Meditation, solitude and silence in Nepal
I looked deep within my soul and all I wanted was a beer and a snog.
My alarm is the strike of a bell. It is still dark outside, an alkaline blue that is losing against the morning sun. I lay in my exceptionally hard bed and try to muster the energy to get out of it.
There is a second sound that tells me it’s time to move. A man draws phlegm from the depths of his lungs and takes several inhales. The noise reverberates round his throat and ends with a splat, spit landing in the sink. I’m glad we are not sharing a bathroom. The man is my yogi and he’ll be waiting for me in a studio overlooking the rice fields.
He beams when I enter.
“Are you relaxed?” he asks. It is five thirty in the morning and all I feel is nauseous. There was lots of scuffling last night that kept me awake.
“Absolutely.” I affirm. It is probably the three hundredth time I have been asked the question since I got here and every time, my blood pressure rises a little. I sit down on my mat and we begin to breathe.
When I told an old friend I would visit Nepal as part of a three-month trip, she gushed that I absolutely, indispensably, must go on this retreat. At this point I thought chakra was a spice, but had never organised extended travel before and was looking for excuses to book things ahead. I was nervous and wanted checkpoints for the road unknown.
What she hadn’t shared was that she there found spiritual enlightenment by starting a thundering romance with a hunk of a Norwegian. The website showed groups of people with lots of body hair looking zen and doing tree poses. When I arrived, I was the only guest and subject to a strict routine of meditation and chanting. As someone who needs to fill every second of time to drown out the thoughts of my own brain, I may as well have paid to be in prison.
There are three and a half hours of scheduled activity between wake-up and breakfast. With sugar banned, I meditate about my personal snack plans, smug at the thought of the unauthorised biscuits in my backpack.
I bow to my instructor with my palms encasing my guilt. It is only back in my room with daylight that I spot the crumbs, the hole in the net of my bag and the demolished packet. I quickly understand why I had trouble sleeping; it turns out that rodents want alternatives to ayurvedic food too.
Even if I could only share them with my tiny friend, the views were as beautiful as the schedule gruelling. There was joy as I stretched and moved my body in flow. I had a massage which to this day is the best ever, where a man smaller than I stood on my back like you’ve only seen in films. I squinted into a candle for an hour during a storm and had reflections I still remember today. I learnt that silence can be friendly.
But I also learnt that four days in my own company is enough. When I left, I was energised at the promise of having other people around me, yet to be known. I craved a conversation with a beer straight from the fridge that leaves droplets on the can. I wanted romance and adventure for myself.
If you retreat from life to find it, then maybe it worked after all.
