Beatles Ashram (Chaurasi Kutia), Rishikesh

The Beatles Ashram is Chaurasi Kutia, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's former meditation academy on the east bank of the Ganges at Swargashram, Rishikesh. The Beatles came here in February 1968 and wrote many of the songs for the White Album. The Uttarakhand Forest Department reopened the ruined site to ticketed visitors in December 2015.

An academy built on forest land

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi leased this hillside from the Uttar Pradesh forestry department in 1961. The American heiress Doris Duke gave US$100,000 toward the buildings, and the place ran as the International Academy of Meditation. Its Hindi name, Chaurasi Kutia, means "84 huts", after the small meditation cells scattered across the grounds.

Who stayed, and for how long

The Beatles did not arrive together, and they did not leave together.

Starr managed about ten days. Lennon and Harrison stayed nearly two months and left on bad terms with the Maharishi, over allegations of misconduct that Harrison and McCartney later said were unfounded. Donovan, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, the flautist Paul Horn and the actress Mia Farrow were also on the course, along with about 60 people training as meditation teachers.

The stay was the band's most productive stretch of songwriting. Eighteen of the songs were recorded for The Beatles, the White Album, and two more ended up on Abbey Road. You will read elsewhere that all four spent four months here; the dates above show that isn't so.

From ruin to ticket office

The Maharishi stopped using the ashram in the 1970s. Accounts of what happened next differ: Wikipedia and Outlook India say the lease expired in 1981, while a 2023 summary gives 1989, and the dates for the forest department taking the land back range from the mid-1990s to 2003. What nobody disputes is that the buildings were stripped, vandalised and overgrown.

In 2012 the street artist Pan Trinity Das slipped in and started painting the empty halls, calling the project the Beatles Cathedral Gallery. The Forest Department opened the site officially in December 2015, a move Outlook India credits to forest officer Rajender Nautiyal. A mural project with several artists picked up again in February 2016, and a gallery of 22 photographs from 1968 followed in 2018, the 50th anniversary, when exhibitions ran both here and at The Beatles Story in Liverpool.

Before you go

Chaurasi Kutia lies inside Rajaji Tiger Reserve and the forest department sells the tickets, with separate rates for Indian and foreign visitors. We found conflicting figures for foreigners, Rs 600 in Outlook India and Rs 1,200 from March 2025 according to Wikipedia, so treat any price you see online as a guide and check at the gate. Outlook describes many of the buildings as roofless, some marked unsafe, on a 14-acre site where vegetation has taken over.

That may change. In August 2023 the Uttarakhand government announced plans to turn Chaurasi Kutia into an international heritage destination, with a master plan from HCP Design, subject to approval from the environment ministry.

For the band's home city, start with the Cavern Club, or see every site on the map.