Yoga and Meditation in Rishikesh

Met at the airport and driven to your hotel, then out into the city. Old Delhi first: the Red Fort, the red sandstone citadel of the Mughal emperors (closed on Mondays); the Jama Masjid, Shah Jahan’s great mosque; a drive through the crowds of Chandni Chowk; and Raj Ghat, the black marble platform by the Yamuna where Mahatma Gandhi was cremated in 1948.

Then New Delhi. The Qutub Minar, the fluted tower of red and buff sandstone begun around 1200 by the first sultans of Delhi; Humayun’s Tomb, the first of the great Mughal garden tombs and the forerunner of the Taj Mahal; and the Laxminarayan temple the Birla family built in the 1930s, known to everyone as Birla Mandir. On the way you pass India Gate, Rashtrapati Bhavan, the Parliament and the Secretariat.

A short drive up the river to Rishikesh and your hotel for the next five nights. The town grew up around its ashrams on both banks of the Ganga, and for decades its schools have taught yoga to people from every part of the world.

In the afternoon, your first class. Yoga here is taught as a whole practice: the asanas, the postures that make the body strong and supple; pranayama, the control of the breath; and the stillness that follows. Practised every day, it steadies the mind as much as the body, and the teachers will tell you that is the point of it.

Breakfast at the hotel, then a day given to yoga: learning the postures, the breathing and the order of a practice you can carry on at home, with your teacher correcting and adjusting as you go.

The evenings are yours. The Ganga Aarti is sung at dusk at Parmarth Niketan, the big ashram on the east bank, and at Triveni Ghat in the old town, where pilgrims bathe at what is held to be the meeting of three sacred rivers; either is an easy walk or a short drive from the hotel.

After breakfast, a session in which you put the week into practice: you lead yourself through the sequence you have learned — the postures, the breathing and the meditation — with your teacher there to guide and correct, so that you can carry it on at home.

In the evening, out along the Badrinath road to the Glass House — the Glasshouse on the Ganges, a garden on the riverbank some 23 km upstream, laid out in an old lychee and mango orchard of the royal family of Tehri Garhwal. Back to Rishikesh for the last night.