This post should probably be a fairly short one, although we stayed in Rishikesh for 5 days, they were a relaxing 5 days… I think rather than story telling my way through the visit I’ll just mention the main points:
MY BIRTHDAY, yep, my 28th birthday fell during the time we were in Rishikesh, we headed off for a walk to find some waterfalls (Neer Garh), it must have been in the mid-30′s and we trekked for about an hour and half up hill to the waterfalls, they were lovely though, lots of little private pools. It was a little bit too hot for me to get in (as I knew we had a long walk back in the sun and we didn’t have any sun cream with us!) but Matt had a good splash about! 
Birthday evening we headed for a massage, we’d booked the night before for an Ayurvedic all over body massage. We were lead into separate rooms with a little mat on the floor, surrounded by the scent of aromatherapy oils… Matt was comfortably having his massage still wearing his underwear, I however was given specific instructions, “Dress off”, ok…. she grabbed my boob, ok, I get it bra off… “Panties out!” Hmm… ok then.. naked massage! Very weird and I felt really self conscious at first but then I decided to just relax, I was never going to see her again so who cares?! About an hour and a half later, I was allowed to re-dress and feeling very sleepy and relaxed we headed out for dinner.
We went searching for the infamous Beatles Ashram… we were expecting something photo worthy… we followed the signs past some really shoddy yoga places, some of which I had researched when thinking of spending a week at a yoga retreat – thankfully I never booked it, they were run down, dirty shabby old buildings with moss growing in the open courtyards, maybe I have the wrong idea of what a “retreat” should be but I was very grateful to not be paying £100 a night for us both to stay there! Anyway, following the signs, across the weird shiny sand…
…we came across an abandoned mess. You could see that there used to be something there but now overrun by the forest, it is just a shell and the rather depressing remains of Great British history that could be an incredible tourist attraction. Instead it was home to what appeared to be a couple of locals and some of their new tourist friends just out for a fix. We promptly left.
On the Luxman Jhula bridge crossing the river, everyone seemed to just stop and take photos of I don’t know what (I think maybe the drab ‘wedding cake’ shrine – so called because it has a few floors and if you’re far enough away and squint a bit it could resemble a wedding cake!) This bridge was also full of cows, no matter what time we went, there was an odd mix of cows, people, monkeys and motorbikes hustling across the bridge (the cows weren’t in such a hurry).
There were also monkeys everywhere… The first day we checked into our hotel, we had a family right outside the balcony!
We had a couple of morning yoga classes where we were staying Hilltop Swiss cottage, I was really looking forward to a yoga retreat but as I said earlier, the places on offer were not really what I had in mind, we did enjoy the private classes at the hotel though, just me, Matt and the instructor – it meant we had a more personalised beginners session, and having not done much exercise (other than walking everywhere) over the last few weeks, it was a nice gentle introduction.
Overall, we had a nice relaxing time in Rishikesh, although it certainly wasn’t the yoga capital of the world that it bills itself as, maybe we where there at the wrong time of year or something…
