We are back in the real world after our six day silent retreat. It doesn’t seem quite right or possible to give a blow-by-blow chronological account of our time there like we have done for the rest of the blog. However, we thought we could give an overview of the schedule, an idea of some of the people we met, and maybe some particular highlights, as well as some of our photos.

Wednesday (arrival) –

We left off in the last blog with us sitting at a cafe in Pokhara, feverishly trying to finish the last three blogs and upload all the photos (a labour of love with WordPress’ software) before we made our way up to Sadhana. We finally got the blogs uploaded and set out back to our hotel to pick up the bags before getting a taxi up to Sadhana Reatreat Centre.

The taxi journey was a nervous one, with neither one us knowing really what to expect from the next week or so. Sadhana retreat was situated on a prominence of the hills surrounding Phewa Lake to the northwest of Pokhara itself, and we had a steep climb up some steps past little homesteads and tiny plots of farm lands on the hill side to reach it from where the taxi dropped us off.

We were greeted by a bearded, smiling, young Nepalese man at the reception desk who clearly was expecting us. We were both a little nervous and also sweaty and out of breath so we poured us a glass of water and told us to take a few breaths. I took this to mean figuratively at first, but then he actually sat silently with his benevolent smile until we had collected ourselves enough for the proceedings to begin. We paid up, and he introduced himself as Komal, one of the teachers.

Komal explained to us (quite briefly, he was evidently a man of few words) the schedule for the silent days, and showed us to our room in the retreat for us to drop our bags. The retreat was a large, 4-storied L-shaped building with a central courtyard and garden with a small plunge pool. Our room was on the 2nd floor, one above the yoga and meditation hall, and one below the kitchen. Above the kitchen was the roof terrace which featured a large, low, square dining table, and a covered balcony seating area.

It was to this seating area that Komal took us, and we met three fellow guests at the retreat. It transpired that they had arrived today but were here for the non-silent volunteer programme whereby from 10am-4pm they would be up at new silent retreat centre owned by Sadhana that was in construction in the hills to help with any jobs that needed to be done. Two of them, Arienne and Xavier, were Quebecois in their early twenties, and the other was a young man from Barcelona who hadn’t done a lick of yoga or meditation in his life. To our surprise, they were the only other people at the retreat for the next 4 days, and we were the only people silent.

The view from the balcony seating area was absolutely stunning, looking over the vista of Phewa lake and the city of Pokhara at it’s eastern shore. The lake was encircled by tall hills topped by small hill station villages, the Peace Pagoda, and a massive statue of Shiva along its southern bank. Directly below us, was the little village of Pame with its paddy-fields, grazing lands for buffalo and goats, and hotels in various states of construction. As we looked out, a massive thunderstorm blew in with terrific winds and then rain down the valley of the lake from the west, blotting out the sun and rumbling with almost continual thunder.

It was in the throes of this storm we had our first yoga session. The session was with the other teacher of the retreat, Drishan, a Nepalese man who couldn’t be far out of his teens and who transpired to be the son of the owners of the retreat. Drishan introduced himself and we started the session to the accompaniment of the howling winds and thunder outside. Drishan was a very sweet young man, and the session was well planned but relaxed and informal.

After yoga, we were straight back upstairs for dinner. Dinner was prepared by Bhavana, a young woman who worked tirelessly and with unrelenting enthusiasm and brightness in the kitchen, and who produced quite extra-ordinarily good food. We had potato paratha with a dhal and a stunning chutney that set your mouth buzzing with the flavour of it. So far, so good.

By now it was 8pm, and we were due the last session of the day. We all went back downstairs for a candle-light meditation led again by Drishan, which lasted only about 30 minutes. It was simple enough, gazing at the candle-flame and trying to still the mind and listen to the sounds of the jungle outside. Once we had concluded the practice, it was the start of Ellie’s and my silence. It was in this silence that we walked back to the room, and tried to get to sleep early for the 5.30am start the next morning.

Rest of the retreat –

We weren’t really sure how to write about this together so this description of the general schedule with some highlights picked out has been intermittently written by us both. Hopefully it still makes sense!

