Arriving after the long drive into rural India and down the remote dirt track leading to Basunti, it was a great pleasure to enter the beautiful retreat garden with its colourful flowerbeds with fish ponds and stunning swimming pool. Its lovely location, elevated on a peninsula which reaches out into the reservoir created by […]
I wrote this article whilst sitting on the balcony ( or Crow’s Nest) of my lovely room at Basunti.
The amazing support of all the staff, the food and friendliness made my second yoga course a delight.
The group was enthusiastic and focused and they loved everything about the venue, food, staff and the […]
The weather has been as changeable as the landscape. The receding water line creates new gullies between the swelling pasture lands. At the head of peninsula the lush green abruptly stops, turning the corner you are greeted by a moonscape of huge boulders of different colours and patterns which seem to pierce the heart of […]
The gates to Basunti swung open to reveal an oasis, we were welcomed into its core through the lush gardens teeming with bustling bees, soaring bird song and trees weighed down with golden pomelos and tiny limes swinging from branches like strikingly green baubles. The last of the season’s chillies clinging to twigs […]
Making the decision to come to Basunti as a working guest was one of my finest decisions – if I say so myself. Being taken away from the cold dark snowy nights, dreary rain and grey skies you can imagine it was a hard choice. So upon arriving in India and making the journey […]
Basunti: a flower growing in northern India in the foothills of the Himalayas, and the name of the retreat centre chosen by Sheila for a two-week yoga course in March/April 2012. Built about five years ago by David Butterworth, the centre is described as of ‘modern Indian design with European plumbing’. It is simple, […]
Mashed potato has never tasted so good!
After a hard day’s work amongst beds in the vegetable garden, surely the most satisfying end is to dine on the fruits of your labour; and nothing whips up an appetite like many hours spent on a veranda that overlooks deliciously inviting rows of lettuce, spinach, beetroot, […]
Our second day at Basunti and it’s 8.30am, a temperate mist hangs over the garden but the stretch of mountains to the North are clear and crisp. The birds are washing themselves enthusiastically in the baths and Sumna pads across the veranda with warm chapatti’s and omelets for breakfast. It’s already 23 degrees when […]
I had the very great privilege of spotting what I first thought was a very large pair of Geese flying over Basunti. Something did not seem quite right, as the necks were to long and they seemed to be bigger than any Geese that I had seen before. Forgot about this sighting for a […]
Mentioning how well the vegetable garden was coming along in the last blog was definitely tempting fate. Woke up a couple of mornings later to find that most of the beds had been completely eaten and the rest thoroughly stomped on. During the night a big male Sambar had found his way onto the property […]
