India. The “mecca” for yogi’s & yoga teachers. At least it seems that way sometimes. This article is about my trip to India (much of which was spent at an Ashram and how the experience lit me up in a good way!)

If you are a longtime yoga practitioner and you haven’t been offered the chance to pay money to go to Indian on a yoga retreat then your yoga studio, youtube channel, or wherever you practice simply isn’t trying hard enough!

I had been craving and wanting and waiting for the chance to go to India.

For reasons beyond a yoga retreat. It had been on my mind for about five years as a “next trip” destination but year after year Peru, Japan, Iceland, Alaska, Hawaii, Costa Rica, Belgium, France, and other heavyweights won the rounds and I ventured there. But India was always on my mind.

It certainly wasn’t on my mind though this soon. After all it was mid December and I had a trip planned for most of February to visit Tanzania and Kenya and climb Mt Kilimanjaro, safari in Serengeti National Park, & explore the eastern beaches of Kenya.
That was THE trip for the year. No doubt about it.

It was mid December when my friend Amy and I grabbed coffee to help her plan out some marketing aspects of the retreat she was planning for mid January to India. As we sat there and I started to work on the FB event and some ads for her it dawned on me that “I wanted to go on this trip.”
But I couldn’t go on this trip right? Not with Africa right around the corner in February.

India had been on my mind and this trip seemed to be doable, affordable, & exactly what I wanted to do for my first experience in India.

I went. I am back. I have jet lag like crazy as I pack to go to Africa and I wouldn’t trade any of it for the world.

Traveling somewhere has now been beyond the sights and to do’s when you visit.
Below I share eight random musings and experiences about how visiting India lit me up in a way I could have never imagined and has me craving to get back there, and elsewhere internationally, as soon as I possibly can!

Without further ado…here are 8 reasons I loved my trip to India and why you might enjoy one too!

1. Life at an ashram.
   We stayed at the JIVA ashram outside of Hyderabad. I took cold showers, ate food with my fingers, and used compostable banana leaves as plates. My room was nice but completely bare bones. It simplified everything and reminded me that the things we “collect” in life are not needed. They are only things that will not go with us to the next stage of our souls.

2. Teaching kids Dr Seuss in English.
   These little dudes were smart cookies and the ability to sit down with kids and teach them a language not of their native tongue while also sharing the themes of one of the world’s greatest writers was an experience I’ll never forget.

3. Tuk Tuk races in Hyderabad.
   Look Hyderabad India is a small city there but it is a population of 11 MILLION PEOPLE. That’s 2.4 million more than New York City folks. Flying down the street with friends going to a park in two tuk tuks the drivers viewed it as a race to see who would arrive at the park first. I have ridden in tuk tuks before but to be streamlining through a sprawling city of 11 million people was something that would be hard to replicate.

4. Doing yoga pre dawn outside with our group and having the sunrise as the asana class went on.
   It’s hard to recreate or describe the simple peace one can feel at 615am by moving their body and breathing as a community. But it happened every day and I was always ready to go get on the mat and experience it as a group!

5. Visiting the Ghandi Museum.
   Ahhhhhhh…do humans get any better than Ghandi? I mean maybe MLK Jr or Nelson Mandela but at that point it’s unfair to pick one over the other. Getting to take a deep dive into the life and times of extraordinary peaceful leader was amazing.

6. Connecting with visually impaired young adults and just having conversations with them. These young men and women just wanted to talk about life in America, Justin Bieber, and more. One told me our 40 minute chat was the greatest thing that had happened to him that week and he was full of joy as a result of that. Try to beat the feeling you get when someone says that to you?

7. The friends.
   Our group was amazing. All 9 folks clicked and connected in a way I’ve never seen in a group. From long walks behind pad locked restaurants into kitchens to hikes that had us squeezing through broken chain linked fences to drumming and chanting to nursing people back to health with terrible processed American food to sharing our own previous stories of traveling and the world and our yearnings for the future. It will be hard to replicate a group like that. I should have expected that from what I know about my friend Amy. She knows amazing people all over the place.

8. Getting a haircut at an Indian barber shop.
   While listening to high volume Indian rap music and relying on my friend Sachin to interpret to the barber what kind of haircut I wanted.
   SO GOOOOOD!

One of my friends told me the other night how happy I looked and how full of light I appeared when they saw me the day after returning from my trip. It wasn’t a bucket list check off that made me feel that good. It was random musings like the ones above repeated and shifted every single day of the trip.

I got delayed by 48 hours to getting to India via DC. My friend Jo Jo said maybe it was exactly what I needed to drop in to a place of humility when I did arrive.
As always she was right. I am humbled by my experience and changed for the better.

India was joyful, sad, busy, slow, chaotic, unique, authentic, disorganized, lovely, scary, turbulent, bustling, and more all in one. Actually most days this was all experienced every few hours or so.

The next time you aren’t sure if you can fit in a trip around the world try to think about all the gains you potentially have to get. If you really think about it I bet your bags will be packed!

Because Adventure Feeds the Soul,

Mike R