This week’s dream: India’s ‘world capital of yoga’

Rishikesh, India, is something of a “shopping mall for spirituality,” said Peter McBride in National Geographic Traveler. Religious pilgrims and adventure seekers alike regularly flock to this small city at the foot of the Himalayas to search for enlightenment in its ashrams, vegan restaurants, and yoga schools, and on the white-water rapids of the upper River Ganges. Perhaps this area’s most famous guests visited in 1968 to study with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. But unlike the Beatles, I wasn’t heading to Rishikesh to meditate and write music. My goal was to avoid back surgery by getting deeper into yoga.

Within days of arriving at Parmarth Niketan, a large ashram, I adapt to a new schedule: “waking to the ashram’s 5 a.m. meditative chants, attending cold yoga classes before breakfast, and eating meals in silence.” The classes feel different too. “There are no New Age tunes pumping through hidden speakers, no distracting yoga outfits, no blinding heat, no incense, and no attitude”—just yoga. Though I miss the music at first, I grow accustomed to hearing monkeys clambering across the roof and wind clapping the window shutters. Eventually, I begin venturing outside the ashram to explore my surroundings on a rented motorcycle. On my first outing, I visit the now-abandoned ashram where the Beatles lived, the words to “Dear Prudence” swimming in my head. At sunset on the banks of the Ganges, I watch a ceremony in which scores of Hindus hold lanterns and sing hymns, some lighting candles that they float downstream on miniature boats.

“Hello?” I ask awkwardly as I enter the darkness of Vashista cave, thought to be the region’s oldest mediation cave. “Shuffling through cool, sweet air, across grain-sack flooring, I stop near candlelight, sit down cross-legged, and try to relax.” I focus on my lungs until “a mental rhythm aligns with my breath.” Outside, I discover that what feels like a 10-minute meditation consumed closer to an hour. Better yet, the pain in my back is beginning to subside.

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At Parmarth Niketan (parmarth.com), room and board starts at about $10 a night.