Rishikesh: Circe’s Island

“So she enticed and won our battle-hardened spirits over.” – The Odyssey, Homer

Nestled between large, luscious green mountains, where the Ganges flows down from the Himalayas to meet the plains, lies Rishikesh. Currently known as the yoga capital of the world, it was made famous to the West in the 1960s by The Beatles, who sought refuge and inspiration within the confines of one of the Ganga’s-facing ashrams. Historically, Rishikesh holds immense spiritual significance in Hindu culture, steeped in myth and tradition. It is a place of pilgrimage and theological practice, drawing sadhus (saints) and pilgrims alike from all over India. It is a haven of peace and tranquillity for any weary traveller seeking to escape the mad hustle and bustle of modern India’s mega cities.

Rishikesh itself is a growing, middling city. However, one only has to follow the Ganges upstream to arrive at its secret oasis of shantiness. The northern side of the city is absorbed by the hills, and hidden at the start of the jungle valley are two small villages separated by the Ganges that form a whole: Tapovan on the eastern side and Laxman Jhula on the west. Here, the Ganges runs clean and pure, its turquoise waters rushing down from the sediment-rich Himalayas, unspoiled by pollution and industrial waste.

My first impressions of the place were mixed. I had arrived tired and drawn out, having just escaped the chaos of Delhi. I had no plan in mind other than to find a place to sleep for a few days before heading into Nepal and continuing my route east. I arrived in Tapovan, the more commercial and party-orientated side of the town. There, I found a cheap hostel full of young kids, all getting high and listening to trance music on the roof. I instantly regretted my choice. Although they were a friendly bunch, this was not at all what I had in mind when I arrived.

Alex, my Alaskan CrossFitter friend whom I had met in Dharamshala, had also travelled there. He had been there for a week or so. We spent the next few days discovering the city together, going to the gym, and swimming in the Ganga – albeit reluctantly at first.

Staying fit had always been a refuge for me in turbulent times. Being able to move my body, control the weights and actions I took, and simply focus on being present had always been a grounding force for me. Travelling by motorcycle could be exhausting, making it difficult to maintain a decent level of fitness. Not only that, but staying fit and strong was a requirement when riding a 300 kg bike. Dropping it required some serious deadlifting strength.

It was good to hang out with Alex during those first few days. Our shared enthusiasm for lifting heavy things and eating eggs was an easy way to bond. Rishikesh is a fully vegetarian city, and finding adequate protein there was a daily struggle. We stuck out as an odd pair among the other foreigners. The majority of “western tourists were there for yoga courses, a mix of linen wearing spiritual bypassers, trustafarians and attractive yoga chicks in actiwear.

 The yoga capital of the world boasts more yoga teacher training courses per square mile than any town in India. The streets are saturated with adverts for TTCs (teacher training courses), promising qualification after only a month’s worth of training. I really questioned the value of this 30-day mastery of such an ancestral and historical philosophy.

The streets were filled with Westerners flocking from all over the world. Seeking healing and wisdom in exorbitantly expensive courses on how to perfect their downward-facing dogs. Mixed in with the yoga mat-carrying crowd are the spiritually seeking trustafarians. Some dressed as full sadhus, sporting the robes of ascetics, expensive lattes in one hand and overpriced rolled-up American Spirit cigarettes in the other, preaching to whomever will listen about the virtues of letting go. As I walked around the peaceful streets of the city, with walls lined with adverts for sound healing sessions, ecstatic dance gatherings, and more, I found myself revolted and angry at this fake world. I couldn’t reconcile this place with the last few months of adventure and fear I had been through across Central Asia. I felt lonely and detached from this world of healing and breathwork.

I was still running on the adrenaline of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia. This seemed like a watered-down version of travelling. Nothing like the wild people I had met in the so-called Badlands of the world. At least out there, when hospitality was offered, it felt real, honest, and raw. Not like the veiled transactional nature of it all here, where spirituality was dished out for hefty “energy exchanges” or “donations.”

