In 2019 my daughter Sorcha Fay was eighteen and disillusioned with the trappings of modern life in London and Madrid. She was drawn to the thin air of the Himalayas. For her it was to train as a yoga teacher. We travelled together in February 2020.

Fifty-two years earlier, four young men had gone to the same town for something not far off the same reason. In 1968 John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr were all still in their twenties and the most famous humans on the planet. The band they had formed eight years earlier in Liverpool had reinvented the notion of fame. As John had said, they were "more popular than Jesus". It seemed they had everything. But they, and George in particular, were becoming disillusioned with the trappings of it — watching their lives become less about the music that had made them want to form a band in the first place, and ever more about what they saw as vacuous celebrity.

I had been a fan as a teenager, George especially. I knew about their time in Rishikesh, but I had never known where it was until Sorcha booked her course.

The ashram is down a dirt track on the edge of town. In 1983 the lease ran out, the Government of India took back the land, and it is now part of a nature reserve. It has fallen into decay. It was recently opened to the public, although fans had been breaking in for years and painting the walls in homage to the band. I stayed for two weeks and Sorcha stayed for seven. We swam in the icy waters of the Ganges every morning. I went back to the ashram many times, and it was always deserted.

The ghosts of John, Paul, George and Ringo are in the cracks of the crumbling walls and the fading paint of the bungalow they lived in. Their presence is not a heavy one. There is a lightness to the place as the forest gently reclaims it and it sinks back into the mountain.

During their time there the Beatles had arguably their most creative period, writing the backbone of what would become The White Album and Let It Be.

Paul McCartney now lives between London and the Isle of Mull. Ringo Starr lives in Los Angeles.

On 8 December 1980, as the winter sun was sinking over the New York skyline, John Lennon was shot dead in the street outside his Manhattan apartment.

George Harrison practised the teachings he learnt in Rishikesh and meditated every day until he died peacefully in bed in California in 2001.

Sorcha completed her training. She is now a qualified yoga teacher.