Traveling in Style with A Police Escort at the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh

Last Updated on April 13, 2024 by Adam Watts

Read on for an account of our police escort at the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh. But first, some preamble.

Traffic in India is, and this is the official diagnosis, completely insane. From rattling rickshaws to maniac mopeds to carefree cows, any urban sprawl in India is chock full of…stuff. I reluctantly admit that most of it has purpose, but more often than not it feels like everyone and everything exists just to be in your way. Thankfully, on our afternoon visiting Rishikesh from Dehradun, we had a police escort who cleared the roads pretty effectively. Apart from the cows. Unlike people, no amount of detailed paperwork or heavy weaponry can get a cow off the road in India.

We were staying with my better half’s aunt and uncle in Dehradun, at the base of the Himalayas in northern India. They both work for the police and arranged a car and driver for us, accompanied by a few other police cars and officers, depending on whatever district lines we occupied at any given moment. The two of us, plus two cousins of my better half, set off in the early afternoon, driving an hour or more along these winding but smooth roads of Uttarakhand. Our previous stop had been fog-shrouded Delhi, so we appreciated the trees and hills all around us, just as groups of pigs were appreciating the piles of trash by the side of the road that exist seemingly everywhere in India that people do.

After we arrived in Rishikesh, on the banks of the Ganga, we waited a few minutes until our police escort had commandeered a boat for us. I assume a financial arrangement was involved and not just a flash of a badge and a “Give us your boat, punks, or else,” but either way, the four of us got a private boat ride just to cross the river.

As an interesting aside, Rishikesh is the point at which the Ganga emerges from the mountains and then debouches onto the Gangetic Plain, which, despite sounding like something you really wouldn’t want your doctor to ever bring up, means the place where runoff from a small, confined space emerges into a larger, broader space. Which is kinda cool.

Inside the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh

After crossing the river, we headed to the Beatles Ashram, more properly known as Chaurasi Kutia, meaning “84 huts” in Hindi. During the 1960s and 70s, as the International Academy of Meditation, it was the training centre for students of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who devised the Transcendental Meditation technique. Since the 1990s it’s been abandoned and since 2015 open to tourists to explore and take photos. So we did.

After telling my dad about our visit to the ashram made internationally famous by The Beatles, a band who have had more impact on music than arguably anyone else, and a band you’ve definitely heard of, he demanded to know, “what about Donovan?” What about Donovan indeed. Donovan also visited Rishikesh at the same time as The Beatles, but there the similarities end. For those unaware, Donovan is a Scottish singer who managed no number one songs in the UK charts, and one solitary single at the top of the US charts for a whopping one week. With accolades like that, it’s an absolute travesty that the Beatles Ashram isn’t known as the Donovan Ashram. Sorry dad.

We spent 45 minutes or so checking out the abandoned buildings that make up the Beatles ashram in Rishikesh, wandering in and out of the many structures that served various purposes for the people that stayed here. Everything has long since fallen into disrepair, and we climbed to the top of one of the accommodation blocks with light steps and fear in our hearts at the risk of something collapsing on us, but the dereliction, combined with the Beatles-inspired graffiti, provided a certain charm.

There’s also a sad sort of museum/exhibition attached to the place, which was opened to us after our police escort decided it should be opened for us. Inside were photographs and captions of notable residents and events in the history of the International Academy of Meditation. At least that’s what I guessed they were. I wasn’t sure until our police escort shined phone flashlights over the walls of this dingy room in a helpful-but-apologetic kind of way.

The Ganga Aarti

If you’re in Rishikesh, definitely don’t miss the evening Ganga aarti, which is a ritual of worshipping the Ganga as a source of life. As the setting sun’s rays reflected off the the river in front of us, Saffron-robed disciples sang bhajans (devotional songs) led by the guru. Variously-shaped lamps were lit and passed out to the crowd to raise and swing in the air. Finally, after a speech and prayer, the crowd dispersed, some of us to float our diya (a flower bowl with a wick lamp) down river, trying not to accidentally slip and fall head first into the water. Despite the daily prayers and rituals proclaiming the Ganga as a source of life, I’m pretty sure she’d be just as happy to whisk clumsy morons to their death. Especially me.

After the aarti with its calming prayers, we traipsed with the packed crowds and mopeds back across the river via the Lakshman Jhula, a suspension bridge that defies physics by being about one foot wide and accommodating two lanes of pedestrian traffic and a whole bunch of mopeds at any given point. Also it wobbled more than I’d like. Also it was really dark now. Also cows.

But thankfully our police escort was still with us. On the other side of the bridge, we headed to a guest house to freshen up and drink some masala chai that was more black pepper than chai. Then it was time to drive back, the police escort ahead of us with its sirens blaring making sure we made quick progress.

Our visit to the Beatles Ashram in Rishikesh, complete with Ganga aarti, was a lot of fun, not least because we got to travel with a police escort. It’s not everywhere we get to travel in so much style!

Before you go, if you’re in India, or planning a trip to India, don’t miss Jaipur’s Amber Fort!

And for more stories about traveling with police, read about my time in El Salvador here.