Despite my cynicism toward the place, it felt safe. The lattes, avocado on toasts, and chill-out lounges felt manicured and fake yet familiar and comforting. I was tired and angry and didn’t even realise how much it was affecting my judgment. The pressure of getting to other side of india to see her again was getting to me, I couldn’t think straight anymore, I had embarked on this journey alone, been heartbroken twice already and felt I was walking right back into something hurtful. I wanted to feel loved but deep down I knew that it was pointless if I couldn’t find any form of self love within. The anxiety of more travel was starting to take away from the joy of the journey.

Letting it flow

The days blurred together as I waited to head to Kolkata. Days turned into weeks, slipping past steadily like the flow of the ganga, an ever-present feature of daily life in Rishikesh. I spent most of my time wandering the town, sitting by the river, watching life unfold around me while feeling strangely detached from it. Time seemed to have stopped, and with it, my drive to keep moving.

The anniversary of my mother’s death came and went. A local swami had once told me about the healing power of the Ganga—that any offerings made to the river would find their way to our ancestors. So, on that day, I sat by the water, imagining what she might have been like if she were still alive. I lost her when I was so young that I barely knew her. But I knew she had traveled through Afghanistan and India in her youth, following the hippie trail. I liked to believe that at some point, she had been here in Rishikesh, standing by this same river. As I watched the water flow past, I imagined her spirit within it, embracing me, comforting me. I wondered what she would think of me now—leaving everything behind, embracing the road, throwing caution to the wind to live so nomadically.

I had taken up accommodation in an ashram called san sewa overlooking the Ganges for seven dollars a night. A simple room—just a bed, a desk, a barely functional bathroom with hot water. It was Gaurav, a young software engineer I met in a coffee shop, who introduced me to the place. In his mid-twenties, he had been living in Rishikesh for two years, his story mirroring the conflict faced by many young Indians caught between tradition and modernity.

Gaurav came from a traditional Indian family. They had urged him into computer studies, seeing it as a secure path to a better income and social ascension. They envisioned a structured life for him—marriage before thirty, a conventional nine-to-five, the respectable Indian dream. But Gaurav was a traveler at heart. He longed for adventure, for the unknown. He didn’t want to marry out of obligation or follow a path dictated by others. Instead, he carved out his own way, lying to his family, who believed he was working in an office in another city. In reality, he worked remotely for a software company, allowing him to live in the ashram and shape a life closer to the one he truly wanted.

India was changing. The younger generation had more financial freedom and social mobility than their parents, striving for individualism in a culture still dominated by patriarchal family structures. That clash between past and future played out in lives like Gaurav’s every day.

We became good friends, training together at the gym, sharing stories—mine mostly about my travels, his about India, its traditions, its history. We often laughed about the veneer of yoga that had been painted over Rishikesh, how many so-called yoga instructors were just in it to bed as many foreign women as possible. We walked for hours, talking about everything and nothing, finding camaraderie in our shared desire for something more in life.

San Sewa Ashram

The ashram itself was a place that housed people from all over India. There was Mohin, a 58-year-old retired industrialist who had suffered a painful divorce. Ostracized from his family in southern India, he was taking refuge in Rishikesh. Then there was Victoria, a Ukrainian hypnotist who had once been a long-haul truck driver in the USA. Now a traveler, she had left her family and life behind in search of peace. Kishore, Vish, Surrender, and a creative crew of twenty-something artists and bohemians lived on the top floor, smoking hash most days, playing music, and finding ways to get by.

There was Gil, a fifty-something German correspondent who had been covering India, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh for the last 25 years. He was an astute, straight-talking, no-bullshit German. We got on famously, exchanging stories about Pakistan. Gaurav, Gil, and I would meet every morning at the local tea stand on the street, sipping sweet, hot masala chais. Gil was a born adventurer and had written a few books about Pakistan, where he had been one of the first Westerners to travel during the Afghan war. He was a fountain of knowledge about the region and stood apart from the usual yogi spiritual-bypassing hippies who flocked to the streets of Rishikesh. He had wild blue eyes and a loud Teutonic laughter.

Then there were the ashram dogs. Four dogs had taken up residence there, the owners allowed them to stay as they were the best deterrents against the roaming bands of monkeys that would occasionally storm the place in search for food scraps. The dogs would chase the monkeys around the ashram floor only to be defeated by the clever apes that would just climb up onto the roof tops and mockingly stare the dogs down. The was a daily show of cat and mouse that made for a good spectator sport for the residents.

