This old man appeared out of the mist last night with over two hundred sheep and goats. He had just walked all the way from Dharamshala, Himachal Pradesh, and is going to spend the next six weeks camping on the meadows below Basunti, where he can be seen from the yoga shala. […]
Our spring yoga season (March, April, May, 2016) is nearly upon us and feeding the guests is an enormous responsibility mixed with much pleasure.
This seasons carrot chutney is ready to be cooked; 20kg carrots, 6 kg onions, 6kg tomato, half kilo fresh green chillies, 400 grams garlic, 400 grams ginger, one kilo raisins […]
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 […]
Finally got around to doing the proposed trip to the well. Decided to go by the land route, as the weather has been really unpredictable and it was not safe to take a canoe out.
My truck driver friend Rajinder, heard that I was going to his neck of the woods and insisted that I […]
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 […]
The Rangpurs, known locally as Ghumerees, are all beginning to ripen. It is a cross between an orange and a lemon. Looks like an orange, peels like an orange, segments like an orange, but tastes more like a slightly less tangy lemon.
The way the locals eat it is to make a paste of sugar, […]
Every morning at 5am, I take my cup of tea to the deck and watch the Peacock strut his stuff. His display area is amongst the Basunti flowers, on the meadow below the observation deck. At 8:30am he leaves, looking slightly dejected, all that effort posturing and calling and no results.
This morning he […]
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 […]
