After weeks of dedicated studies of all things yoga, Kimberly is about done with the 200-hour teacher training course. And since she already completed her written and practical exams all on one day, the only thing left is graduation. She moves her things to the Airbnb up the street where Dennis has been staying. It’s the first time we’ve spent the day and night together in nearly a month. Rishikesh, with its hidden waterfalls, unique traditions, and unexpected charms, is waiting to be explored. A great deal of the enchantment can be found on the same steep street where the yoga school and the Airbnb are located.

Hidden Waterfall

During the day, we hike up the hill to a little waterfall, the Hidden Waterfall, It’s a place Kimberly’s been wanting to take Dennis since she discovered it a couple of weeks ago. A calming susurration of water cascading and trickling down the rocks, into a pool that’s ideal for taking a little dip if you’re game for goosebumps. And a few guys are doing just that, in their underwear. Power to them.

At her insistence, Dennis has a consultation with an ayurvedic doctor whose practice is located on this street, as she had done. Arriving in the little office, Dennis finds the male receptionist burning incense, playing some kind of Hindi hymn, and indulging in some sacred ritual or other. After a few minutes he is ushered back to see the practitioner, who asks him some questions about health history, and prescribes a couple of herbal concoctions, including one for the minor kidney stones Dennis was diagnosed with the previous year. He is not as sold on ayurvedic medicine as Kimberly is, but he was willing to give it a shot.

Another stop we have to make on this street (well, at least that Dennis has to make) is a bookstore with a large selection of books in English. He’s always had a habit of accumulating more books than he has space for, a habit that did not abate when we were touring in an RV (or other vehicle). He’d been known to hoard enough of them to add the weight equivalent of two or three additional passengers. These days we do most of our reading via audiobook and PDF files on our devices, yet he still likes to experience the old-fashioned feel of paper in the hand. But since we’re backpacking, space is more limited than ever. So his overarching rule is that whatever book he acquires (and it’s generally just one at a time), it has to fit into a pocket of his cargo pants.

His particular mission on this day is to ferret out some novels by Haruki Murakami, a Japanese novelist of whom he’s become quite enamored. At first, his quest comes up empty, but then, voila, there is a shelf of Japanese authors with quite a few by Murakami. And he zeroes in on the perfect selection: an edition of After Dark. It’s the right dimensions, it’s very reasonably priced (about 6 dollars), and it’s one he hasn’t read. So he leaves with his pocket fuller, his wallet a little lighter, and his heart much happier.

We pass by a monkey hanging out with a dog, and one coffee shop that is currently attending to a curious cow. Another shop on our street that we’re quite enthralled with is a bakery that makes some exquisite sugar-free treats. Our favorite is a chocolate peanut butter ball about the size of a tennis ball. It has become a part of our daily ritual to pick up a couple of these every morning, before they run out. This is one of many intriguing little shops along this hilly narrow street that frequently sees women carrying gigantic bundles of vegetation on their heads, and cows making their deposits wherever they please.

Beyond Tapovan

But as richly rewarding as our own street is, there’s much more to the city that we have to see. On Monday, we make an errand run to the main part of Rishikesh. which is a you-can’t-get-there-from-here type of situation. Oh you can take a tuk-tuk, but this time we want to walk there, which is much more problematic. The road on this side of the river is not pedestrian friendly. In fact, it’s not even pedestrian possible. Getting there (mostly) by foot requires crossing the river twice.

So first we hike down to the river, which involves going down, down, down the hill, through the narrow winding streets of a neighborhood lined with cafes, trendy clothing shops and tour companies. Since there is no bridge anywhere near, we have to take a ferry to the other side, where we can walk on streets that we can actually walk on, to get farther down river, so we can walk across a bridge back to this side.

While we’re waiting for a boat, a very persistent lady tries to sell us flowers, and a father and son do a ritual bathing in the frigid water of the Ganga. Power to them. Personally, we find it annoying when people try to sell us things (especially when they don’t take the hint that we’re not interested) and we consider it foolhardy to plunge into the chilly and polluted Ganga. But the latter has sacred significance for the people who do it. And the lady has to eat. To each his or her own.

After a few minutes, the ferry arrives; one of our fellow passengers is a fellow from Wisconsin, who we learn is a former marine. So of course we have to pose for a selfie (threefie) with him.

It’s a very quick trip to the other side, and then finally we can walk along the Ganga, past spiritual-minded mendicants in vibrantly colored garments and ladies laughing and chatting around a fire, until we come to Janki Bridge, which will take us back across the river. Along the way, we encounter some of those unusual monkeys (the Tarai Gray Langur, a near-threatened species) that seem to prefer that side of the river, as that’s where the biggest forests are. One fellow has trained them to eat out of his hand. That’s quite a feat (no pun intended), as wild monkeys are both skittish around humans and aggressive if they feel their space threatened.

Tarai Gray Langurs

Back across the river, we run hither and yon in pursuit of several pursuits — including a followup visit to the dermatologist for Dennis (his toes are looking better) and prospecting for winter clothes for our upcoming jaunt to even colder weather, up in the Himalayan foothills. (Score, finally.)

We are out and about so long that we end up springing for lunch twice. To our surprise, it’s difficult to find a good restaurant open on Monday, at least in the neighborhoods we are scouring. Initially, we settle upon a pizza and hamburger joint — not normally our cup of grease at all. But this being Rishikesh, we at least can be certain that everything is vegetarian. Kimberly settles on a veggie burger, and Dennis opts for a paneer burger — a patty made from a chunk of cheese in a crisp crust. They’re not too bad, despite the white pasty bread, but they are not very substantial, and will not hold us over all day.

