Along the Away

a traveler's tales

Ahh happy days!

They go something like:

  1. Rise with the sun
  2. Morning yoga in an outdoor shala
  3. Enjoy an organic brekkie with fruits and yoghurt and pancakes and muesli amidst a table strewn with flowers
  4. Amble down to the outdoor meditation hut and spend a blissful 30 minutes being still
  5. Have a long hot shower in my private garden bathroom
  6. Read on my cottage verandah
  7. Tuck into a delicious organic vegetarian lunch by the pool
  8. Take a stroll on a bush trail walk
  9. Swim in the pool
  10. Afternoon yoga in the outdoor shala
  11. 1hr massage
  12. Sit in the steam room a little while
  13. Back to read on my verandah
  14. Is that the phone… oh yes thank you for the dinner reminder
  15. Organic vegetarian dinner under the lantern strewn trees
  16. Good conversation with beautiful souls visiting from around the world
  17. Sleep in a fluffy marshmallow bed

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Welcome to Shreyas Yoga Retreat. Oh God was this what I needed. This place is amazing, a true oasis to relax, unwind and recharge.

Although I arrived with a hacking cough still, the lovely staff arranged for the health consultant to meet with me; she organised a special tea to be made for me and for the steam room to have peppermint oil in there when I went in. I started to feel better immediately.

Shreyas is pretty magical, for one thing – whenever you enter a building on site you leave your shoes at the door. Whenever I went in I slipped out of my shoes and left them facing the door… yet when I came out, my shoes were at the door, facing out so I could slip them straight on. Sometimes, I only went into the building for a few minutes but sure enough, when I came out – the shoes had turned around…. and I never saw anyone do it. Amazing.

And the flowers. They’re everywhere, in pretty arrangements or just scattered around. On the table at breakfast. On my freshly made bed when I return from meditation. On the soap dish in my bathroom. On the sun loungers by the pool. Even on the trees… oh wait, yeah they belong there. But even on my outward facing shoes sometimes when I come out of buildings.

As mentioned in the previous post, I have misplaced the photos I took from the last couple of weeks of my trip (I did take a photo at dinner and breakfast on my iPhone (cliche much?) which is why I have those two). But here are some photos I pinched from the Shreyas website (which you should check out if you are in the area as I highly recommend a visit there):

My cottage looked exactly like this one. Maybe it is this one. Who knows, whichever one was mine, it was really beautiful inside. The blinds go up and down during the day by themselves. And the bed makes itself in the morning and turns itself down after dinner. It is a crazy-capable cottage.

Here we did our yoga every morning and afternoon. OK, maybe I missed a couple. Because of my cough… and maybe because all the relaxing one does does skates dangerously close to laziness, but I did go to at least one, sometimes two yoga sessions a day.

The meditation hut was fun – breathing, chanting, humming, and lots of stillness. And so quiet – in India, quiet. Pretty special.

My outdoor garden shower – seriously, maybe my favourite thing.

Can you just imagine the peace that comes from hours laying by this pool under this frangipani tree? Can you?

And that concludes India.

Say what?

Pretty momentous, but yes, just like that it was over.

Four months trickled into three then into weeks and then days and then…

I was on a plane.

And I was home.

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Sydney based, coastal dwelling. When I'm not at work I'm somewhere outdoors, or in the yoga studio, or at my local cafe, or pottering at home.

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