The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
‘Peace and love is a good marketing strategy’
It’s not always this quiet at the Last Chance Café. Just up the road, after all, is the Beatles Ashram where, 50 years ago this month, the group famously came to explore transcendental meditation with the Maharishi.
The café has just two other customers – a pair of Western seekersafter-truth more than old enough to remember the Beatles’ visit. They’re sipping soup and doggedly seeking that truth.
“When the snake recognises the rope, you will never see the snake again,” says the man on the left, rolling what may or may not be tobacco. The man on the right, resplendent in a maroon turban, nods slowly.
“Illusion is like a black blanket on your head,” the snake man continues. “The only way is to accept it nicely and sit on it. Then the black blanket becomes a lotus.” He pauses. “Remember – no matter where you go, there you are.” He finishes his rolling and lights up. Smoke drifts over us. It’s not tobacco.
My wife and I, without turbans or black blankets, are in Rishikesh, the north Indian town on the Ganges often called “the yoga capital of the world”. Up in the Himalayan foothills, it became world-famous thanks to the Beatles’ stay and (with no undue rush) it’s now making the most of its celebrity connection. The focus is an intriguingly alternative tourist attraction – the remains of the ashram run by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a man with a winning line in charisma and a seriously straggling beard.
The band had met him the previous August after a lecture he gave in London. He invited them to his 14-acre retreat and, on a quest for spiritual enlightenment and a bit of peace and quiet, they accepted. John Lennon and George Harrison arrived in India on Feb 15, with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr following four days later. Ringo, who brought a suitcase packed with cans of baked beans as a safeguard against spicy curry, seems to have been the least impressed by what they found.
The Maharishi lived in an impressive house with its own helicopter pad, but the chalets in which the group were billeted were, said Ringo, just like Butlin’s. He left after 11 days. The others stayed on for up to two months, meditating, writing songs – reputedly as many as 48, including some for Abbey Road and the White Album – and eventually becoming disillusioned with the Maharishi.
The visit – which also attracted singers Donovan and the Beach Boys’ Mike Love and the actress Mia Farrow – became a predictable media circus. Pathé News sent out its cameras and filed a wry report on the Maharishi’s “top-of-the-pop pupils”. Sporting stubble and dressed in Indian clothes, they were filmed walking round the ashram grounds, occasionally waving to the journalists.
The Maharishi, who died in 2008, was described in Pathé’s clipped voice-over as “the man who through transcendental meditation is currently bringing peace of mind to the Beatles”. He apparently told reporters “that his brand of peace of mind could only be truly appreciated by intelligent men of the world with rewarding activities and high incomes”.
Back at the Last Chance Café – socalled because it’s your last chance to get a cup of coffee before reaching the ashram – the legends live on. “Many people come here only for the Beatles,” says Manjit Singh, the café’s owner, who runs an attached guesthouse with