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India has been making a major push lately in the tourism world but its minister of tourism said last week the country still needs to do more to capitalize on its yoga and spiritual roots.

Many of us have seen the Incredible India ads on TV but the government is realizing it takes more than slick marketing. Tourists may see the results of some of the recent actions while others are at a more bureaucratic level.

In a speech Friday, Minister for Tourism and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja said the country needs to better tap into the yoga vacation and wellness industry by developing wellness tourism standards and collaborating on marketing.

“Tourists (the) world over revere the Indian system of wellness as among the most pristine and authentic forms,” she said in a press release. “They yearn for opportunities to experience these systems.”

This speech followed a meeting on Aug. 17 with the tourism minister in Mexico.

India admires how Mexico has preserved its culture and heritage while also being a tourism hot spot and the two countries pledged to continue cooperation. The leaders are also proposing an India festival in Mexico to promote yoga and wellness tourism.

But travelers may see the results of other efforts.

Earlier this year, the country has allowed on-arrival visas for residents of a few countries, not including the U.S., and is monitoring that program. Currently, most visitors must apply online and mail in their passport to receive a visa.

Then this summer, loans were issued to upgrade guesthouses in Delhi before this October’s Commonwealth Games.

Furthermore, at Friday’s speech, Selja also announced a push to create better budget accommodations by offering incentives and subsidies.

“The exorbitant cost of land forces hotels to operate under higher star categories in order to make them commercially viable,” the press release stated.

Canada loves itself some yoga and the latest take on how to “Eat, Pray, Love” shows some of the options in The Great White North.

The Montreal Gazette’s website carried the story giving three Canadian locations to do each of those most basic activities. Eating lobster on Prince Edward Island or taking cooking classes to fulfill the eating portion.

The “love” options include Meet Market Adventures. A business with a catchy name that organizes singles outings and has expanded to include some U.S. cities. Excursions listed for Toronto, for example, include sea kayaking, introduction into archery and scuba diving instruction.

I saved the “praying” experiences for last to offer up some more about Canada’s love of yoga. They have developed Heli-Yoga, where visitors can take a helicopter ride to a location in the Canadian Rockies and practice yoga at high altitudes. They use it to help incarcerated teens, hold month-long yoga challenges to raise money for visually impaired residents and an instructor broke a world record for holding the longest yoga marathon.

There’s just so much to choose from, but the writer narrowed it down to the Yoga Development Course at Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia. They hold shorter retreats as well as a three-month program for visitors really wanting a taste of what Elizabeth Gilbert experienced.

More yoga in Canada options from The Toronto Sun

Yogis across the country will be able to step out of the studio and into Hindu temples Sunday in 21 states for the first Yogathon.

Hindu American Seva Charities started Yogathon 2010 as part of a new outreach effort, according to the press release on their website.

The event will allow residents to visit temples in Wichita,Kans. to North Carolina and elsewhere in the U.S. and attend a yoga class.

Nearly 80 temples and ashrams are opening their doors and welcoming guests. You can see the list at the Yogathon website.

I’ll let scholars debate which came first, yoga or Hinduism, but it is an opportunity to see places in our communities that many residents do not normally visit and likely meet new people along the way.

Sleeping under the stars at night, floating down the river during the day – not a bad way to spend a week.

From the Northeast to the Northwest, a few whitewater-rafting companies have added yoga to the mix.

Yoga teacher Laura DeFreitas went on her first such trip last year and is leading another one this year again with Oregon-based Winding Waters Rafting.

The idea sprouted from of her wanting to take yoga out of the studio and she began leading yoga hikes. Time on the river makes visitors forget their watch and their schedule, she said. Even more so when she adds chanting and yoga nidra, a form of deep relaxation.

Morning and afternoon yoga sessions, as well as the new addition of a massage therapist, help those arms and back after a day on the river.

“It can bring a lot of balance and reprieve to areas being used in a new way or strenuous way,” she said.

But it’s not exactly taxing.

“It’s like a floating lounge chair on water,” DeFreitas said. Guides do the paddling and dinners are local foods cooked in a Dutch oven.

Her trip on the Salmon River in Idaho starts Saturday but other such yoga and whitewater rafting trips are going on through the fall.

New this year, Northern Outdoors in western Maine is offering three-day yoga retreats. The sessions in September and October offer participants twice daily yoga classes as well as a hike or float trip.

But some places have been at this awhile.

Peter Grubb, founder of Idaho-based ROW Adventures, said he has been offering the River Soul Journeys program for 10 or 12 years.

Three to four times a year the specialized trip incorporates meditation, journaling and yoga with whitewater rafting.

The difference starts with who signs up for the trip, Grubb said.

