This is my yoga in Rishikesh diary. Practicing Yoga here was nothing like the brochures: it was a daily grind that revealed the truth about yoga tourism.
This entry is part of my 90 Days in Rishikesh travel journal.

Practicing Ashtanga Yoga in Rishikesh isn’t just about showing up to a drop-in class. It’s demanding, physical, and often humbling. The best place I found for consistent practice was with Sachin Ji at AYSRishikesh, a respected teacher known for his disciplined approach and no-nonsense guidance.

I didn’t come to India to heal, find myself or go on some big spiritual quest. I came because I wanted to travel and deepen my yoga practice. That’s it. Rishikesh had the reputation, the history and a high concentration of teachers, so it made sense. I wasn’t chasing enlightenment. I just wanted to train and get stronger in the method.

I signed up for a month-long Ashtanga intensive, and from day one it was clear: this wasn’t going to be easy. We practiced Mysore-style every morning at 7am. Some days felt amazing and other days were a total mental and physical beatdown.

The physical intensity is no joke. It’s the same sequence every day. You sweat, you breathe and you repeat. Add the heat, noise, joint pain, unpredictable sleep and inconsistent food, and the practice becomes a mirror. Some mornings I walked in sore, sleep-deprived and congested. Other mornings I caught a rhythm and felt like I was floating. Either way, I showed up.

A full day included not just asana but also pranayama, Sanskrit counting, yoga philosophy, anatomy, adjustments and mantra chanting. I practiced through a sinus infection, sprained groin, tweaked knees barking dogs keeping me up all night, power outages, and 95-degree heat. Discipline doesn’t care.

The truth is, you can’t rely on Rishikesh to make you consistent in your practice. You bring the consistency with you. If you’re serious about practicing, you’ll find the teachers and put in the work. If you’re not, you’ll loaf around at cafes all day and call it a journey. The city will let you do either.

There’s a gap here between traditional practice and what gets sold to tourists. You’ll find serious teachers if you look, but they’re surrounded by cafes, branding and endless 200-hour TTC’s churning people out like yoga is fast food. A lot of the Yoga teacher trainings in Rishikesh are completed in 3 weeks! You have to spend a significant amount of time here to see and cut through the noise. There are many great teachers in Rishikesh but please do extensive research before coming.

Ashtanga attracts intense people. Competitive with themselves, hungry to push and eager to perfect every posture. I know, because I’m one of them. But this style — six days a week, same postures, strict sequences — can easily slide into ego territory.

My knees started to hurt. My joints felt inflamed. Sometimes the adjustments are too deep and not healthy. Many times, I caught myself wondering if this was even the right practice for me. I’d come to yoga years ago to heal, and here I was grinding my body into the floor.

Eventually I started balancing it out with other classes. One night I took a classical Hatha class and left feeling light and relaxed, something I hadn’t felt in a while. That class reminded me that yoga is supposed to support the body, not punish it.

If you’re not eating well and sleeping enough, your practice will suffer, plain and simple. It took a few weeks of trial and error but I figured out pretty quickly that wheat and dairy were wrecking my joints. Once I cut them out, I started to feel better.

A lot of days I was running on one meal, a nap and whatever fruit I could find. Some nights the dogs fought outside my window for hours. Other nights I was wide awake sweating to death under a ceiling fan, trying to swat a mosquito in the dark. This is the stuff people don’t post on Instagram.

Yoga isn’t just postures. If your digestion is shot and you’re not sleeping, the whole system breaks down. I had to learn that the hard way.

This wasn’t some dreamy yoga fantasy. It was real, It was sweaty and It was hard. And it was one of the most valuable experiences I’ve had as a practitioner. Don’t let these instagram posts give you the wrong impression.