As I wandered through the crumbling meditation caves and traced my fingers over the faded colors on the walls of the residential buildings, the hum of mantras still vibrated in the earth beneath me. The Beatles Ashram, long abandoned, felt less like a ruin and more like a place in waiting—holding onto echoes of the past, whispering them through peeling paint and overgrown vines.
Only in India can you climb to the top of a six-story building, stand at the edge of a rooftop without a guardrail, and peer over at the vast expanse of the Ganga, spread out as far as the eye can see. No barriers, no warning signs, just the weight of space and air and possibility. Safety is less of a concern in these places—not out of carelessness, but because life here is not so tightly controlled. There’s a raw excitement in the risk, a thrill in the idea that the building beneath your feet might not last another decade, another year, another breath.
The walls, covered in graffiti and devotion, tell their own story. Some messages are from wandering seekers who left behind words in Hindi, English, and half-finished thoughts in marker pens. Others are just timeworn imprints of another era—paintings half-swallowed by moss, prayers that have settled into the cracks like dust.
The ashram even in its crumbliness is majestic, I wondered what it must have been like in its heyday, supported by all those famous people with deep pockets. The walls are pasted with images of its lovers, The Beatles, Mia & Prudence Farrow, Donovan, Mike Love…it must have been a beautiful sanctuary. The ashram itself, now a ruin reclaimed by the forest, still carries the echoes of that brief but legendary moment in music and spiritual history.
There’s a strange sense of peace here. Not the curated, meditative calm that polished retreats promise, but something wilder, more honest. A place where stillness doesn’t ask you to sit cross-legged with your eyes closed, but instead urges you to climb, to touch, to listen—to be present in a way that feels both exhilarating and completely natural.
I stood on that rooftop for a long time, the wind moving through the empty halls behind me, the sound of the river below steady and endless. For a place that many would call abandoned, it felt more alive than anywhere I’ve been in a long time.