“They’re beyond splash and giggles of a river trip,” he said. “They’re interested in a life-centering experience.”

That common goal brings a calmness to the group. The potential for personal transformation is stronger sleeping under the stars than in some pampered resort, Grubb said, and the mix of activities also deepens the connection with nature.

“It brings a different vibrancy. Maybe a stronger sense of wonder and a deeper appreciation of the river and the entire river environment that people are in,” he said.

Maybe next time I check in to a hotel I’ll have to pick up a yoga bag for my room.

More and more, hotels are finding they can market themselves in a new way by offering the relatively inexpensive items to help a yoga practice – a mat, a strap and maybe some blocks.

Some hotels are going a step beyond and offering mini yoga retreats for local residents. Hotel Interactive had a story Friday about how hotels are not only offering the equipment, but some have a teacher or a special retreat day at the hotel.

The Liaison Capitol Hill, An Affinia Hotel, now has rooftop yoga and created “Destination Relaxation,” a special event every Sunday combining yoga, hanging out poolside and eating, the article stated.

Other hotels have made such relaxation the focus. Cosmopolitan Hotel and Spa in Toronto calls itself “Zen in the City.” Meditation mats, books on Zen philosophy and relaxation CDs are offered in some rooms and in-room meditation sessions can be arranged.

At minimum, many hotels have crammed the treadmills closer together or taken out some weights to make a space big enough for a mat.

With all that assistance, now there’s no excuse to stop practicing when I’m on the road.

I’m guessing the release of the “Eat, Pray, Love” movie this weekend is going to be the biggest event to date for the yoga travel industry since The Beatles visited a guru in India.

With all the hype surrounding this movie, more and more articles have come out too. One in the Louisville Courier-Journal discusses how “eat, pray, love” is good advice for anyone post-divorce. It’s good to try new things, reconnect with oneself and find an independent identity, said Eli Karam, assistant professor at the University of Louisville’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program in the Kent School of Social Work.

And how does yoga fit into that.

“Yoga is all about self-reliance, learning to have faith in yourself and your own abilities,” said Sarah Ayers, owner and trainer at Inner Strength Fitness in Louisville.

This seems to fly in the face of what some people have experienced at ashrams. In a New York Post article Marta Szabo recounts how she mostly had friends who went out and found nothing but spent all their money trying.

Reading this article reminded me of another article I just read in the New York Times Magazine about chronicle depression. The author spent years going from doctor to doctor always hoping for some fix until she finally realized she needed to stop.

I’m not sure the two are really all that different.

But what’s the reality of these countries beyond the eating, praying and loving?

The Washington Post has articles on each location – Italy, India and Indonesia. The former and current reporters who have logged vast time and sometimes lived in these locales explain that the book and the movie provide a romanticized version of reality. Or maybe it’s just taking the most positive spin on what’s happening. Regardless, countries all have a personality. Some of it that comes from generalizing, but just like people, countries have idiosyncrasies and baggage.

The write up on Italy described it as clichéd but “lovingly filmed” but the book gets honest when describing how the city has struggled, but remains alive.

India’s a bit more complicated. In the book, Elizabeth Gilbert confines herself to an ashram. Maybe necessary for her purpose, but reveals little about India as a country. It’s actually something I want to avoid when I visit this fall and find a balance between ashram time and seeing the India the actual Indians know.

“If I were advising Gilbert (or any other traveler seeking a spiritual India), I would order them out of the confining ashrams and into the streets and neighborhoods of India’s feast of religious festivals. That is where you’ll find the true soul of the country,” wrote Molly Moore, who served as the India-based correspondent for three years.

Then there’s Bali. This was my favorite of the three Washington Post pieces. Gilbert didn’t gloss over the island’s violent history in her own writing. Maybe in personalities it’s what one would call a “hot mess.” But so many countries are. Beautiful, but replete with poverty and problems. A good vacation spot, but tough to live there.

“Besides, destinations are the least important aspect of Gilbert’s journey; it’s the people she meets in them that push and teach her,” the article stated.

Now, in Bali, those people have become mini-stars. The healer she spent her days visiting with has been hospitalized, according to the AP and this USA Today post. His family said he was overworked.

By Shirin Parsavand

I felt invigorated in Warrior II as I stretched my arms toward the crashing waves. As I reached my hands down to my toes in Forward Fold, I could look up to see the mist-covered hills behind me.

Last Saturday’s yoga class on the Malibu Pier was my first outdoor yoga experience, and it did not disappoint. During the last six months, nearly all of the yoga classes I’ve taken were in a small gym at a university recreation center. I had great instructors, but the environment left something to be desired. (The sight of musclebound athletes gamely attempting to twist their bodies into yoga poses kinda made up for that, but perhaps that’s a subject for another blog post.)

