I wanted to see Rishikesh where the Beatles stayed with the Maharishi . . .

I'm wedged into the third-row seat of an SUV between two young girls, Israeli soldiers, and three other young Israeli soldiers, my partner and a Sikh driver with his turban. We're in the Pajar Ganj in New Delhi at a traffic light on the way to Rishikesh when there's a knock at the window.

I see a hand with long fingernails painted red and lots of bangles up the forearm. It's a he /she, a Hijra, India's third gender. The Sikh driver rolls the window down, drops some coins into her palm and we’re on our way to Rishikesh.  

Want to learn more about the trip from New Delhi to Rishikesh, the James Bond movie set in Rishikesh and how we got out of Rishikesh? Listen to my podcast, Bollywood and Books - Episode 6.

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Rishikesh Transcript

[00:00:29] Pedestrians will push you out of the way. And beggars will tear at your clothes as well as your heart. If you're on a train or a bus, then anything goes. Just get out of the way. Shove or be shoved. Your survival depends upon being in the moment. And that goes for just about any place or any time in one's life. Be here now.

[00:01:15] There were two places I wanted to visit before we traveled to Varkala - one was to see the Taj Mahal and the other was to visit Rishikesh where the Beatles stayed with the Maharishi.

[00:01:51] One of the articles caught my attention because it was about a young Canadian who'd received a dear John letter. His heart was broken. He went off to India just to try to sort himself out and found himself in Rishikesh at the same time as the Beatles.

[00:02:49] And especially to Rishikesh - just how difficult it was just to get there from New Delhi in the first place.

[00:03:31] We always tried to avoid buying tickets at the hotels where we stayed, because we knew we would get ripped off, but we were desperate. I had made hotel reservations at a place that looked like it might be a good spot for us to stay. The reviews looked okay.

[00:04:40] I was ecstatic. I knew we had an eight-hour drive ahead of us according to the agent. He said it would be an SUV because parts of the road were under construction, and it was the last vehicle he had available. Who knew whether or not it was the truth. The only thing I was thinking was how much easier it would be on both of us if we were in an air-conditioned vehicle with a driver. While we'd had taxis with AC on rare occasion, a car and driver for a long road trip would be a first. It was something we'd never had before. Little did I know...

[00:05:20] Within just a few minutes, a young guy - not an Indian, arrived and climbed in the front seat. Then another guy came and climbed in the back seat beside me and my partner. I'd had to move into the middle - over the exhaust. Hmmm. A few minutes later, two young women and another young man approached the vehicle, and suddenly it dawned on me. The travel agent sold as many seats as he was able in the vehicle. Why had I thought my partner and I would have the ride all to ourselves? We all had to shuffle around.

[00:05:23] Of course, there was a festival in the Pajar Ganj where we'd been staying and we were parked just off the Main Boulevard of the old Delhi marketplace. The traffic was godawful as the driver would his way through alleys and back streets until we were finally on a four-lane road although it was still in the city. Did I saw it was hot? Even with the AC going full blast. I was sweating profusely. My tunic was soaking wet. I was miserable, and I wondered if we'd ever get to the highway when we stopped at a traffic light in bumper to bumper traffic.

A brief explanation:

In India, those individuals called the third gender can be found in the Hindu holy texts like the Ramayana and the Mahabharata where hero Arjuna becomes the third gender.

The road was under construction a good deal of the way and turned out that our Sikh driver who spoke no English had a death wish. He drove like an absolute maniac weaving in and out of traffic around cars and buses. I finally closed my eyes when I couldn’t take any more of the driver whose apparent skills put our lives in danger. The last half hour of the trip was gravel and dust and not necessarily in that order. That was the road from Haridwar to Rishikesh. The driver stopped in the marketplace and gestured for us all to get out of the vehicle. Apparently, that was as far as he was going to take us.

So my partner and I got a tuk tuk to take us from the center of Rishikesh to our hotel. When we got to hotel which was in the back of beyond literally perched on the side of what had to be a mountain overlooking Rishikesh, I didn’t panic at the outset. I was too relieved to have arrived.

It was dusk when we arrived. The hotel looked promising from the outside. It wasn’t as spectacular as the online description, but it seemed to promise what I hoped would be a comfortable stay. It was a huge concrete structure much larger than most of the low rent hotels where we stayed. I reserved air-conditioned room for our special tourist-y trips to Agra and Rishikesh. I thought we deserved special treats before going to Varkala. After paying for a couple of nights in advance, we hauled our bags up the several flights of steps on the exterior of the building to the top floor. The balcony overlooked the city and the river. The entire top floor was a suite and it was to be ours for the next couple of nights.

We opened the door and stepped back in time … at least that’s what it felt like. The place looked like a set for a James Bond movie. It was a time capsule. It hadn't changed since the 60s. It was garish and exotic. It was a large room with marble floors filled with shabby but fancy furniture. The bathroom was Pink - all Pink with a massive pink bathtub. The bed was on a platform. At one time it had been surrounded by curtains that fell from ceiling to floor but there was one frayed curtain hanging and empty tracks on the ceiling for the missing curtains. It must have been extraordinary when it was all new.

I couldn’t wait to take a bath in that huge tub - the faucets didn’t work. I couldn’t fill the tub with water. At least there was warm water in the shower, and that did work.

The next day as we walked down the steps for breakfast, we encountered a very large and aggressive monkey that appeared out of nowhere. Monkeys are a bit aggressive if they have been fed or are around humans a lot especially in a tourist town. I was terrified. My partner scared the monkey off and I stepped around the poo it had left on the steps. I noticed it remained there for the duration of our stay. The hotel employee (I only saw one) wasn’t cleaning. Then who was cleaning? And why weren’t they? So I was puzzled that the people at the hotel didn't clean up the monkey poo. I mean it was in such contrast to this exotic hotel room with fancy furnishings from the 60s and complete neglect of the building.

I recall that each evening a group of guys on motorcycles roared up in the evening and these handsome young Hindi guys, all well-dressed, congregated in the office, a little sitting room in a separate building - the older part of the complex. They stayed an hour and all left at the same time. The next night, the motorcycles arrived at roughly the same time and the guys - maybe 6 or 7 - gathered in the office for an hour and left as a group - the motorcycles all roaring off into the night.

It seemed very odd because it happened each night we were there. I was intrigued and I wanted to find out. So I asked the young man in the office why the guys were meeting every evening. He gave me a blank look, a wave of his hand and went back to his computer. What an odd non reaction. Maybe I have a wild imagination, but it was mysterious and intrigued me. I decided the key to the puzzle had to be money. The motorcycles were brand new and the guys were very well-dressed. It must have been a money laundering scheme. The hotel, which did a cash business with its guests, was simply a front. And there I was in a James Bond movie set in Rishikesh where the Beatles had descended for spiritual enlightenment.

It struck me as ironic …. Capitalizing on enlightenment in a way ….