Monastery Stay in Pokhara

Somewhere between the paragliding selfies and the lakeside cocktail bars, Pokhara holds a quieter version of itself that most travellers walk right past.

Our Monastery Stay package gives you two nights and three days inside that quieter version of Pokhara, sleeping in simple, clean monastery guest accommodation, eating vegetarian meals prepared in the monastery kitchen, waking to the sound of a gong rather than an alarm clock, and spending three days between the monastery's rhythm and the city's most meaningful sights at a pace that most Nepal itineraries never allow themselves.

This is not a retreat in the spa-menu sense of the word. Nobody is going to hand you a robe and a cucumber water. What you get instead is something considerably more interesting, a genuine glimpse into a way of life that has not fundamentally changed in centuries, delivered in a setting where the Annapurna range forms the backdrop and a community of monks going about their actual daily practice forms the foreground. You might sit in on an afternoon puja as the chanting fills the prayer hall and the smell of butter lamps drifts through the open doors. You might find yourself in the courtyard at dawn with a cup of chai watching Fishtail catch the first light while novice monks sweep the flagstones around you. You might simply sit in the monastery garden with nothing in particular to do and notice, perhaps for the first time in a while, what it feels like when your brain stops generating its usual to-do list. Pokhara's famous sights for the lake, the World Peace Pagoda, the viewpoints, the caves are all woven into the itinerary. But the monastery is not the backdrop to the sightseeing. The monastery is the point.