{"id":50272,"date":"2026-05-11T02:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/im-a-single-mom-who-left-the-chaos-of-the-city-to-raise-my-daughter-in-a-yoga-town-in-the-himalayas-2\/"},"modified":"2026-05-11T02:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T02:31:09","slug":"im-a-single-mom-who-left-the-chaos-of-the-city-to-raise-my-daughter-in-a-yoga-town-in-the-himalayas-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/im-a-single-mom-who-left-the-chaos-of-the-city-to-raise-my-daughter-in-a-yoga-town-in-the-himalayas-2\/","title":{"rendered":"I&#8217;m a single mom who left the chaos of the city to raise my daughter in a yoga town in the Himalayas"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e7a9a2367066d7c296f255?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Amrisha Agarwal and her daughter Lavenia.\"\/><figcaption>Amrisha Agarwal moved to Rishikesh with her daughter, Lavenia, to escape the rat race of city life.<\/p>\n<p>Amrisha Agarwal<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Amrisha Agarwal moved to Rishikesh, a town in the Himalayas, with her daughter in 2019.<\/li>\n<li>She opened a caf\u00e9, where she serves dishes to a diverse clientele.<\/li>\n<li>Agarwal said the peace and quality of life she found have been instrumental in her daughter&#039;s upbringing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Amrisha Agarwal, a 36-year-old caf\u00e9 owner in Rishikesh, India. It has been edited for length and clarity.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was born and raised in Kolkata, a populous city in India&#039;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.<\/p>\n<p>But I&#039;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&#039;d been searching for.<\/p>\n<h2>A peaceful mountain escape<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e7a398367066d7c296f21b?format=jpeg\" alt=\"The River Ganges runs through the town on March 16, 2024 in Rishikesh, India.\"\/><figcaption>Agarwal moved to Rishikesh in 2019 to escape a difficult marriage and the city&#039;s rat race.<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca Conway\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In 2019, my marriage was not in a good place.<\/p>\n<p>That same year, my father died. After his cremation, I came to Rishikesh with his ashes to immerse them in the Ganges River.<\/p>\n<p>My first impression of Rishikesh was that it was peaceful and pristine. It had really clean, fresh air, which I wouldn&#039;t get in Kolkata or any other city in India. My health, my gut, my digestion \u2014 everything improved with better food and cleaner water.<\/p>\n<p>As a woman, I felt a lot of freedom here. I didn&#039;t have to think about what time it was, I didn&#039;t feel unsafe, and I didn&#039;t have to be conscious of what I was wearing. That kind of ease is something I had never really experienced before.<\/p>\n<p>I couldn&#039;t let go of my father immediately. It took me almost 15 days before I could finally say goodbye.<\/p>\n<p>Something shifted during that time. I had a return ticket, everything was planned, but I couldn&#039;t leave. I remember the taxi was waiting to take me to the airport, and I said, &quot;I&#039;m not going back.&quot;<\/p>\n<h2>Building a caf\u00e9 with no expertise<\/h2>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>But in our rented apartment, I started cooking more because my daughter and I were missing the flavors we couldn&#039;t find in Rishikesh.<\/p>\n<p>We made friends in community spaces, and people started coming over to eat my food. They asked me, &quot;Why not make a space and sell your food?&quot;<\/p>\n<p>That&#039;s how Bistro de Lavenia started, named after my daughter.<\/p>\n<p>When we started in December 2020, I had no expertise in running a food business. I don&#039;t know what kind of equipment was needed. We started with just four dishes: two kinds of pizza and two kinds of pasta.<\/p>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e7a1a7367066d7c296f20c?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Amrisha&#039;s caf\u00e9 now sells a variety of dishes from around the world.\"\/><figcaption>Amrisha&#039;s caf\u00e9 now sells a variety of dishes from around the world.<\/p>\n<p>Amrisha Agarwal<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Five years on, the menu has expanded vastly, with Asian and Indian dishes and some international varieties. We have eight staff members, and I&#039;ve brought on a friend to help design the menu and handle the food operations.<\/p>\n<h2>I see Rishikesh&#039;s effect on my daughter<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69e7a242367066d7c296f210?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Amrisha&#039;s daughter, Lavenia.\"\/><figcaption>Amrisha&#039;s daughter, Lavenia, has grown up in Rishikesh.<\/p>\n<p>Amrisha Agarwal<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Rishikesh has been instrumental in my daughter&#039;s upbringing.<\/p>\n<p>When she moved here, she was about 2.5 years old. She&#039;s nine now, so practically her entire development and early childhood have happened in Rishikesh.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>Her life has been built around doing things physically, being outdoors, rather than sitting in one place watching television or being on the phone.<\/p>\n<p>Rishikesh gets visitors from everywhere because it&#039;s India&#039;s yoga capital, which is why she&#039;s grown up meeting people from all over the world.<\/p>\n<p>There was this one time she met a family from Russia in the caf\u00e9, and they were talking about carrots. She only knew carrots to be orange.<\/p>\n<p>Then their daughter told her that back home, they had yellow and purple carrots too. It&#039;s these kinds of things that make me appreciate that my daughter&#039;s education isn&#039;t just from books; it&#039;s from real interactions, and makes her realize that the world is much bigger than what we are taught.<\/p>\n<h2>Rishikesh is changing<\/h2>\n<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/69f97945405e0cf89dc8705f?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Rishikesh, India&#039;s yoga capital, is getting more crowded.\"\/><figcaption>Rishikesh, India&#039;s yoga capital, is getting more crowded.<\/p>\n<p>Rebecca Conway\/Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Rishikesh has grown and changed from the peaceful haven it once was for me.<\/p>\n<p>When I started my caf\u00e9, there were maybe five caf\u00e9s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Now it&#039;s completely different. It feels like Rishikesh has grown a hundred times.<\/p>\n<p>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 caf\u00e9s.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;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&#039;s not what I signed up for.<\/p>\n<p>I&#039;m planning my next move. I don&#039;t know which part of India or the world, but I&#039;d like to be someplace where the next building is at least 10 kilometers away, where we can really pursue slow living once again.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Amrisha Agarwal moved to Rishikesh with her daughter, Lavenia, to escape the rat race of city life. Amrisha Agarwal Amrisha Agarwal moved to Rishikesh, a town in the Himalayas, with her daughter in 2019. She opened a caf\u00e9, where she serves dishes to a diverse clientele. Agarwal said the peace and quality of life she [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50272","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50272\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}