RISHIKESH
One of the oldest and most low-key ashrams on the Ganga, founded 1936 — no hard sell, no certificate-course upsell, just a working ashram you can walk through respectfully. A useful contrast to the commercial yoga-school strip in Tapovan.
The Divine Life Society was founded in 1936 by Swami Sivananda Saraswati, a former physician in British Malaya who took up monastic life and settled at Muni Ki Reti after returning from pilgrimage; the King of Tehri Garhwal granted him the land on which the ashram stands. Sivananda went on to found the Yoga-Vedanta Forest Academy in 1948 and author more than 200 books on yoga and Vedanta before his death in 1963, and the society he founded became one of the most influential exporters of modern yoga to the West, with branches later established across Europe, North America, Africa and beyond. Its Ganges-side headquarters near Ram Jhula remains a major center of Sivananda-lineage yoga teaching today.
