Best Monastery and Meditation Retreat Destinations
Browse more guides: India travel | Asia destinations Best Monastery and Meditation Retreat Destinations I sat my first 10-day Vipassana course in 2018 at a center outside Hyderabad, India, knowing very little about what I'd signed up for besides "ten days of silence." By the third day I'd thought about quitting roughly forty times. By the seventh, something had shifted that I still don't have language for. I left the course unable to explain the experience to anyone who hadn't done one, and convinced that this kind of structured meditation retreat is the most concentrated personal-development experience I'd ever encountered. That was the first of four retreats I've now done across Burma, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and back in India. Monastery and meditation retreat travel divides into two distinct categories. Tourist visits to monasteries - viewing architecture, observing rituals, photographing ceremonies. Participant retreats - staying at monastic comm...