At 5.30am, the bell in the courtyard was rung five times by Komal. This was our only form of alarm, given our phones were off and in a drawer. We both struggled quite a lot with getting up at this time, having gotten firmly out of the practice since yoga school many months ago. I (Ellie) resolutely refused to fast as it is just not my thing and threw back a couple of our smuggled in digestive biscuits, and once we’d gotten into the swing of things we started agreeing (via written notes) to head down to the centre’s cold plunge pool for a 5:45am wake-up cold dip. After this highlight of the morning, we got dressed and ready before the bell tolled a couple more times to signal that it was time for us to make our way to the yoga and meditation hall.

Once we had assembled Komal led the first meditation session of the day. Sadhana is a word in Hindu spiritual practice that means “spiritual work”. As such, most of the practices of the day were Hindu rather than Buddhist in flavour. From a meditation point of view, this meant less sitting quietly and watching the mind (Buddhist), and more chanting, mantras, oms, and other altogether more complex practices.

The morning meditation was no exception, being a recitation of 108 oms after 15 minutes or so spent warming up the hips and back to be able to sit upright on the floor for the hour. Om (or aum) is thought to be the fundamental sound of the universe, and so the meditation was focusing on the vibration of the sound as you repeated it over and over again. Ellie and I were both much more used to Buddhist meditation but had done this sort of thing at Yoga School. I think it fair to say it wouldn’t be our preferred meditation technique (Ellie’s low light of the day – 108 is significantly too many oms and I never thought it would end), but Komal led the morning sessions with such quiet cheeriness that it was still enjoyable enough for so early in the morning.

After the omming, it was 7am and time for a glass or two of herbal tea on the balcony. We sat here in silence and watched the little fishing boats cut through the still waters of the lake. The fennel, cardamon and clove based tea sat in a huge vat on the rooftop balcony all day and was freely available, which was a blessing. At 7.30am the bell went again, and we were walked down into the garden by Komal for the practice of neti kriya, or nasal cleansing. This involved pouring warm saline into one nostril and letting it pass out the other to clear it (I – Rob – remained snotty as always, sadly), followed by a variety of increasingly silly ways to blow your nose to clear it of the water.

After neti kriya, it was time for breath-work, or pranayam. Pranayam was led by Asanga who, I think it is far to say, was the chilliest of all our teachers. Asanga set up the Sadhana centre back in 1998, but he didn’t radiate the same warmth that all of the other teachers and staff there did. He was perfectly pleasant however, and the simple breathing practices were only 30 minutes before he left the centre again not to be seen until the pranayam session the following day.

Komal took over from Asanga after pranayam, and led the yoga class from 8.30am-10am. We (well, Rob) were yet to eat anything by this point, so was probably one of the hardest parts of the day. The yoga was not easy, and Komal was an endless repository of challenging dynamic movements and still poses which he made sound pleasant and easy in his calm voice, then left us in for extended periods of time whilst coming around to adjust postures.

Feeling well exercised, we waited patiently for the bell to toll for breakfast prepared by Bhavana. Breakfast was a boiled egg with salt, and a huge bowl full of fruit and yoghurt, or fruit and banana pancakes, usually accompanied by a yoghurt lassi or smoothie. This was probably my (Rob) favourite part of the day after the four and half hours fasting in the morning.

After breakfast, the volunteers went off to the retreat centre up the hill and we went with Komal for either a mud bath (which involved covering ourselves head to toe with warm, wet mud on the rooftop then standing in the sun to let it dry before scrubbing it off), or a steam bath in a little wooden chamber that your head stuck out the top of. The mud bath in particular was hilarious, we were encouraged to help each other cover every inch of skin outside of your swimwear (physical touch!) including your ears, armpits and between your toes, and felt very silly standing arms out facing the sun to dry off. After this, at 12.30, Komal ran a yoga nidra session which involved lying down and listening to a series of instructions which was basically a deep relaxation exercise and through which we were more commonly than not fast asleep.

Lunch came after yoga nidra, and after lunch we had free time until 4pm. We weren’t able to read books, so most of this time we spent sitting watching the hawks circle above the paddy fields, watching the buffalos trudge out for their mid-afternoon dip in the lake, and otherwise watching the world go by. In addition, we would take ourselves off for our own meditation sessions, or to journal, or for a short walk around the grounds immediately outside the centre. It was only a few hours to fill so it wasn’t too difficult, and even I (Ellie, 99.9% extrovert on any scale) was able to appreciate that you gradually stopped reaching for something to occupy your mind constantly after a few days of the practice.

