This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amrisha Agarwal, a 36-year-old café owner in Rishikesh, India. It has been edited for length and clarity.
I was born and raised in Kolkata, a populous city in India’s far eastern state of West Bengal. I was married there, gave birth to my daughter there, and built a brand consultancy with my ex-husband.
But I’ve always dreamed of moving out of the city. When I visited Rishikesh, a quiet town in northern India, it was clear that this was the place I’d been searching for.
A peaceful mountain escape
Rebecca Conway/Getty Images
In 2019, my marriage was not in a good place.
That same year, my father died. After his cremation, I came to Rishikesh with his ashes to immerse them in the Ganges River.
My first impression of Rishikesh was that it was peaceful and pristine. It had really clean, fresh air, which I wouldn’t get in Kolkata or any other city in India. My health, my gut, my digestion — everything improved with better food and cleaner water.
As a woman, I felt a lot of freedom here. I didn’t have to think about what time it was, I didn’t feel unsafe, and I didn’t have to be conscious of what I was wearing. That kind of ease is something I had never really experienced before.
I couldn’t let go of my father immediately. It took me almost 15 days before I could finally say goodbye.
Something shifted during that time. I had a return ticket, everything was planned, but I couldn’t leave. I remember the taxi was waiting to take me to the airport, and I said, “I’m not going back.”
Building a café with no expertise
After I decided to stay in Rishikesh and moved my daughter and me here permanently, I had no game plan. I just needed a break and space in my relationship.
I had not planned to work in Rishikesh, since I already had a company back in Kolkata. For the first few months, I lived off my savings.
But in our rented apartment, I started cooking more because my daughter and I were missing the flavors we couldn’t find in Rishikesh.
We made friends in community spaces, and people started coming over to eat my food. They asked me, “Why not make a space and sell your food?”
That’s how Bistro de Lavenia started, named after my daughter.
When we started in December 2020, I had no expertise in running a food business. I don’t know what kind of equipment was needed. We started with just four dishes: two kinds of pizza and two kinds of pasta.
Amrisha Agarwal
Five years on, the menu has expanded vastly, with Asian and Indian dishes and some international varieties. We have eight staff members, and I’ve brought on a friend to help design the menu and handle the food operations.
I see Rishikesh’s effect on my daughter
Amrisha Agarwal
Rishikesh has been instrumental in my daughter’s upbringing.
When she moved here, she was about 2.5 years old. She’s nine now, so practically her entire development and early childhood have happened in Rishikesh.
When she got bored, instead of giving her a screen, I would take her out to the Ganges, to the sand, to waterfalls, for hikes, cycling, skating, and archery.
Her life has been built around doing things physically, being outdoors, rather than sitting in one place watching television or being on the phone.
Rishikesh gets visitors from everywhere because it’s India’s yoga capital, which is why she’s grown up meeting people from all over the world.
There was this one time she met a family from Russia in the café, and they were talking about carrots. She only knew carrots to be orange.
Then their daughter told her that back home, they had yellow and purple carrots too. It’s these kinds of things that make me appreciate that my daughter’s education isn’t just from books; it’s from real interactions, and makes her realize that the world is much bigger than what we are taught.
Rishikesh is changing
Rebecca Conway/Getty Images
Rishikesh has grown and changed from the peaceful haven it once was for me.
When I started my café, there were maybe five cafés in total on the main street, including mine. You would see a few lights from those buildings, and apart from that, there was pitch darkness at night.
Now it’s completely different. It feels like Rishikesh has grown a hundred times.
The biggest shift happened after the pandemic. A lot of people moved here as remote work became popular, and the number of businesses here suddenly exploded. People saw an opportunity, and everyone started opening cafés.
It’s started to feel like the city I left behind. I look out of my window instead of seeing the mountains, I see another building, and that’s not what I signed up for.
I’m planning my next move. I don’t know which part of India or the world, but I’d like to be someplace where the next building is at least 10 kilometers away, where we can really pursue slow living once again.
