Getting centered in Yoga Central

It only took a train that started from a station packed body to body with people, a bus that felt more like a carnival ride, and a jarring tuktuk to arrive at the circus of spiritual seekers that is Rishikesh: Yoga Capital of the World. The night I got here, the valley was ringing with chanting until midnight. There’s the city proper of Rishikesh, and then the spiritual corridor, shoved up the Ganges River valley north of the city, where the ashrams and yoga centers are concentrated. And that corridor is split into two: Lakshman (or Laxman) Jhula, the more backpacker-esque area, and Ram Jhula, where most of the ashrams are. The Ganges runs its own shade of blue-green and the river itself is mesmerizing. It’s difficult to not stare at it.

Not that we could see it in the dark. What we could see in the dark was a posse of people singing karaoke kirtan (Sanskrit chants) at a stage bedecked in pink and yellow Christmas lights. And a series of men at guesthouses that had no rooms available. I’d met a man on the train to Haridwar who was also headed to Rishikesh and searching for a place to stay for the night.

This little city straddling the Ganges is stamped with the signs of people searching for higher ground—temples, shrines, ashrams, the incense and prayer bead and other assorted accoutrements of the devout. The bookshops are predominantly spiritual texts. Street vendors hawk all the tools necessary to step your way up the ladder of enlightenment. Prayer beads and incense and books written by men in orange robes, some of whom must have started as those men I see in my walks along the Ganges, pacing its banks and staring into the water like they’re reading its surface, living in earth huts and shacks as close to the banks as the river’s regular flooding will allow, letting their hair and their beards go wild.

And yoga here is what trekking was in Chiang Mai; signs hung on every post and bare scrap of wall advertise for places to go, ways to practice, teachers to learn from, teacher training courses to take, retreats to attend, intensive courses to take, lectures to listen to. The city constantly rings with chanting and the much less enlightenment-encouraging blare of horns on jeeps and motorbikes. Forget Hindi, Urdu, English, whatever; the horn is the primary form of communication in India. Drivers honk to let pedestrians, cows, dogs, cats, and monkeys know they’re approaching, getting closer, passing, and have passed.

Patrick, who I met on the train, was here two years ago, and knew where to look and what to look for. We paced all over town the next day, and he pointed out everything from good yoga classes to the best place to get chocolate balls, told me the ashrams have filtered water and will let you fill your bottles for free, and gave the all clear on the street chai. Men stand at these little carts with a fire blazing and will bring the milk to a boil right in front of you. The chai is sweet and rich, sipped from little glasses, and the perfect prelude to a morning yoga practice. When the weather was cold and rainy those carts stayed open all day, as tightly squeezed together on the main street as Starbucks coffee shops are in Portland. Now that the weather has started to warm up, more of them have switched to juice, which is hand cranked through a juicer crushes sugar cane with lemon, mint and ginger.

I’m staying in a room at a guesthouse that happens to have a stunning view of the Ganges. I can lie in bed and watch the sun set over the water. And I have hot water. At least, from one of the taps. It pours into a bucket. The showerhead runs nothing but cold water. So the question now is, “Which would more greatly encourage spiritual enlightenment? Watching the sun set with my head on a pillow and bathing with hot water (even if it is from a bucket), or surrendering windows, outlets, and any hope of warm water and moving to the ashram at the far end of town that does occasionally have rooms open up?”

I splash myself off in the mornings, and then head to a studio that faces the Ganges for ashtanga yoga classes. The “sweet pain,” as the teacher calls it, I felt after the first couple classes is diminishing. For those two hours every morning, the noise of the traffic, the push and pull of people, and even, for a few moments, the chatter of my own brain vanishes. And that, I think, is the real point.