The bell rang at 4pm to signal tea, this time milk chai with spices, and popcorn. This again was served on the balcony and was a highlight of the afternoon. I am not sure whether it was partially the context of ending the emptiest part of the day, but the chai was possibly the most perfectly sweet and fragrant we have ever had. I (Ellie) had a page in my journal dedicated to things I wanted to remember to tell Rob post-silence and bullet point no.1 was we must make a thermos of this at home to take to work for the afternoon slump.

At 4.45pm we met Durga, Asanga’s wife, for chanting. Durga was clearly the spiritual force behind the centre and one of, if not the, most memorable person we have met on the trip so far. The chanting sessions would start with a talk from Durga, with some participation encouraged from our non-silent counterparts or us in written form. She spoke about connecting with the universe and a higher power in a way that spanned all faiths and was so moving. We both agreed afterwards that she was the first person we have met on the trip who we truly believed lived what she preached, and she had a warmth it is impossible to get across in words. She was a firm believer that love for the universe is not possible without love for yourself, and would include practices like asking everyone to write down the names of 5 people who you love and then explaining that all of our problems stem from the fact we have not included ourselves on that list.

We would then sing/chant – Durga knew hundreds of chants in Sanskrit, Pali, and English off by heart and was a talented drummer which made the chanting sessions great fun and a welcome chance to make some noise. There was no way you could be in her presence and feel self-conscious about your singing (shocking for anyone who has tried to get me (Ellie) to sing). Some of the chants were particularly catchy, and we’d all (including Durga when you passed her on the stairs) be humming them for the rest of the day. You couldn’t help but leave every one of the hours spent with her feeling moved and uplifted.

After chanting, we were back round to Drishan’s evening yoga session, dinner, and the candlelight meditation sessions which we have already described. After a few evenings of finding our feet, we again agreed in note from to wind down together in silence with some yin-yoga in the room. This is a form of yoga where you hold a much more relaxed pose, things like lying on your back with your legs up the wall, for several minutes, which definitely helped us both unwind. We borrowed a stop watch from the yoga hall and took turns to write down a pose on a journal pose, and then silently crawled into as far as we could opposite sides of a quite small double bed!

So that’s largely the schedule we followed! It got easier as the days went by in many ways, and the food remained plentiful and delicious. We both felt our bodies change perhaps even more than the month at yoga school. The classes were so much smaller and were clearly deliberately personally pitched to us, our 2 young and enthusiastic teachers worked together to keep the programme cohesive and certainly for me (Ellie) their gentler and more encouraging style helped me push myself far better than the more traditional-Indian-yoga style of chastising.

Once our volunteering friends left on day 4, we had several classes completely to ourselves which was lovely. However on one of the remaining days there was a private tour group from South Africa coming of 20+ people coming just for 1 day. We could tell leading up to this that there was a lot of stress from the team – that’s really too many people for their yoga hall, and they were also worrying about how not to disturb our peace, and possibly also that the group wouldn’t want 2 silent people hanging around. After some deliberation, they decided to take us up to their new still under construction centre further up the hill.

So, on Monday morning, we got to skip the 108 oms and hike up the hill with Komal. It was about 40 minutes of pretty steep clambering up some almost-paths, but it was really nice to get somewhat out of the bubble of the centre itself. This is a venture they are hoping to have as a purely silent retreat, and looks set up to eventually be huge and beautiful, but we got the feeling construction has somewhat stalled. Nevertheless, there was a small kitchen from which we were given another huge vat of herbal tea and we sat out and looked over the view for a while. Komal led the two of us in the normal morning practices of neti krriya and yoga. The latter was in the yoga hall there which is very much not finished, but still peaceful. They had a much larger and colder plunge pool there, built into the rocks, which made for a wonderful few dips to break up the quiet times of the day. Before breakfast the lovely Bhavana arrived in a car full of our food for the day and served us up the usual delicious fare with her usual huge smile.

