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A Sivananda yoga students sits by the nearby lake. By Sonja Bjelland

I keep seeing different publications listing their “Top 10 yoga retreats.”

In the industry we call this a roundup, it’s what readers seem to like best. So today I’m rounding up the roundups in a collective of the top five lists. A few of these have overlap of the most popular places, but each has it’s own flair. One gives more luxurious places. One highlights a little more adventure with the yoga. It all depends on who their audience is.

Combined this gives a pretty good look at the world’s top yoga destinations, from the U.S. to India. The finds here vary in price point and type of yoga but if you’re making a bucket list of yoga retreats, this is a good starting place. I’ve been to a few of these places and would love to go to many more.

If you’ve been to some of them be sure to let me know if you thought it belonged on the list. And let me know what’s missing. What yoga retreat did you love?

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  View near The Yoga Barn in Ubud, Bali By Sonja Bjelland

  Gayot annually updates its list of “Top 10 Yoga Retreats Worldwide,” that includes Alicante in Spain and Big Sky Yoga Retreats in Montana.

• Coastal Living rounded up its “23 Best Coastal Yoga Retreats.” This includes anything near water from Mexico to Martha’s Vineyard and the Turks and Caicos to Vietnam.
• The UK’s Guardian newspaper has a more adventurous list that couches it’s title as “10 of the World’s Best Yoga Retreats 2012.” Their list includes several places I’ve been including Bali’s Yoga Barn and the Sivananda Ashram in Kerala, India. This reflects the more outgoing British traveler and the list is totally different than the first two.
• Well+Good NYC’s “9 Best Yoga Vacations” has some listings that are similar to the rest but they managed to come up with a few more original offerings. One of my favorites is the yoga, Tango and wine trip to Argentina.
• Departures magazine’s “Top Yoga Retreats” list ranges from the romanticized and secluded in Bangalore to Western and easier access at the Wanderlust Festival. Though it might be possible to buy a plane ticket to India for the price of lodging and an all-access pass to one of the Wanderlust Festivals.

Monks resting outside of Angkor Watt, Cambodia By Sonja Bjelland

Hobby vacations have taken off with yoga being no exception.

But some yogi vacationers want less focus on poses and more on philosophy.

I was reminded of this last night while listening to Tibetan Buddhist Monk Khen Rinpoche Lobzang Tsetan address a crowd at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

No, it’s not everyday a monk speaks at a U.S. military installation. But his calm presence reminded me of the monks I saw daily during my travels in Asia. His lessons on different types of gratitude allowed me to recall chats with monks and various religious leaders during the same trip.

“You are to give an open heart without expectation,” he told the group.

I have always found asking questions to be the best way to find out something and I feel the same when learning about the world’s religions. Some places make this easier than others so if you’re looking for clarification or insight during a vacation or for your complete trip here’s my recommendations.

For serious study of Buddhist thinking try a vipassana retreat. Typically 10-days long, participants stay in silence at a monastery. The point is to internally confront whatever your mind brings up.

My friend and occasional poster, Laura Hitchman, wrote about one she attended in Thailand.

“Throughout the day we would all file silently into the meditation hall, where we’d sit cross-legged on our allocated cushions and receive instruction from a recording,” she writes. “Despite feeling like a mixture of school assembly, sitting exams and some sort of authoritarian regime, this was strangely enjoyable. The mornings and evenings especially so because they’d dim the lights and we’d all wear pyjamas and shawls, and everything was quiet except for the sounds of the rainforest outside.”

Musical service known as aarti in Rishikesh, India By Sonja Bjelland

And this isn’t something you need to go to Nepal or Thailand to experience. They have them at Buddhist centers across the U.S. with several annually in Colorado and Illinois.

For something lighter, stop in at the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center in Bloomington, Ind. Visitors can meander through the 108 acres of wooded trails and take guided or self-guided walks through the grounds to see two traditional Tibetan stupas, central to Buddhist practice. Or if you happen to be in Chiang Mai, Thailand, the main temple has a “chat with a monk” session most evenings.

To dig a little deeper into Hinduism, staying at an ashram puts the resources in front of you. As a visitor in a town such as Rishikesh, India, you can stop by the ashrams that do nightly services and hear the spiritual leader chat about life’s questions.

