Aloo There!: Everybody's Got Something to Hide but Me and My Monkey

On Friday morning, Nadine and I set out for Maharishi Mahesh Ashram just outside of Rishikesh proper. In 2012, the ashram is abandoned and overrun, but in 1978 it was the home of the Beatles as they learned Transcendental Meditation. And wrote a number of songs from the White Album, such as "Back in the USSR," "Blackbird," "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?," "Julia," "Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da," "Rocky Racoon" and "Revolution." We didn't expect to get into the ashram, so we tried to bargain our jeep driver, Gopal, from the costly 300 rupee fee, but he wouldn't budge so we decided to bite the bullet and split the roughly $6 charge to go make our own pilgrimage - as they say, ob-la-di, life goes on (even if your pockets are three dollars lighter)!

Note the monkey sitting on the right side of the entrance!

Couldn't translate the Hindi that quickly, but there is a nice "No Entry" for English speakers.

Once we got there, Gopal turned off his jeep and wandered away. Considering we hadn't paid him yet, we figured that we might have not successfully garnered return fare, but for free we weren't complaining.

More after the jump...

We were complaining even less when Gopal led two men up to us, who promptly informed us that they would open the front door of the ashram if we each paid 50 rupees. We forked it over easily.

Our fearless leader Gopal, leading the way.

Once inside the gates, Gopal led us up the path, past where the brush was hollowed out ("That's where the elephants walk through at night") and up onto the roof of various decrepit buildings. Here's some pretty simple math: the view of the foothills of the Himalayas + the Ganges + Rishikesh across the water = inspiring.
Nadine pulled up the White Album on her iPod and we continued to poke around the ruins with Gopal's help. Sometimes, you just have to soak in the scenery around you. The architecture of the ashram would have been interesting on its own, but combined with the eerie loftiness that you automatically attribute to places that hosted the beginnings of cultural shifts, and the overgrown atmosphere from the jungle takeover, and it really starts to overwhelm you. It was crazy to hear Beatles songs that I feel like I've known forever playing in the locations where they were first heard - kinda kooky, but fun and exciting all the same.