First Day Off! -Exploring Rishikesh

The last two days were pretty cold and rainy. But it was beautiful falling asleep with the rain and waking up having a cup hot Indian chai tea watching the rain nourish the ground.

Today the sun is back out and shining onto my face while I’m writing this post. I really started to appreciate and love the early mornings here. Waking up at 5:30 am would have never been imaginable not even in my wildest dreams :) haha

But as you can see, things and mindsets can change. These early mornings have become my favorite part of the day! As the sun rises and the birds start to sing, we have a 45 min meditation on the grass area in front of the river. It’s magical to see how it has affected me. I’m more calm, my focus is better and I am more disciplined with the things I have set my mind on.

The day before yesterday was our first day off :) we went into Rishikesh to explore the city.

You can’t believe how good it felt to walk for a day. Sitting in cross legged position everyday, for hours and hours can get pretty painful. Because something like chairs does not exist here. We have our yoga mats and that’s it! 

So far Rishikesh is the place I like most from all the cities I’ve seen so far. Many people can speak English. There are lots of Cafes serving amazing coffee and pastries. Also many shops selling incredibly beautiful handcrafts; from jewelry, to marble boxes and hand carved artworks. You’ll find a cow randomly walking around at every corner, and as in every other city in India, the streets are very dirty.

It’s fascinating to see how many power cuts India seems to have, not only here at the yoga academy!

But funny enough, as everyone is aware of it, they don’t really mind and always calculate in an additional hour for all services haha.

So arriving at a cafe, we ordered a croissant that was just in the making. He told us that it would be ready in 15 min. So we went for a small walk and came back. He looked at us and said, didn’t you notice that there is a power cut? The oven is not working. Your croissant should be ready in 30-60 min :) haha

So there we go. Now we had to wait one hour for a stupid croissant. And as we were craving it so much, we actually sat there and waited... but it was sooooo worth it. ;P

After we went shopping like crazy, buying beautiful cashmere scarfs, handmade artworks and looooots of snacks; as the food here at the school is very minimalistic, we went and had lunch at a cafe that I found on trip advisor. I can only recommend it when visiting Rishikesh. It was called the Buddha Cafe and had a beautiful terrace overlooking the Ganges river. The interior was very comfy and the menu was huge, from Chinese to Indian to Italien food. Pretty much everything you could dream off. It seemed like it was the go to spot for many backpackers.

The days here at the Sattva yoga academy are very intense. We have a full schedule, starting from 5:30 am and ending at 9:30 pm. The yoga journey and classes are physically exhausting and emotionally demanding. The food they serve is very clean. No sauces. Mostly vegetables. Rarely any carbs, other than rice and no meat.

So on our day off, we craved all the bad stuff. Fried food, carbs and sweets. So of course we spend the day eating pizza, falafel, dumplings filled with Nutella and croissants... actually pretty disgusting haha. The next day i felt the impact of it... I realized how much energy our bodies require to digest this kind of food. The whole next day I was exhausted. It was harder to get up in the morning and I felt tired and fairly weak all day.

Definitely learned from that mistake 🙈

Now we’re on to week 2/3. I’m Excited for what’s to come, the new things I’ll learn and the things I will continue discovering about myself!