Where I stayed in Rishikesh, Parmarth Niketan, we could listen to the guru and his American colleague explain Eastern philosophies. Those who wanted more in-depth study had a chance to research at the onsite library.

Islands off the coast of Thailand By Sonja Bjelland

One year after returning from my yoga travels through Asia, the journey continues.

Some people describe such trips as watershed, life changing, pick your overused descriptor.

It was, but not in an obvious way.

Writing this has been a reminder of how much I did take away from my travels, and why I think it’s important to dive in and refill your cup.

The intense travel days gave me a confidence that has been dripping out since my return – along with a sense of hope. The open hearted-ness I achieved after months of yoga and having people help me when it may not have been culturally appropriate has also dwindled.

These are the benefits of travel that are hard to maintain no matter how I try with my current efforts. My yoga and meditation routine fluctuates and my daily habits have waned.

My life stateside has returned to a focus on paying the bills and figuring out what’s next. Today, I substitute taught high school band, choir and in-school suspension. One year ago, I was celebrating my return to the U.S. with friends in Southern California. My Asia travel wear wasn’t quite the going style and the ginormous Whole Foods freaked me out after months in local markets.

Griffith Park Observatory, Los Angeles, Calif. By Sonja Bjelland

I’m happy I did it and given the opportunity I would love to travel for months again. This isn’t a youthful transgression I’ll get over. I love learning about different cultures and seeing new places.

At some points, it feels those months were lost in time. As if they didn’t happen because life back home went on.

Pillowcases from India, dresses from Bali and jewelry from everywhere remind me that it was real. And I know my thought processes have changed. I judge less, worry less and am more likely to acknowledge what is my perception versus reality.

By judging less, I don’t spend as much time thinking about what other people think of me or what I think about other people. The personal views, habits, etc., of others also spend much less time under my skin.

So much of what we spend our time and worries on doesn’t matter and that doesn’t leave a lot of time for the things we really do need to ponder. Now, I’m better at evaluating what actually means something to me and what doesn’t. And most things don’t, which is good because I have enough serious issues to occupy my mind.

Not worrying as much also frees up my time. I used to stress for hours before a trip. Now, I’m still able to pack a bag in minutes. I don’t worry about having a definitive plan and can let my daily life flow. Smartphones have helped with that. Plans come together much more quickly as I can look up a location and text a dinner spot to someone. Months catching trains and buses in foreign lands helped me know I can figure it out and that things manage to fall into place if I just let them. I just need to keep reminding myself that what happens on the daily level, expands to longer lengths of time.

Downward dog is one of several immunity helping poses By Susan Gill

The yoga world tipped out of tree pose recently when one of it’s leaders stepped down from an empire he built amid various accusations.

Long-time readers of this blog may remember that I briefly interviewed John Friend, Anusara yoga founder, years ago after seeing him speak at USC’s Medical School. He tweeted my post and it became one of my most read articles.

What he was selling sounded good, lives transformed by a healing touch and thinking holistically about health care.

But I was fresh off many years as a daily newspaper reporter so I wasn’t surprised to see a few months later when a New York Times profile called him a cult of personality and compared him to evangelical Christian minister Joel Osteen. The Yoga Journal conferences director clarified in the story how important he was to their events, “In 2008, his was the largest yoga class ever held at our conference.”

This isn’t just some guy who did some downward dogs. He was slated to headline several of this year’s Wanderlust Festivals, had merchandising deals with Adidas and had plans for a yoga Disneyland in California.

Friend has now taken leave from Anusara yoga, which he founded, and admitted to being involved with students and employees, some of whom were married. Other accusations that have been previously leveled on the Internet have yet to be addressed from freezing employee pensions to having employees accept marijuana deliveries for him. We should be thankful for bloggers from YogaDork to Elephant Journal who are making yogis aware of this. That’s the whole purpose of journalism and this story isn’t yet big enough for traditional media to tackle. But within our space, it resonates and needs to be known.

It also highlights how all of us, yogis or not, to be aware of ourselves and our space. It’s what one of my teachers here called “the internal ‘or not’ clause.”

Stand up and rock a warrior pose when you need to By Susan Gill

We all have to be alert while also having the courage to step forward when we know something is amiss.