This is the second summer that instructor Lori Rischer has taught the free classes every Saturday morning by the Pacific. She said last year’s Yoga on the Pier classes, then held at Santa Monica Pier, proved so popular that sponsors KIIS-FM (102.7) and KYSR-FM (98.7) extended them for an extra month. The classes are drawing a strong turnout again this year, but there is no word yet whether the sponsors will extend them beyond Sept. 4.

About 100 people can participate each Saturday, and the classes attract a mix of drop-ins and regulars. Rischer uses a microphone so it’s easy to hear her instructions over the pop and classic rock tunes she plays. (Rischer works in the music industry and takes pride in her playlist, announcing at the start of Saturday’s class that we’d hear a brand-new Bon Jovi song.) The class was not particularly hard, but it was challenging enough to be worth my while. Rischer aims to make it comfortable for beginners too, describing modifications to the poses and walking between the two rows of yogis to offer assistance. Those new to yoga might want to place their mats in the second row, to see the poses as well as hear them described.

The only thing I’d change to make it my ideal class by the water would be to turn off the music during savasana, so I could just listen to the waves crash against the shore. I was glad the music was quiet enough that I could concentrate on the surf anyway, even though I was lying near a speaker.

After class, we were treated to free coffee, bagels, muffins, fruit and juice at the Beachcomber Café on the pier. Many of us lingered there, chatting and watching the paddlers and surfers ride the waves.

To get a spot, register online starting at 10 a.m. the Tuesday before class. Those who don’t sign up in time might still be able to get in by showing up at Malibu Pier before 8:30 a.m., when organizers cross the no-shows off their list.

And don’t forget to throw on a long-sleeved shirt or sweatshirt. The Southern California coast has been relatively cool this summer, and mornings can be downright chilly.

Even in these days of smartphones and DVRs, daydreams remain synonymous with warm August days.

During a yoga break under a shade tree in my backyard, I started taking a little pretend yoga trip to Italy. Thankfully the Internet makes it very easy to extend daydreams into hours of Googling.

Maybe better known for the indulgences of pasta and wine, the laid-back atmosphere and romanticized vistas have made it a popular spot for yoga vacations. Though, from the prices, one most of us will only daydream about.

Sting’s 900-acre ranch, Il Palagio, combines grounding views and local food with yoga vacations. Gardens, pools and a historic monastery dot the acreage, according to the website. The location made the news recently because the honey, wine and oil made on site will now be for sale at a stand by the ranch gates southeast of Florence.

Farther south, an hour outside of Rome Sunflower Retreats also offers stays in houses, yoga classes and bike use. The website says the homes have kitchens allowing visitors to cook for themselves if they prefer. That would just make my week. A yoga class, shopping at a local market and making an Italian feast. Really all I need is some bread, tomatoes and basil but I’m guessing I would buy more than that and have to build a meal around it.

But what does it really take to feel like you’ve gotten away and not just a daydream?

Budget Travel interviewed Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert on how to experience a place instead of just passing through. Her main piece of advice, stay a little longer in one place and meet people. Those experiences and conversations are what you will remember.

The same can be said for making new friends next door or around the world.

Boots, check. Jeans, check. Yoga mat, check.

I started riding horses when I was a kid and have always loved the feel of wind on my face. Something that keeps me sailing as well.

Feeding modern women and their youthful Flicka dreams, a variety of yoga and horseback riding adventures have emerged and many have retreats coming up in the fall.

Some are one-day classes while others mix the “Dude Ranch” tradition with yoga elements.

A woman in Pennsylvania is leading classes where participants stretch out with a hatha practice before and after riding but also learn how to do certain poses while the horse is resting. Keeping a yogic calm while on the horse means it won’t sense your fear, Tina Smith, owner of The Yoga Pony said in the article.

Stretching out also helps riders after being in the saddle. Unfortunately, I don’t think yoga can help my sit bones after a long ride.

Similar to doga (yoga with your dog) Whoaga is yoga to help with riding. The positions and balance from yoga translate into a more confident rider, according to the Whoaga website.

But for longer escapes, companies in the U.S. and Canada have options for yoga vacations with horses.

The Chezacut Wilderness Adventures in British Columbia and Big Sky Yoga Retreats in Montana are two of several options but there are more in Arizona and the Midwest. With a yoga mat strapped to the saddle, visitors can build a relationship with a horse that deepens the yoga experience.

The theme has been popular for articles in Girlfriend Getaways and Yoga Journal. Women seeking their own version of City Slickers but with a yoga twist.