 There was Bobby, the striped hyena-looking dog, was notorious for sneaking into people’s rooms and eating their cigarettes. Lucy, the fat matriarch of the ashram, resembled a fluffy blond bear, always happy and wriggling her body in excitement whenever someone called her name. Skippy, the only male, was a small, runty-looking dog with a loud bark and a skittish personality. He never left the ashram, barking at other street dogs from the safety of the walls but retreating instantly if one barked back. Then there was Laloo, a half-husky with floppy ears. She lived between the ashram and the Ganges shore. She was affectionate, kind, playful, and sensitive. She would walk and sit with me by the Ganges during my more contemplative moments.

Once, as I was overcome by shame and pain from past failures towards those I loved, I began tearing up. She sat beside me, rested her head on my lap, and licked my hand. I was so moved that from that point on, I let her sleep in my room. I removed the yak fur I had bought from some nomads in Kyrgyzstan and set it on the floor of my room for her. She instantly understood what I was doing and lay there quietly. That night, I fell asleep peacefully, knowing she was in the room with me—only to wake in the middle of the night to find her snout inches from mine on the bed. Too tired to push her off, I let her stay. This became our nightly routine from then onwards.

Life was good in Rishikesh. I had friends, I had a dog, and routine was beginning to settle in—it was starting to feel like home. I was meeting interesting people every day, and leaving became harder and harder. There was something hypnotic about the place.

Routine

Deep down, I was craving peace and stillness. The longer I stayed in Rishikesh, the harder it became to leave. As the Ganges flowed steadily through the town, nourishing the plains of Uttar Pradesh, it seemed to have the same soothing effect on my emotions. I spent my days sitting in hippie cafés, overhearing conversations about healing and spirituality. Slowly, I felt my mood soften, lighten, as the river moved past.

The constant pressure of being on the road—planning the next route, figuring out where to stay, where to eat—was wearing me down. I needed a break, some grounding, some stability. I was still clinging to the hope of making it across India to reconnect with an old flame, holding on to a naïve belief in love. But what I wasn’t doing was listening to what my body and soul really needed: rest and self-compassion. Instead, I was pushing forward relentlessly, running away from myself. The Rolling Stones kept playing in my mind—You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find you get what you need.

The air in Rishikesh was fresh and clean, the people warm and welcoming. No aggressive stares, no weapons flaunted in the streets. It was a place where I could finally let my guard down. So I allowed myself to be enveloped by the rhythm of the river, the scent of burning incense, the distant hum of devotional singing drifting over the ashram walls. The adventure could wait.

As time passed, I met more and more locals. First, there was Boneo and his girlfriend Nia, both from Manipur in the northeast. They had fled their home due to an unreported tribal war, a conflict buried under an information blackout imposed by the Indian government. I met them at a local motorcycle garage while doing some maintenance on my bike. Boneo, with his long black dreads, Chelsea boots, and wild tattoos, had an edgy, rebellious look. Nia, petite and striking, looked more Burmese than Indian, dressed in torn jeans and a checkered shirt. We bonded over our shared disdain for the spiritual bypassers—the “white babas,” as they called them. Westerners draped in spiritual trinkets, staying in overpriced hotels, preaching enlightenment while sipping on turmeric lattes.

We also laughed about the ever-growing Indian middle class that had begun flocking to Rishikesh. They weren’t drawn by spirituality or self-discovery. They came for adventure—specifically, whitewater rafting. What had started 30 years ago as a few Canadian rafters running the river had exploded into an industry of over 300 rafts, shuttling excited Delhites through the once-peaceful ashrams. Unregulated, driven by greed, and with little regard for safety, it was a booming business. A single raft could carry eight people at $10 a head, with 30 to 50 rafts going downriver daily. It didn’t take much to see how, in a country like India, regulation and safety standards would quickly be discarded.