No, this is not a common occurrence in the yoga world. But it’s not extinct either.

It’s not even the first time I’ve taken up the topic. A string of events last year inspired me to write “Preying on yogis at their most vulnerable.”

Indians are skeptical of many yoga gurus because of accusations over the years. It’s true of many powerful men be it priest or politician, especially when surrounded by students or disciples.

One of my friends in India was groped by a security guard while walking back to her dorm at an ashram. A guesthouse employee in India tried to convince a male friend of mine that he should stop me from going to the ashram because it wasn’t safe.

Yes, we want to let our guards down and be vulnerable to the world. But there’s also common sense and realizing that anyone is capable of anything – guru, teacher, leader or not. That’s what I learned in 10 years of sitting in murder trials and interviewing suspects in jail. Any prison warden will tell you the same thing. It’s what they’ve told me. Under certain circumstances, anyone is capable of the best and the worst society can offer.

The controversial plow pose during a yoga program in India By Sonja Bjelland

The yoga world seemed stuck upside down recently with a headline declaring “How yoga can wreck your body.”

The New York Times Magazine piece excerpted from a book by the paper’s science writer William J. Broad called “The Science of Yoga: The Myths and the Rewards.”

Fellow NYT columnist Maureen Dowd wrote the only piece I’ve seen that looked at the book on a whole and showed some of the contradictory and surprising findings that were not included in the excerpt.

The section included in the magazine carried some incredible examples of yoga-related injuries and started what any publication hopes for – buzz.

So much so, that other publications did roundups of the best responses to the NYT piece and it devoted an opinion section to allow six people from the yoga world to respond. Comments on the article were stopped at 700.

What was missing in those responses was addressing what the article was about – do we need to look at what we’re doing in yoga?

The village elders class at the BaliSpirit Festival By Sonja Bjelland

Instead, the responders blamed the student for not being mindful enough in practice and letting our egos run away. But it’s more complicated than that. If we want to admit it or not, bad positions and bad instruction can cause problems.

When I started this site, my first retreat was with Judith Hansen-Lasater. I still remember her saying how many fellow yoga instructors needed hip replacements in part because people tried to stack their hips in triangle pose. She encouraged us to question teachers who taught that and I’ve done that even in the last few months. After all, one of the tenets of yoga is to be “non-harming.”

Reality is the original poses were done by men and ones who sat cross-legged all day at that. Western, female bodies are different and the alignment should be modified accordingly.

I hope instead of just being defensive and keeping everything the same that this encourages the yoga community to think about anatomy and alignment.

This is all the more crucial when you’re traveling for yoga.

In a regular class you can walk away and never return. But if you’re at a weekend or weeklong yoga retreat, you’re stuck.

That’s why I had to learn to watch myself closely when I studied yoga in India. Tradition trumped modern science and some poses did not make my body happy. I found out how important it was to know if the teacher understood the human body as well as how much I had to hold back my ego while also challenging myself.

The Taj Mahal at sunrise By Sonja Bjelland

The reaction in India has been different than in the U.S. and blames it on the Western commercialization of yoga and people only focusing on the physical part of yoga, not the breathing and meditation aspects. But this isn’t a conversation that only needs to happen in the U.S.

I found Indian yoga far from safe. At 6 a.m. we were expected to roll back and forth from a seated forward bend back to plow pose and up again. This was not a slow moving thoughtful movement, but rushed.

This also came up when I attended the BaliSpirit Festival. It was hot and some classes were over my head. It’s in these elements that yes, the ego is powerful. You want to do as well as the rest of the class, especially when a teacher calls people out for being a beginner in her class – which was listed as all levels.

So no, yoga is not exempt from competition and the ego does lead to our injuries. In fact, they used to have yoga demonstrations in India where the boys studying would display their feats of strength and flexibility.

But I prefer to keep my eyes closed and listen to my body so I don’t hurt myself.

Friends gather on a roof at Parmarth Niketan By Sonja Bjelland

I’ve often described my stays at yoga ashrams as being like summer camp.

What I’ve discovered in the nearly year since, is the enduring power of the friendships built on a yogic foundation aren’t that much different than what I can imagine from summer camp as well.

