SERENITY NOW!!

(With apologies to George Costanza)

After the trek I was in some serious need of recovery time in Pokhara. I spent 48 hours hobbling around the main street with sore knees and calves, getting sports massages, clearing my throat from yet another charming mountain-derived cough and hoping my blistered feet (and weirdly blistered swollen ankles) healed quickly. After I could walk without wincing I moved from the main area of Pokhara to a yoga & meditation retreat not far from the town.

This was a specialist yoga centre but not an ashram per se...from what I understand these things can vary widely in quality, requirements of its participants, and weirdness - apparently there's an ashram in India that takes a great deal of, er, liberties with its female guests for instance. But from my research this looked like a fairly sane, nice place to spend a few days...bit of yoga, bit of meditation, some vegetarian lentil dishes and a nice setting overlooking lake Fewa north of Pokhara.

Getting there was the first challenge - for some bizarre reason that to this day is completely beyond my understanding I decided to walk from Pokhara to the retreat, which was described as a "short, pleasant walk of about a half hour". It was neither short nor pleasant - It was hot, I had my 16 kilo pack on my back, and the last 20 minutes was up uneven cobblestones and a path that...well let's just say was a bit too much like trekking for my liking. So I arrived with my unamused face on, dripping with sweat and dreading the point where I'd have to leave and carry my stuff BACK down the hill. Why I didn't take a $4 taxi (which would have saved me at least part of the strife though trekking would still be involved) I am just not quite sure.

The initial stress went away quickly though and I joined the group for the evening meal. I was pleased to discover that the group of 5 or so (which was to grow to 12 before I left) were all very down to earth fun travellers and not a bunch of space cadets. We had our soup and chappati before heading to the rooftop to watch the shooting stars over the lake. Bedtime was about 8:30 because of course the wake up bell is a very rude 5:45 for 6:00 meditation session!

Because it was the first night of Dewali (the Hindu festival of lights) the centre was decorated with candles and mandalas, and we were given tikkas (didn't even have to pay for it!) at dinner. Unfortunately however Dewali also means that everyone is out at strange hours of the night singing at the top of their lungs and blaring Nepali folk songs through blown-out speakers. Wasn't expecting to have to dig out my earplugs at 2 AM during a meditation retreat.

So the daily schedule went a little something like...

5:45 AM - Wake up bell

6:00 AM - Pre-meditation exercises. This was essentially an attempt to help your body cope with sitting still for 30-40 minutes but regardless of how much I stretched, my legs still fell asleep every time.

6:15 AM - Morning meditation. There were about 10 minutes of saying "OM" out loud together followed by whispering "So-hum" and then mentally repeating that to yourself (in case you want to DIY meditate from the comfort of your own home). The 10 minute increments assisted me to space out the points at which I cheated to stretch out my legs which had inevitably fallen asleep.

7:00 AM - Morning walk.

8:00 AM - Nose cleaning. This is going to sound as strange as the whole 'drinking hot water helps you lose weight' thing of 2008 (which I stand by!) but it's an age-old ayurvedic treatment and - gotta say - my nose DID feel clean. The process is designed to, of course, help you breath more clearly and to fully clean and dry out the nose. The photos and video must be consulted for the full picture but it involves tipping a special pot of warm salt water into one nostril, allowing the water to drip out the other, switching sides and then doing a series of exercises to completely dry your nose afterwards. All told, though, you do feel it's a bit silly to be jumping up and down like a chicken as you aggressively blow air out your nose.

8:30 AM - Morning yoga. Always pranayama (alternative nostril breathing) followed by yoga and then what the leader called 'laughing meditation'. He played the same recording each time of people laughing and you were to laugh along with it whilst lying on your back. It was so absurd that you couldn't help but join in...

9:30 AM - Breakfast! Finally! Delicious...muesli with pomegranite and banana lassi

10:00 AM - Your choice of mud or steam bath. The steam bath was a 10 minute session in a custom-built box that you head sticks out of (I felt like a magician's assistant...). The mud bath was a long involved process of smearing mud all over the body, allowing the layer to dry, and repeating 2 more times. We were in our bathers on the rooftop watching paragliders sail over the building and wondering what on earth they were thinking of us...

12:00 PM - Pre-meditation exercises and another meditation session. This one just used the mantra "So-hum" in a similar fashion to the morning session. It was 12 loops of the 108 prayer beads in total

1:00 PM - Lunch of dal bhat - rice, dal soup, a few vegetable curries, pickle and salad. Afterwards we had a few hours to do whatever we liked

4:00 PM - Chai masala and popcorn

4:30 PM - Chanting...Yeah, OK there was chanting. None of these things were required activities but, in for a penny in for a pound as they say. We all joined in the first session and repeated 'Om Narashivaya' as the cook sang along and beat the drum. I felt a bit like I was in Sunday School....or that I was able to earn the next hippie wandering traveller merit badge.

5:30 PM - Evening yoga

7:00 PM - Dinner of soup and chappati

That's it - pretty easy day really. The yoga was challenging (especially the last day in which we were incorporating sarvangasana into surya namaskaras, which will make sense to those yoga aficionados reading this) and I didn't get very far with my meditation skills. But I came away from the 3 days having stretched out my tight trekking muscles, renewed my interest in yoga and felt a bit more healthy all around.

Shame I went and undid it with steak and red wine that night... I blame Heather!