The influx of rafters was changing the town. Once a serene, pedestrian-friendly hippie enclave, it was now overrun with traffic, honking cars catering to the new wave of adventure-seekers. The tranquillity that had once reigned was being drowned out by the shouts of rafters crashing down the river, their cries of excitement breaking the meditative stillness of the Ganges. But who could blame them? The surge of young Indian professionals, products of the call centre and software boom, had disposable income to burn. And the locals, who had once capitalized on the yoga industry, saw a new gold rush in adventure tourism. COVID had shifted the dynamics—foreign tourism declined; domestic travel surged. Fewer yoga seekers, more rafters. The place was changing fast. It wasn’t hard to imagine that in a few years, Rishikesh could become the next Goa—nightclubs, drinking, psytrance, all packaged under the guise of a spiritual retreat.

Despite these contrasts, I felt at home. Life slowed down here. Softened. My urge to leave dulled. But I was caught in a dilemma. Should I continue on the road and ride into Southeast Asia for the dry season? Or should I take a chance with Em, see if we could rebuild what had already broken twice?

I had always believed in Kintsugi—the Japanese philosophy that broken things, when repaired with care, become even more beautiful. That scars, if healed properly, are not flaws but marks of resilience. Proof of both vulnerability and strength. A friend had once told me: If you truly live, you will feel everything—both the good and the bad.

I had to take the risk. I had to find out if my heart was lying to me.

But it threw my plans into chaos. Crossing the world in the time I had given myself was no longer so simple.

The First Escape Attempt

I left Rishikesh with a heavy heart, confused by my own decision-making. Why was I leaving a place I loved so much to step into something uncertain, something that could potentially end in catastrophe?

I left anyway. I said my goodbyes to Gaurav and the dogs and headed for the hills of Uttarakhand. The higher I climbed, the more the scenery changed—from semi-jungle to semi-alpine. The weather grew colder and colder. The mountain people looked more Nepalese than Indian—smaller, more Asian in their features. There were fewer people, a welcome change from the overcrowded plains.

The air was cool and fresh as I rode deeper into the Himalayas towards Nepal. I passed through a series of small villages, the houses painted in bright colors—pink, blue, and green.

Two days into my ride, I reached Ranikhet, near the Nepal border. Tall pine trees lined the tarmacked roads, large rocks covered in moss lined the edges. It felt like a mix between the Alps and the hills of California, only with monkeys swinging from the pine trees.

I pulled up on the side of a winding road with a view of the Himalayas for a short cigarette break. The roads were well-paved, but the constant twisting and turning made for tough riding. Behind every sharp corner, a bus or 4x4 taxi could appear at any time and send me flying off the cliff.

My plan was to ride to Pokhara, leave my motorcycle there, and fly to Kolkata to meet Em. I hadn’t checked flight prices yet, so I did a quick search on my phone and realised they were prohibitively expensive—$700 one way! I then checked flights from Rishikesh, and they were only $70. It made no sense. Angry at myself for not planning properly, I lit another cigarette in frustration and tried to figure out how to return to Rishikesh.

A voice from a previous life resonated in my mind, belittling me for not applying military thinking to the task, further darkening my mood. I was being led by emotion, not logic.

As my Colour Sergeant would say,

 “piss-poor planning leads to piss-poor performance, Mr Clark and you would know you fucking spanner”

And here I was—scrambling, second-guessing, caught between impulse and indecision, when I should have been executing a well-calculated plan.

Suddenly, an old man appeared from behind a pine tree. He wore a brown overcoat, a grey hat, and carried a walking stick. His skin was leathery and wrinkled from years of sun and mountain life. He approached me, and we exchanged greetings.

“Hello.”

“Namaste.”

“How are you?” I asked.

“I’m quiet,” he responded pensively. “You know, today you cannot see the high mountains because of the fog,” he said, looking at me and then into the distance.

“But tomorrow, it will clear up, and you will be able to see clearly.” He then stared right through me.

 “I hope that one day, you can come walk with me and be quiet too.” He shook my hand and walked back into the forest.

I sat on Tara, completely stunned. How did he know I felt so disturbed? It was as if he had seen into my soul. He had understood my inner turmoil, the clouds of doubt occupying my mind. I finished my cigarette, took a deep breath, and decided to head back to Rishikesh.