I started noticing this during late-night conversations with my roommates on my first retreat at the Mt. Madonna Center in California. I made other friends over those brief few days that have been lasting friendships.

In India, the connections were almost more immediate. I had been traveling for weeks by myself in cities that require you to muster up the courage to walk outside. I would chat with any fellow travelers. Then I landed in an ashram surrounded by more Americans and Brits than I’d seen in weeks.

Then I started meeting my roommate and my other classmates.

Gardens at Parmarth Niketan By Sonja Bjelland

I know a lot of people can’t imagine having a roommate, or staying in a dorm as an adult, but I found it was the best way to make friends.

For 10 days at an ashram in Rishikesh our group of 13 made our way to 6 a.m. yoga. We attempted chanting and sang “Imagine” on a dorm rooftop more than once by candlelight.

Many of us have stayed connected via Facebook and email. One Bulgarian man from our class may soon be meeting up with a few from our group while in California.

When I head to Colorado in a few weeks one of my yoga camp friends will be in the area.

These are friends I’ll happily see whenever I make my way to London or Australia.

And I will always have a place for them to sleep.

I got lucky with my group of friends in Rishikesh.

Yoga friends in Rishikesh, India By Sonja Bjelland

My other, shorter, stays at yoga ashrams in India, Thailand and Bali all led to friendships, but not always the kind of bond from 10 days together at Parmarth.

I think the length of time helped strengthen that. At Sivananda’s Kerela ashram, the yoga vacation program allows people to come and go every few days. I was only there four days and met some great people but I didn’t leave with the connections I’d made before.

Thailand and Bali lacked the dorm-yoga-ashram type accommodations and therefore required much more effort to make friends.

I would ask people if they liked what they were having for dinner or if I could join them when there wasn’t a seat available. That meant I rarely ate a meal by myself. Otherwise, it would have been easy to hang out at the beach and go to yoga classes twice a day without meeting anyone.

But I didn’t let that happen and made friends who have given me more reasons to hop across the pond. Those links also bring each of us back to a time when we were focused on deepening our practice through a yoga vacation and allows us reconnect to those moments.

Within the yoga community and yoga spaces we often feel safe. An automatic trust in each other’s goodness based on our oneness of yoga practice.

But this last week has been a reminder that yogis are human too, and that can be bad.

At the Hanuman Yoga Festival in Boulder, a man was found hiding under a tarp inside a portable toilet. The Smoking Gun is saying he’s into “spiritual pornography” and travels from festival to festival giving massages.

Yes the story is ripe for all sorts of puns and potty humor, but it also raises the issue of people who prey on the open-heartedness of yogis. After 10 years writing about such incidents for newspapers, I’m still working on moderating my level of skepticism back to a more normal level. I’m transitioning from thinking everyone I meet has a bad past as I attempt a more open-hearted life. But like everything, it’s a balance.

Ashrams and retreat centers in India and Thailand have also come under fire for gurus having sex with patrons and various other accusations. A friend of mine in India was groped by a security guard at an ashram while she was walking to her dorm. The ashram took care of the situation immediately but it reminded the rest of us that we still still had to keep our guards up.

And as disturbing as the sex crimes are, they’re not the only brand of potential evil.

Last week the LA Times reported a jury in Arizona convicted a self-help guru of negligent homicide in the deaths of three people who paid to undergo a sweat lodge ceremony.

It wasn’t a yoga activity, but it was in the hallowed spiritual grounds of Sedona and something yogis might participate in. I’m not arguing that all sweat lodges are evil because Native Americans have held “sweats” for years.

But Sedona and the yoga/self-help industry gathers seekers. People looking for something more who want to live with an open heart.

Now the family of one of the victims, Kirby Brown, is now working to create a safer self-help industry.

“Our goal now is to bring attention to this issue, and call for some action–both in applying existing legal protections to the industry and developing new ways to help protect people from this type of fraud and recklessness,” their website stated.

Winter at home in Illinois by Sonja BJelland

The other day I was talking to someone about my yoga travels and she said my upbringing must have been a big help.

I’m not sure she knows how true that was.

I’ve written about what lessons I learned on the road, but what skills did I have before hand that were useful that I hadn’t realized would be? No, these aren’t necessarily lessons everyone learns growing up. But they were part of mine and they’ve served me well.

