Namaste North America! Matt from Boston here!
After an amazing week in Calcutta, we took a domestic flight back to Delhi and then a train to Rishikesh. We spent 7 days just outside of the city at the Phool Chatti Ashram, which is a silent yoga and meditation retreat. While having to wake up every day at 5:30am, the rigid schedule, and the speaking limits were all challenging aspects of the retreat, we all agreed that it was an amazing experience that we truly could not get anywhere else. Our daily schedule at the ashram was as follows:
5:30am- Wake-up bell
6:00- 6:30am- Silent meditation
6:30-6:45am- Chanting
6:45-7:00am- Neti Pot clensing
7:00-7:15am- Pranayama (Breathing exercises)
7:15-8:45am- Hatha Yoga (A gentle session of yoga)
9:00am- Breakfast
10:30am-12:30pm- Meditative Walk (To places such as a waterfall, or beaches along the Ganges river)
12:30pm- Lunch
1:00-3:00pm- Free Time (We were allowed to talk from this point on until dinner)
3:00-4:00pm- Lecture and Discussion on yoga and meditation
4:00-5:30pm- Ashtanga yoga (A more advanced ,strenuous session of yoga)
5:30-5:45pm- Pranayama (Breathing exercises)
6:00pm- Temple Pooja (A nightly ritual that involved ringing bells and warming hands over a candle at the temple in the ashram)
6:15-7:15pm- Chanting/Singing
7:30pm- Dinner
8:30-9pm- Guided meditation
Our head instructor of the retreat, Lalita Ji, was hilarious and a wonderful teacher. We will all be quoting here for years to come. One highlight was the 2nd to last day when we did “laughing yoga”, an extremely funny and memorable practice. We also met some great other travelers from all over the world, as there were 40 people at the ashram in total this week.
After the program ended we had 2 days left in Rishikesh, one of which (today) we spent white water rafting down part of the Ganges river! We all had a blast, and swam multiple times during the day trip and even stopped and cliff-jumped part way through. We’re lucky enough to have an experienced raft guide in Paffy, who took command for part of our excursion. Tomorrow we will visit the Beatles ashram, before getting on a train to Jaipur in the afternoon.
Look for pictures related to this post to be up on the blog tomorrow morning!