Years later, John said, "There is no guru. You have to believe in yourself. You've got to get down to your own God in your own temple. It's all down to you, mate."
quoted from The Ultimate Beatles Encyclopaedia
Most often we travel to seek visual pleasure. We visit beautiful beaches, stunning architecture, mountains etc. A class above is the journey which we make not exactly for visual but for emotional pleasure, where the focus is not just to see and but also to feel and then enjoy.
In my 'feel' category, I will definitely put the 'Beatles Ashram' in Rishikesh on the top.
No visit to Rishikesh is complete without stopping by at the decaying 'Beatles Ashram'. Yet, very few people actually know about it and even fewer manage to find it. It was here that most of the songs from the White Album were written in 1968, after the band adopted Maharishi Mahesh Yogi as their guru. The ashram was later claimed by the government and declared part of the adjoining national park.
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| The entrance to the ashram |
The vast campus has since been reclaimed by the forest and the buildings are in ruins. Never the less, the fact that the Beatles were motivated to compose some of their best songs here, keeps the spirit of this place alive.
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| The main campus |
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| meditation caves |
However, the most exiting part of this campus is the recently added community art project - The Beatles Cathedral Gallery at the decaying Satsang Hall. A bunch of artists collaborated to create a magnificent wall art and graffiti installation and have given a new charm and life to the walls of the ruined hall. Following are some of the pics through which I tried to capture the spirit of the hall but I strongly feel that you need to actually be there in order to feel that creative energy.