1. How to hang laundry out to dry

This sounds simple enough but when I was standing on the roof of one of the Amma Ashram dorms hanging out my laundry I realized how many people didn’t know how to properly hang up their clothes. The trick is you overlap the clothes so you use fewer clothespins. That’s especially important for thin or smooth materials such as satin that can wriggle out of clothespins. Those are also the clothes that need the clothespins that snap together instead of the two-pronged clothespins. This knowledge was way in the recesses of my brain after a childhood of seemingly constant laundry duty. But my laundry stayed on the line above the smattering of fallen clothes.

Hanging laundry in my room in Goa, India By Sonja Bjelland

2. How to tie knots

Sometimes I had the luxury of outside clotheslines or even my own personal clotheshorse. But often I was left stringing up some clothesline across my room tying one end to the shower nozzle and maybe one to the towel bar and back and forth until I could dry two shirts and one pair of pants. My sailing years proved handy as I got to keep up my bowline tying skills as well as some quality hitches.

3. How to cook from scratch

Processed food is easing its way in to developing countries but it helps to know how to start with the basics. When it was my night to cook at a small ashram in India I was able to pick up at the farm stand eggplant, peppers, onion, garlic, basil, zucchini and tomatoes and whip up a modified ratatouille. The same proved true when I lived in Peru. If I wanted peas or green beans I was glad I knew what they looked like in their original form and how to snap them ready for cooking. Then I walked down to the payphone on the street and called my grandma to ask how long I needed to cook them.

4. That honey catches more flies than vinegar

There were times I could have pitched a fit. Parts of my family are pretty epic at doing so. But rarely will that do any good in Asia. My very first room in India I had to change because I could smell the mildew as I walked in. Mildew and mold are my biggest asthma triggers – a problem I hadn’t even contemplated. I was shown two more rooms and found one that would do. I proceeded to inspect every subsequent hotel room before agreeing to it but doing so with a smile.

5. How to clean and fix a bathroom

Bathroom No. 1 in Delhi, India By Sonja Bjelland

At the yoga ashram I visited in Rishikesh, the bathroom had 4 to 5 leaks. They called the “plumbers,” volunteers who may know something but not about Western toilets. Most of the world doesn’t use Western toilets so don’t expect anyone to know how to fix one. The squat versions don’t have any components that can fail so at least know how to put the chain back on the handle.

That bathroom was one of many that weren’t quite up to my cleanliness standards. I’ve heard different versions of why the bathrooms are so bad ­– even at $50-plus-a-night hotels. One person said it’s because only the lowest of the low caste would do such work so no one really knows how to and thinks they’re above doing so. Another person said it’s mostly men working in hotels so they just take the hose that is next to the toilet and spray down the room without actually doing any scrubbing. It’s a great combo.

More than once I took out a Clorox wipe to tackle the mildew I could see. In ashrams they would give you cleaning supplies. I readily took to the bathroom. Happily a fellow Midwestern and I scrubbed the three bathrooms in our dorm. Gone was the black coating on the floor and walls. Did we do it out of pure service to the ashram? Nope, we knew we enjoyed it.

Islands off the coast of Thailand By Sonja Bjelland

Maybe you don’t want to follow my footsteps hiking on jungle islands and navigating Indian trains but many more yoga travel options exist. Having a vacation feel more like you’ve walked out of a yoga class and less like you’re walking out of a night club  seems to be catching on. With so many options, I’ve offered up a few thoughts to keep in mind when considering a yoga holiday.

1. How intense do you like your yoga?

Do you want a constant challenge pushing you into new poses and ferocious sweating or are you looking for something more restorative? Make sure you don’t end up with a power yoga instructor when you’re craving something more yin. You’ll end up miserable. If you’re not sure, ask detailed questions in advance.

2. Are you OK with chanting and philosophy?

It should be expected at an ashram but may also be part of the curriculum at other yoga locations. Read the online descriptions carefully and if you’re not cool with chanting about Krishna you’ll likely not be happy being expected to do so. Some are more secular and teach more general philosophy but ashrams should be expected to lean toward Hinduism unless stated otherwise.