So later, we make our way to the cafeteria style restaurant that Dennis ate at on a prior solo trip, a bustling hive with the chatter of a crowded bus terminal. He wants to introduce Kimberly to the paneer wrap such as he had before — it was quite sumptuous, crisp on the outside and moist on the inside, and not at all too fatty. But this time the manager is not on hand to navigate the menu, and we end up ordering something that we think is what we want, but it ends up being totally different –and as salty as Utah. We’re unable to finish even half of it, and half to ask for to-go containers. Ultimately, it will remain uneaten, and be discarded.

In the evening after we get back, Kimberly and her fellow students have an outdoor party to celebrate the end of classes, complete with bonfire and dancing. The chill night air in the hills above the Ganga is warmed by the crackling heat of the fire and the companionship.

Tuesday is Christmas Eve. And while the locals themselves don’t make an issue of Christmas, they realize that many tourists do; and there are rupees to be raked in by catering to their holiday sentiment. One thing that catches our eye is a Christmas Eve buffet dinner, to be held at a hotel in the evening. So we decide having a nice meal out would be a good thing to do on Christmas Eve, and make plans to do so.

Newly Minted Yoga Instructors

While Rishikesh prepared for a quiet Christmas Eve, Kimberly was celebrating her own significant milestone: the graduation ceremony at Vinyasa Yogashala. For weeks, her life had revolved around the demanding 200-hour teacher training – early mornings, rigorous physical practice, and the brain taxing study of philosophy and anatomy. It was a journey that stretched her in every way imaginable, preparing her not just to teach yoga, but to live it.

The last time we visited India in 2022, we attended a 10-day meditation retreat. We’ve come to learn that India has a way of opening our eyes and teaching us to go beyond what we think of as limits.

The most treasured memory that she will take with her however is the time she got to spend getting to know each and every one of the other students attending the course. It was refreshing to be around so many like-minded people for an extended period of time. A chance to be apart of a community is a rare occurrence when traveling as we do.

She also has an acute awareness of how much more she has to learn before she will feel comfortable hearing anyone address her as Kimberly-Ji. Somehow this just feels like the beginning.

Christmas Eve in Rishikesh

So in the evening, we stroll down to the hotel. On the way, we pass The Beatles Cafe, which looks really intriguing. (The Beatles, of course, studied Transcendental Meditation in Rishikesh back in the Sixties.) Most of it is in a courtyard, with some indoor spaces tucked away as well, adorned by a great deal of trees, vegetation, and moody mood lights. For a moment we ponder the possibility of ditching our plans and just having dinner here instead. But we rule that out when we glance over the menu and see little beyond pizza and burgers.

When we arrive at the hotel lobby and check in with the desk clerk, he phones up to the restaurant to let him know we are on the way up. Then we board the elevator up to the fourth floor and the rather spacious restaurant/ ballroom, which is festively decked out with balloons, a Christmas tree, an inflated Merry Christmas sign, and so on. The waiter is wearing a Santa hat. But to our surprise, we are the only customers there — the manager says he expects the crowd to start arriving at about 9:30

It’s about half an hour before we’re served anything, and we’ve already begun to feel uncomfortable – a feeling that only will deepen as the night wears on. Finally the waiter brings us some pumpkin soup, which is outstanding, and not too salty. A few minutes later, he serves us some fried croquettes with cheese and spice in the center. Also superb, but we reserve a couple of them in a napkin to take home, not wanting to fill up on cheese.

The waiter asks us how the food is, though we don’t understand him at first, and when we fail to answer, he just cocks his head sideways in that quintessential/ stereotypical Indian fashion, as if he humbly doesn’t want to trouble us to be too frank. But when we understand what he is saying, we tell him that we love it.

Then the next course arrives: even more cheese (paneer) sauteed in a light curry with onions, tomatoes, and bell peppers (which Indians call capsicum). We eat all of the above, which again is quite tasty, even though we both are getting weary of so much cheese — especially Kimberly, who has made the mistake of probing family medical history and is now aware that she has a hereditary cholesterol issue to deal with.

The waiter then brings out even more of the same thing, but we wave him off, and he acts as if it put him off a little bit, almost offended him. Both he and the manager do quite a bit of hovering, making sure we are happy, and seemingly waiting to see if we are enjoying the meal. We assure them everything is A-OK.

Finally the manager informs us the buffet is ready. What we’ve already consumed is more than a full meal in our book — we’ve never understood how people can just heap mountains of food on their plates, and then go back for more. Anyway, we at least want to sample what they’ve set out, so while the waiter brings naan to our table — enough to make a hockey puck, so we wrap up some to take home — we investigate what’s on the long table.

There are another variety of soup, artistic arrangements of raw vegetables, and a pasta dish, all of which we forego. We do have a dal (yellow lentil) casserole/ stew, a some kind of braised potato dish, more cheese in a salad (we have some, avoiding the cheese), and some other kind of delicious casserole that we can’t identify,

It’s all capped off with a unique (to our palates) dessert, partly red and partly white, that seems to have been made from coconut and pistachios. Altogether, a highly satisfying meal. And throughout the whole thing, we are the only customers there.

After we take our photo with the waiter by the tree, the manager escorts us downstairs to pay the bill. We make two attempts to pay by credit card. but both times the error message says the PIN is incorrect, even though it definitely isn’t. So we just shell out the cash, a total of 1600 rupees (about $18.50). quite a bargain for such a sumptuous umpteen-course repast. We hope the restaurant really did get the crowd it was expecting — this is something that deserves the clientele.

As for us, in addition to this epic dinner, this day saw Kimberly’s progression into the ranks of the certified yoga teachers. Certainly one of the most unusual and memorable Christmas Eves we’ve ever had.

Events occurred 12/22-24/2024