RISHIKESH

Rishikesh is a holy area along the Ganges River several miles from Hari Dwar. It became famous in the West after the Beetles went there in (‘67?). They met with a guru and stayed in one of the Ashrams here by the river.

A couple make an offering to the River goddess Gunga. They put flowers purchased at a shop owned by one of the Ashrams place them in the jar of water scooped out of the river, then pour both back to the river.

An Ashram is a Hindu Monastery. The place the Beetles visited is no longer in existence, well… it is there but it is a hotel now. When that Guru died people stopped coming to that Ashram and it fell into disrepair until it was purchased by the hotel.

This is a Temple inside an Ashram near the river bank.

If you want to visit an Ashram there is certainly no shortages of them in Rishikesh. Rishikesh has one of the highest concentrations of Ashrams in India. Almost every building here is in some way part of an Ashram or is owned by an Ashram. Some have sprawling complexes where entire families will live, they are not just for meditative monks.

Men and idols under a Bodhi tree, the same tree under which Siddhartha was sitting when he attained enlightenment and became Buddha.

There are also many places in Rishikesh that teach how to read Sanskrit, the holy language for Hindus. All of Hinduism's holy scriptures are written in Sanskrit. It is a dead language but the holy men of Hinduism only read the scriptures in Sanskrit.

A guru reading the Sanskrit scriptures who whoever will sit for a while and listen.

There are many places where I saw very old men sitting by the Ganges and reading the Vedas or the Gitas in what looked like very old books. These men are thought of as very holy men. The two holy locations in the area are Hari Dwar, which I have already written on, and Rishikesh. These two places each have their specialty. Hari Dwar is holy because of the mythological stories about its origin. It is the place where you go to perform holy rituals.

Rishikesh may be the place where people go for Hindu learning, but since it is on the River, thousands of people will come here to wash their sins away in the river.

The area in and around Rishikesh is where the ancient Brahmin priests would go to get away from the world to meditate for long periods of time. It was during the middle of the first millennium b.c. roughly when the Upanishads were written. Today Rishikesh is a center of learning and study and gaining holy knowledge. Hari Dwar is the place do holy rituals, Rishikesh is the place you go to gain holy knowledge. Hence all the Ashrams where you sit under guru and learn the holy scriptures, and all the places where you can learn Sanskrit.

One of the most prominent features of Rishikesh is the huge suspension bridge that spans the entire breadth of the Ganges river. Whenever you see pictures of Rishikesh you will see pictures of the bridge. This bridge is about the width of your average sidewalk. Yet you will have four of five or ten people trying to walk in the same space, and believe it or not while walking across the bridge myself, a motorcycle went right past me.

The entire month of July is the pilgrimage month and the holy pilgrimage color is orange. It has something to do with the color of the sunset and how the color symbolizes the going down into the river and then coming up as a newly washed person. Just as the color of the sky when the sun is setting and rising. So many people were bathing it was extremely crowded. A lot of people have a lot that they need to cleanse in the their soul. I am not sure they find what they are looking for though. The Hindu scriptures say nothing of absolution. Each of these people will come back and do the same thing next year with no sense of certainty that they are getting what they came here for.