Around 3pm were due to set off back for the centre as we’d specifically requested (via note of course!) to be back to join Durga’s chanting session – we weren’t missing one of those! We were informed shortly before this that we needed to make our own way back and also show Bhavana the way as it was a different route to the one the car drives. I (Ellie) obviously did not know the way – my sense of direction is incredibly poor at the best of times and on their recommendation I’d spent the way up doing walking-meditation – looking at the flowers, trees etc – not remotely thinking about the route. However we both had faith in Rob’s ability to get us home. His normal navigational abilities however were hindered by multiple issues – mainly that we couldn’t talk to discuss the options for the route, and also that poor Bhavana was there wearing little flip flops and we really didn’t want to keep taking her scrambling down steep rocky paths only to have to repeatedly scramble back up if we’d tried the wrong route.

After some back and forth this way, Bhavana, smiling as big as ever, offered to show us the car-route home, which was considerably longer but would at least get us there eventually. At this point the sky was heavily threatening its usual 4pm-downpour and we were all concerned about missing precious chanting! However Bhavana found the whole thing hilarious, she joked that the cows were mooing at us that we were all going the wrong way and asked what we’d have done without her – we obviously couldn’t talk to defend ourselves which I think she enjoyed too. She stopped regularly to pick out berries for us to eat or flowers to inspect and generally remained utterly unbothered that we’d taken her around the houses.

We got back to the centre with time to spare for a delicious chai in the kitchen (Bhavana straight back into chopping for dinner beside us) and without a drop of rain. We then came across the group of 20, who were an eclectic mix of ages ranging from 20s-late 70s, both men and women, it was hard to draw any connections between. We all headed down to do yoga together outside – the only space that could hold so many – and sweet Drishan fretted slightly about the threatened rain and that Rob and I might find the class easy. He’d placed the two of us right at the front as ‘we were so good at the postures’ (can you believe it! after the yoga-school-month of do-it-betters!!) and led a lovely practice for a group of extremely varying abilities which must have been a challenge.

We ended the session just short of an hour as it started to rain more heavily on us (although practising in the light rain had a special quality of it’s own) and headed inside for the famed chanting. To my and Rob’s surprise, most of the group seemed to already know most of the chants and seriously went for it during the session, with a few notable exceptions. To this day we remain unsure what connected them and whether they were a spiritual group of some kind, or if the reason that a higher proportion of them then we expected had some Indian heritage was an explanatory link or just made them more likely to do what ever this tour was. Had we been able to speak we’d definitely have asked!

The rest of that day passed the same as ever although Rob and I took our dinner to the dedicated ‘silent lounge’ so as not to be too disturbed. It was a little walk and a floor away from the kitchen, but lovely Komal came back to us several times for refills of the best momos we’ve had all trip with a sweet peppery dip – we’re pretty sure the group upstairs didn’t get such treatment.

The following morning brought, finally, the end of our silence following breakfast. It was definitely a strange moment being able to speak and hug again, and I (Ellie) in particular found it very emotional. Our voices felt strange and our throats almost immediately sore but we slowly started to catch up on how we’d found things. As we were waiting for me to stop crying so that I could take my breakfast plate back down without the embarrassment, Durga showed up on the rooftop as she said she wanted to be able to speak to us after the silence. We spent several hours chatting to her about everything from how the retreat is going (its been running since 1998 so has had lots of ups and downs), her life, our lives etc. She said lots of lovely things about our matching energies and it was generally nice to get to know her some more. From both this and some of her earlier talks it was clear that she was raised in a very spiritual family but had been through some very tough times with her mental health before finding the connection with faith she has today, and we were touched by her honestly and vulnerability. We stayed so long that Bhavana insisted on cooking us one last big lunch (one of the best of the trip – an egg curry with leftover breakfast eggs) and packing us up more of the boiled eggs to take home as Rob had raved about how much he loved the salty-egg breakfasts.

Eventually we left, packed up and called a taxi back to Nanohana Lodge. We spent the remainder of that day and to be honest, the couple of days since leading to now re-acquainting ourselves with speech and the world. It may sounds dramatic but it was truly a week of complete withdrawal from communication and reality, and it’s taken some adjustment to get back used to everything from caffeine to noisy restaurants to being able to speak to each other. I think we’re just about there now, and both starting to process what we learnt from it and want to take forwards with us into our lives.

Until next time,

Ellie & Rob xxx