to be reading this, Meera and Shilpa)!

Aarti at Parnath Nikean: As one of the first cities along the Ganges (the holiest river in Hinduism), Rishikesh is a very spiritual place. You can feel the spirituality as you’re walking around Rishikesh, especially when strolling along the Ganges. Every night, hundreds of people gather along the river to perform aarti – a Hindu ritual to worship the water. We attended the largest aarti in Rishikesh at Parnath Nikean – an ashram along the river. We stood on a bridge overlooking the river, listening and observing the aarti in awe. It was a beautiful ceremony with chanting, fire dancing, and clear appreciation of the river as hundreds of people rushed to the river to cleanse themselves with the water at the end of the aarti