Saffron sacrilege

Idyllic Rishikesh, once the pilgrim destiny of the flower power generation, is fast becoming a hunting ground of dubious sadhus and new age yoga gurus looking for easy sex and a fast buck

Akash Bisht Rishikesh

Katie Fowler, a 25-year-old UK citizen, broke down while narrating her awful experience in Rishikesh. Only a week into Rishikesh and she’s already amassed complaints about the people. “When I heard about this place from a friend, I was so excited that I left my job and packed my bags for Rishikesh to attain spiritual serenity. But when I landed here, I was aghast to see the greedy shopkeepers who would go to any extent to swindle money from westerners. I was made to dole out exceptionally high prices for almost everything and have been continuously harassed by the people and the so-called sadhus,” recalled a tear-eyed Fowler. Her experience is no exception. Many other regular visitors bear testimony to the decline in the holy innocence that made Rishikesh popular.

The number of reported cases of chicanery increases proportionate to the influx of international visitors to the town. Pradeep Singh, sub-inspector of police, corroborates, “It is a fact that occurrences of foreign tourists being cheated by touts and thugs are quite common. We keep getting complaints and try to sort out the matter without getting them involved in the legal

rigmarole.”

“Tourists, if new to the place, should only contact authorised persons for assistance and should keep an eye on the thugs. Bargain in the tariffs of the hotels,” reads a sign board at the famous Chotiwala restaurant junction in Rishikesh. Warnings like these are also issued to international guests even before they land up in Rishikesh.

Rishikesh shot to fame in the West after the famous foursome of Beatles made a sojourn to Mahesh Yogi’s ashram in the late 1960s, the heyday of Flower Power – a slogan used by hippies in the late 1960s. The sacred city has all the ingredients of yoga, mysticism, marijuana and sadhus to make the heady concoction that drives a materialism-weary westerner to its holy river’s picturesque sandy banks. Soon hard currency replaced small earnings from local pilgrims as Rishikesh was firmly placed in the international travel itinerary of global jetsetters. Jostling with tourists for entry by the river banks was a band of sadhus and yogis eager to cash in on new promised earnings in the emergent yoga capital of the world.

Armed with a smattering of the rudiments of yoga and meditation, these charlatans make merry by conducting river-side sessions for innocent tourists. Ample doses of marijuana blow off any misgivings. The spectacle is one of pure hedonism: money, sex and drugs. Some ‘old-timers’ such as Leron Weitzman, an Israeli citizen who has been in Rishikesh for a year and has adopted Indian clothing, adorns dreadlocks and piercings much like other sadhus, caution the newcomers, but to little avail.

Drugs act as the grease to gain entry into the inner circle of tourist groups. Many yogis and sadhus are keen to seduce foreign women so as to migrate to the West and set up shop there. “Inspired by some success stories many youngsters have found yoga a ticket to fame,” says Gaurav Mishra, a renowned yoga teacher and spiritual healer.

It was not long back that Rishikesh boasted of some of the world’s best yoga gurus. Eventually many of them were drawn to the lure of easy earnings in the West, where holistic living was becoming a fad. Tourists are well aware of the dwindling of yoga talent along the river bank despite the swelling numbers of teachers. “Most of these gurus are young boys who have practised yoga for a year or so and do not know much about it except some basic asanas,” reveals Mishra. These young persons join the bandwagon to earn money, attract women and migrate to greener pastures abroad. 

“We meet a lot of these young yogis who try their best to convince us to join yoga and meditation classes at cheaper rates and many new tourists fall for the bait and end up wasting their time in Rishikesh,” says Jessica Adams, a UK passport holder. Adams has been in Rishikesh for six months and plans to stay for a year more. She has learnt a bit of Hindi and tries to converse in it to make sure that she does not end up paying thrice the amount of money that is normally charged.  Adams laughs, “I have learnt counting in Hindi and have been practising very hard to learn other simple words like namaste, bahut jyaada maang rahe ho and bhaiyya thoda kam kar do. Everyone from the vegetable ˆvendors to beggars tries to extort money from tourists and most of the new tourists have ended up paying exceptionally high cost for basic amenities too. One has to be extra cautious while handling these crooks.”

Rishikesh also attracts a lot of tourists from Asia who come in large groups on a travel package organised by a nexus of yogis and travel agents. They are charged exceptionally high rates and the travel package provided is in no way at par with the rates charged. Himanshu Joshi, a freelance travel guide, said he is back after a tour with South Koreans but was appalled by the arrangements made by the planners of these tours. The Korean troupe paid Rs 10 lakh for the tour while the expenditure incurred by the travel agency on the entire tour was around Rs 3 lakh. “The tourists were very shocked with the arrangements and wanted to know why this happened but the matter was soon hushed up by these travel agents,” confides Joshi. Many new travel agencies have mushroomed around yoga ashrams which try to hawk inflated packages to these tourists.

The crime graph against tourists is also on the rise and multiple instances of fraud and theft are being reported in the local media. Cases of harassment and sexual advances by yogis are so common as to escape reporting. The local police are aware of these crimes and provide extra security to foreign tourists.   

Despite these trends, Rishikesh is still top on the tourist chart.  “Such incidents won’t deter us from coming to Rishikesh because the place offers just more than comfort. It is believed that meditation in Rishikesh brings one closer to attainment of salvation, or moksha, as does a dip in the Ganga that flows through it. Rishikesh according to me is a stairway to heaven,” concludes Pedro De Melo Franco, a Brazilian yoga instructor.