Sunrise on Bali By Sonja Bjelland

3. How rustic or lux do you want to go?

Sometimes what you need is being taken away from computers, cell phones and your hyper-charged life. But other times you need a comfortable place to be safe and feel good. Ashrams and similar yoga centers can be as basic as camping. Yoga spas trend toward the opposite end. Plenty of locations land in between. Anywhere from dorm accommodations with thin mattresses to private bungalows with scenic views.

4. Solo, friends, group tour?

Yoga vacations are ideal for solo travelers because you can meet so many new people on the yoga retreat or vacation destination. But it’s also a fun time for friends, sisters or mother and daughter combos. Many times they have enough chances for self reflection but also group interaction. If you’re searching for your soul, however, make sure the place will meet your needs. Some travelers are seeking more quiet personal space than some noisy Indian ashrams or Thailand yoga/party resorts offer.

5. Which continent?

Antarctica is the only one not currently available that I’ve found for yoga travel. The rest of the world is up for grabs – pretty much. Do you want something with the comforts of home or do you want to explore another culture to help you explore yourself?

Is their a country you’ve wanted to see and maybe add a yoga holiday to that. Just today I spotted articles online about a yoga cruise on a tall ship from Greece to Turkey and a foodie yoga tour of India with a woman who owns Indian food restaurants in the U.S.

6. Yoga retreat, yoga vacation, yoga spa or yoga adventure?

Some towns like Chiang Mai, Thailand and Ubud, Bali, have so much yoga you don’t even need to go with a group to make your

Yoga vacation in Cambodia? Of course, mix with the Angkor Temples

own yoga time. Others such as India are more challenging for travel but have live-in yoga options. Retreats keep you in a group of like-minded yogis, which is a great way to travel and make new friends. Then there’s straight up adventures. Yoga and horseback riding, heli-yoga in Canada, and yoga and whitewater rafting or hiking.

7. What are you looking for?

Is this meant to be a spiritual awakening or a weekend tune-up? Are you looking to stay somewhere for weeks or days? Is this about physical or mental fitness, or both?

Admitting to yourself that you really just want to sit quietly in the woods for a few days and do some relaxing poses is fine. Don’t require that you undertake some detox regimen with 4 hours of yoga a day just because some friend recommended it. Know what you want and do that.

Bus ride Kerala State, India By Sonja Bjelland

It’s been brought to my attention that I’ve left out one key ingredient in how to take a yoga vacation in India – how to get there.

Yeah, sometimes you hop on a plane in New York and land at an airport where someone whisks you away after you cross customs and plop you’re at your destination.

For most of the places I’ve written about this is entirely possible.

You can take a plane into Delhi, grab a connecting flight to Haridwar and have a driver waiting with a sign to pick you up and take you the hour to Rishikesh. You will pay a premium for such service. But for many people it’s worth the convenience. The same goes for almost every other ashram in India.

Then there’s the other way to go.
Those of us who travel for months at a time know what it means to save $25 by taking an overnight train because that also saved another $10 in room expenses. That’s another day on the road for us. I’m not the world’s cheapest traveler, so I splurged sometimes for that $80 airfare instead of the 36-hour train ride from Delhi to Goa. I’m sure I would have had plenty of experiences on the train. But the plane offered it’s own adventure.

Everything felt so Western and comfortable. The plane was new and clean.

I had the window seat in a line of three seats. An Indian man in business attire took the aisle seat, raised the armrest and proceeded to sit cross-legged.

An interesting site but nothing untoward until he raised his left side and passed gas. And then did it again.

I was aghast. This to me was egregious because I was in my safe Western environment – an airplane. Didn’t this man know that the rules changed just because we were in a really expensive vehicle and not on the train?

On the train to Haridwar By Sonja Bjelland

But I didn’t say anything because I also had realized by then that with 1.2 billion people in a country, there is no sense of privacy. All human expulsions are considered just something natural humans do. And so it is nothing for a massage therapist to belch while giving a massage. Or for a man to fart, hock a loogie and scratch himself in the course of 10 seconds all while having a conversation in the middle of the street.

So yes, I may have missed some adventures taking the plane instead of my usual train method, but India still came along.
Train is the most common way of traveling in India for everyone. But remember 1.5 million people work for the train system alone. It’s heavily bureaucratic and packed with people.

