In January I spent four days in Rishikesh, during the coldest week in years. Schools in Delhi actually shut down because it was too cold for the kids to sit in class. We slept in an unheated ashram room, wearing all the clothes we brought to keep the cold out. In the morning we would get up and wait outside the chai wallah shop around the corner until he opened. It sounds like a terrible trip, but once the sun came out during the day we had a really good time. No yoga classes though–I couldn’t imagine taking off my three pairs of wool socks for long enough to step on a mat.

One of my favorite memories from Rishikesh is the aarti ceremony at dusk at Triveni Ghat on the banks of Ganga: