I arrived at Basunti in the dark, straight from Amritsar airport and yet to see any of India in daylight. I was warmly welcomed by Izzy, co-owner/creator of Basunti with her husband Dave, who showed me to my lovely room. I then crashed into bed without a second thought for where I was. When I […]
Although I know my downward dog from my one-legged king pigeon pose, I’m relatively new to yoga.
Yet even almost breaking my nose while attempting a handstand wasn’t enough to take away the enjoyment of attending a 10-day yoga retreat in the Himalayan foothills.
The Basunti retreat in Himachal Pradesh, north India, is set […]
Lucille Nesbitt-Comaskey, Jann Singh, Dorothy Morris and Allison Rudd-Mumford will be exhibiting their paintings of India.
We had the pleasure of hosting the artists – they stayed at Basunti in 2014, as part of a painting retreat and some of their resulting work will be exhibited.
The exhibition will take place at The […]
Today I noticed something fresh; the sound of the human voice floating freely in the air. There is little traffic, no hum of tall buildings. I hear children’s voices and women’s voices and the men, too. Calling out to each other, singing fragments of song. Not competing with anything but the birds and the wind and the […]
2014 started with a mild winter followed by a huge landslide in the nearby village – trees travelling to new locations, opening new views of the mountains, new beginnings.
March & April marked the start of our yoga season with new teachers joining the growing family of teachers who are returning on a regular […]
Even after the daily depredations of the Barbets, Parakeets and Himalayan Civet Cat, we still managed to harvest over seventy Kilos of organic, Italian peaches, just from one tree. After sharing some with the staff, fifty were put in the fridge for later consumption. The remaining peaches were diced and put in the sun to […]
Rajendra, our truck driver friend, recently celebrated his sons fifth birthday with a big celebration in his honour. This consisted of producing industrial quantities of food and then feeding the entire village. The son helped serve the hundreds of guests that arrived, which is customary in this type of Pooja.
The meal comprised of […]
“The words of my book nothing, the drift of it everything.” Walt Whitman
I had a novel to write. It was neither burning to be written nor demanded by a publisher. But I needed to write, knew that writing a first draft was the toughest graft of all, so I decided on a retreat and […]
We recently rediscovered some photographs of Basunti taken in 2007, and subsequently shot the same angles again to show the tremendous changes that have taken place in just seven years.
In this first image of the main house from 2007 the walls are positively pink and the […]
Tour dates: November 13-25, 2014. (For information or to join, contact us via the contact page or on info@basunti.com).
Our 2014 photography tour will be small and special. Number of participants will be limited in order to allow personal attention from David Bathgate. It will be 12 days of touring and exploring with plenty […]
