Mountain View Yoga & Meditation Retreat in Nepal

The 7 day Mountain View Yoga and Meditation Retreat at Bodhidham, in Ghachowk near Pokhara, is a calm, gentle retreat for anyone who wants to slow down for a week in a quiet setting with the Himalayas in view. It pairs classical yoga and guided meditation with sound healing, nature walks, and time in the surrounding village.

The pace is unhurried by design. Mornings begin with classical yoga, the middle of each day brings a different activity, a hike, a sound healing session, a village tour, a counselling session, and evenings settle into meditation and a spiritual talk. The ashram has its own log cabin relaxation space that looks out toward the mountains.

It suits all levels, including complete beginners. It is a straightforward, restful week in nature, a chance to practise gently, walk, and rest somewhere quiet.

What the week includes:

• Classical yoga. Daily morning yoga with senior teachers, paced gently and suitable for all levels.
• Guided meditation. Quiet evening meditation sessions to close each day.
• Sound healing. Two restful guided sessions with singing bowls.
• Nature walks and a hike. Time outdoors in the hills around the ashram.
• A village tour. A visit to the surrounding Gurung village and its daily life.
• Spiritual talks and counselling. Evening talks on mindful living, and a one-to-one counselling session.
• An Ayurvedic massage. One relaxing massage during the week.

The Mountains: What you are actually looking at?

This retreat is named after a view, so it is worth being precise about what the view is.The peaks in front of you

The ashram faces north, and the mountains that fill that view are not distant scenery. They are close, and they are enormous.

Sunrise, and why the peaks light up first

The best twenty minutes of this retreat cost nothing and are not on the schedule.

Before the sun clears the horizon, the valley is still in shadow, but the summits are already catching light. Low-angle sunlight travels a long way through the atmosphere, the blue wavelengths scatter out of it, and what is left is red and orange. That light hits the snow, and for a while the peaks go pink, then gold, then ordinary white as the day arrives. It is called alpenglow, and in the Himalaya it is unusually dramatic because the gap between valley floor and summit is so large.

It lasts twenty to forty minutes, and it is longer in winter. Morning practice starts early here, which means most students see it whether they planned to or not.

When the mountains are actually visible

Honest answer: not always, and less often than the photographs suggest.

If the mountains are the main reason you are booking, come in October or November. There is more on this in our guide to the best time for a yoga retreat in Nepal.

The week explained:  The parts of the week, explained properly

Seven items on a list tell you what happens. They do not tell you what it is like, so here is the longer version.

• The morning yoga: Classical Hatha, paced gently. Warm-ups, asana, breath work, and relaxation, guided the whole way through.
• The two sound healing sessions: Sound healing here is simple in form. You lie down. Singing bowls are played around and near you, and you do nothing at all for the length of the session.
• The Ayurvedic massage: One full massage, on arrival day. Warm oil, worked along the length of the body, unhurried. Ayurveda calls oil massage abhyanga and treats it as everyday maintenance rather than a luxury, on the reasoning that a body that moves and travels needs lubricating the way anything else does. 
• The nature walk and hike: Day two, out from the ashram gate into terraced farmland, oak and rhododendron forest, and the trails between neighbouring villages.
• The village tour: Ghachowk is a Gurung village. The Gurung, who call themselves Tamu, are one of Nepal's indigenous peoples, and this belt of hills below the Annapurna range is their heartland, along with Lamjung, Gorkha, Manang and Syangja.
• The evening talks and the counselling session: The talks are informal, on mindful living and how a practice fits into an ordinary life back home. You can ask questions, argue, or say nothing.
• The log cabin: A relaxation space of its own, facing the mountains, and it belongs to the retreat.

Is this the right retreat for you?

 It suits you if

• You want a proper week away, but not a demanding one, and gentle genuinely means gentle
• You would get bored of seven identical days and want the variety of a different thing each afternoon
• The view is a real part of why you are going, and you would rather look at Machhapuchhre than a garden wall
• You are new to yoga and want a week that will not embarrass you, and would like to know what a first week at an ashram is actually like before you commit
• You want the extras included rather than sold to you on arrival, since the massage, both sound sessions, the hike and the counselling are all in the price
• You are coming to Nepal for the mountains but do not want to trek to see them

Look at something else if

• You want a hard physical week. The Intense Yogasana and Meditation Retreat is the demanding one
• You want silence and depth rather than variety. The Noble Silence Retreat runs six days without small talk
• You have only two or three days. The Nature Yoga Retreat is the short version, in the same setting
• You want a cleanse and a change in the body. The Detox Yoga Retreat is built around that
• You want to teach afterwards, in which case you want the teacher training, not a retreat

What a week here actually changes

Seven days is long enough to be worth something and short enough to be honest about. You will sleep better, probably from the third night. You will notice your breath is doing something different. You will get used to eating at fixed times and to a day that starts early, and that rhythm is usually what people say they miss most once they are home.

You will not come back a different person. You will come back rested, with a practice you can repeat and a fairly clear idea of what you want to do next, which for a good number of students turns out to be coming back for longer.

Why choose Bodhidham?

1. Traditional lineage-based teaching from experienced yogis. Every session is led by a resident teacher, not by rotating staff.

2. Family environment. The ashram is small enough that everybody eats together and everybody knows your name by the second meal.

3. Organic food grown on a local farm. Most of what is on your plate was picked that morning from the terraces below the building.

4. Away from the city, at the height of 1,320 m in Ghachowk Village. Far enough for the noise to stop, close enough that Pokhara is thirty minutes away.

5. In the lap of the holy mountain, Machhapuchhre, which faces the ashram directly and has never been climbed.