It starts with buying a ticket unless you manage to buy one in advance on ClearTrip.com. Otherwise, this requires physically going to the train station. In Delhi, that meant walking through the dingy, crowded hall up stairs to the tourist ticketing office. Other places will have one window to deal with tourists, the disabled and veterans.

First, you have to fill out a form with the name and number of the train you want. Some trains are express with fewer stops and others stop at every hamlet along the route. I tried to avoid arriving in a new city at night so that also changed what trains I took.
You can track down all that information on IndiaRailInfo.com or at one of the electronic kiosks at the train station. Seat61.com is also a great resource for train information for anywhere in the world. You will likely need your passport to buy the tickets so have a copy of it with you and the original in hand.

With so many people taking the train, tickets may need to be purchased way in advance. Especially if you want one of the nicer cars. A few popular routes will have a “tourist quota” two to four seats that they won’t sell and save for tourists needing to make last minute purchases. This saved me several times.

Then there’s the waitlist. Even if you book online, your section may be full and you won’t know your seat and car in advance. That requires you to ask around at the train station and likely look at the paper taped to the side of the train cars to find some spelling of your name next to your seat number.

Traveling alone I chose to take the 2AC class, second class with air conditioning. This is the second best option and they descend from there.

It had minimal amounts of cockroaches and mice and I was usually comfortable. Not the best sleep but you actually do get a place to rest your head and they issue everyone a new pillow and sheet.

In the sleeper classes, each “seat” folds into a bed. They are sort of like day beds.

Terra cotta lamp in Jodhpur, India By Sonja Bjelland

Bags can be secured below the seat and chained to the metal hook. Yes, you’ll need to bring some sort of luggage lock that would allow that. I bought a Swiss Army one. Worked fine for me. Some folks go with an entire swath of chain-link around their bag.
I didn’t have any problems but there’s a reason people go with the fortress system.

From the previously mentioned websites and a handy iPhone app, you can monitor how late your train may be. They make up time when they can so it’s not always accurate. But it is important to write down how many stops your train has and when it stops where. They do not announce the stops and unless it’s a major destination each stop ranges between 2 and 5 minutes so you need to be at the door and prepared to hop on or off with ease and grace.

At the train station, signs tell what car is supposed to be at that place, so you have to line up with where your car, or carriage as it’s called, is likely to be. Then you watch it go by and run like mad with everyone else to catch up.

While I was on the train, I would try to find someone in my car heading to the same place to make sure I got the correct stop. I’m sure this all works fine when you know the system, but it made me anxious. I never felt like I knew my stop and feared missing my stop.

Or maybe I was hopped up on the hot cups of saccharin they call chai.

Then you still have to get out of the train station.

In the north at least, walking out of a train station as a lone, white woman makes you top priority for porters wanting to carry your bags for a tip and taxi and rickshaw drivers.

I aimed to have transportation arranged at almost every city in advance. Having an Indian SIM card in my cell phone meant drivers could text or call me to know when I was getting in and find me when I got off the train. A few had the wherewithal to guess I was the white girl walking by myself. One waiting outside the Jaipur train station spotted me, grabbed my hand and got me through the scrum of drivers wishing they were him.

Another savvy hotel operator met me at the train station with a sign. His place was only a short walk from the station.
Ashrams usually have a tour operator they work with who can arrange pick up and drop off. Have the number of the hotel or ashram on you in case something doesn’t work out.

Then there are buses. I figure this post is long enough that I’ll keep this short but buses are a good option for short distances of 4 to 6 hours. The ones I took were like a school bus without glass in the windows. The open air cooled it down and kept the smell to a minimum. They stop every few hours for restroom breaks because there aren’t any on the bus.

These are popular in the south and a much more laid back option than trains in the north. You find out through your hotel or at the bus station what time the bus is supposed to leave. Some run as often as every half hour. Once you show up you can usually grab a cup of chai and ask around to find your bus. Fares are frequently paid on the bus and are usually in the 60 to 80 Rupee ($1.50 to $2 USD) range for a 4 to 6 hour trip.

Of course you can always hire a driver. And I’m sure it would still be an adventure.