Rishikesh

Rishikesh takes its name from a tradition that the sage Raibhya Rishi performed austerities here and received a vision of Vishnu, and the site appears in Hindu epic and Puranic literature as a place of meditation where the Ganges leaves the hills. Its importance has always been as a staging post: pilgrims bound for the Himalayan shrines of Yamunotri, Gangotri, Kedarnath and Badrinath gathered here before walking north, and a cluster of small temples and dharamshalas grew to serve them. The oldest temple in the old centre is traditionally associated with Adi Shankaracharya.

The modern town dates largely from the 19th and 20th centuries, when pilgrimage traffic increased and ashrams were founded along both banks. The iron suspension bridge at Lakshman Jhula, built in 1889 and washed away by floods in 1924, was rebuilt in 1927, and Swami Sivananda established the Divine Life Society in the 1930s, which trained teachers whose students spread hatha yoga well beyond India. Road building after independence, and the creation of the state of Uttarakhand in 2000, tied the town more firmly to Haridwar, Dehradun and the mountain routes.

International attention arrived in February 1968, when the Beatles spent several weeks at Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's ashram above the river and wrote much of the material that became the White Album. The visit made Rishikesh a fixture on the overland trail, and yoga schools multiplied from the 1990s. Rafting began commercially on the upper river in the same period. The town now handles both a very large domestic pilgrimage and a steady foreign student population, and has spread up the hillsides to accommodate them.

The town's public life is religious. The evening aarti, when lamps are circled before the river to sung invocations, takes place at Triveni Ghat and at the riverside steps of the large ashrams, and draws both pilgrims and visitors. Sadhus in ochre robes are a common sight, temple bells and loudspeakers mark the hours, and the Ganges is treated as a goddess rather than a river: water is carried home in sealed cans, ashes are immersed, and flowers and lamps are floated on the current at dusk.

Alongside this runs an international yoga industry. Hundreds of schools offer teacher training courses accredited by various bodies, ranging from serious lineages to short commercial programmes, and Tapovan's cafés, shops and noticeboards exist largely for their students. The relationship between the two worlds is mostly practical: pilgrims and foreign students use different streets, eat in different places and rarely overlap except at the river crossings.

Local customs are conservative. Dress is modest, alcohol and meat are absent from the municipality, and public displays of affection are out of place. The town is used to visitors and generally welcoming, though touts, unlicensed guides and people presenting themselves as gurus operate around the bridges. Uttarakhandi culture — Garhwali language, folk songs and temple festivals — shows most clearly in the villages just outside town and in the shrine processions of the pilgrimage season.

The town recorded about 102,000 residents at the 2011 census, and more than 300,000 were counted across the city and its surrounding villages in 2021; the working population swells further with seasonal staff. Almost everything here depends on visitors: ashrams and yoga schools, hotels and guesthouses, rafting and trekking companies, taxi and jeep operators, and the shops selling puja items, clothing, books and souvenirs.

The year is organised around two flows of people. From late April to November the Char Dham pilgrimage fills the roads north and the town's hotels; July and August bring the Kanwar Yatra, when huge numbers of walkers in saffron collect Ganges water, and traffic is rerouted for days at a time. The yoga season peaks between autumn and spring, when the weather suits long practice. Days start early with bathing and prayer at the ghats and end with the aarti and an early dinner; little is open late.

Growth has brought familiar strains. Construction has spread up unstable slopes, sewage and solid waste management lag behind visitor numbers, and the purity of the river is a live public issue even as it is worshipped. Traffic on the single highway through Muni Ki Reti is often at a standstill in season. Work on the railway line towards Karnaprayag and on the Char Dham road project has brought employment and heavy machinery to the valleys around the town.

Food in Rishikesh is entirely vegetarian and free of alcohol by local regulation, which shapes everything on offer. The standard meal is a thali: dal, two vegetable dishes, rice, roti, curd and a pickle, served on a steel tray, often unlimited and eaten in a plain hall. Ashram canteens serve sattvic cooking, which avoids onion and garlic as well as meat, at set times announced by a bell.

Street food follows the north Indian pilgrimage pattern. Aloo puri with a spiced potato curry is the usual breakfast, and stalls near Triveni Ghat sell chaat, samosas, kachori, pakoras and jalebi fried in the open. Sweet shops make barfi, peda and laddus, sold in boxes as offerings; lassi, sugarcane juice and ginger-lemon-honey tea are the common drinks, along with milky masala chai at every corner. Garhwali dishes such as kafuli, a thick spinach and fenugreek preparation, and jhangora, barnyard millet cooked as a pudding, appear in a few kitchens.

The foreign student presence has produced a parallel café scene in Tapovan and around Lakshman Jhula: brown bread and strudel from bakeries established decades ago, porridge and fruit bowls, hummus and shakshuka, wood-fired pizza and herbal infusions, much of it served on roof terraces facing the river. Cafés here also make coffee properly, which is otherwise rare in a town that drinks tea.