Backpacking Rishikesh
The Land of the Bholenath. You may be outside a temple, walking the busy streets across the Lakshman Jhula, or be sitting by the Ganga, you are bound to find a Sadhu, a hippie in the strangest of clothing, or a local in his everyday attire casually slipping a kash of ganja. The story of how Rishikesh went from becoming an Above of Gods and a land of several myths and legends to the Yoga capital of the nation and a place to let your hippie side out is particularly interesting. The Beatles came in search for answers to life’s larger questions in 1968, and ended up performing transcendental meditation - I’m certain they were merely stoned, and were given the freedom to sit and ponder by the holy Ganga - but it’s here they wrote their most famous album, the White Album. There was then a second wave of foreign artists coming in search for a story of their own, and this is where the locals realized these visits could become a major tourist attraction. There are now a dozen privately