Topiwala Restaurant

You can find Topiwala Restaurant right at the Bharat Sadhu Samaj near Ram Jhula in Rishikesh. We are in the Swargashram area, which stays pretty crowded with pilgrims and travelers walking down to the river. The atmosphere around here is always a bit intense because of all the people visiting the temples and the ghats. Our restaurant is a simple spot where people can sit down for a bit and get away from the sun. We don't have fancy menus or anything like that. We mostly just serve what is fresh that day. In the mornings, we are busy making tea and getting the kitchen ready for the lunch rush. It’s a lot of manual work, like peeling potatoes and cleaning the floors after the morning crowd leaves. The monkeys around Ram Jhula sometimes try to get inside if we leave the door open too long, so we have to keep an eye out for that. The tables are just basic wood and sometimes the fans hum a bit too loudly, but it keeps the air moving. People come in with their backpacks or in their saffron robes, eat their meal, and then head back out to the bridge. We have been here for a while and we know most of the shopkeepers nearby. It’s just a regular life running a kitchen in a place like this.