Shouldn't travel be fun?

My stomach expands and contracts with each breath like clay being moulded on a kiln. Thick air trickles upwards through my nose as though I’m inhaling a cloud.

I am aware of the millions of atoms that make my body. These are the same atoms that are on the bees who drunkenly stumble between flowers just outside the meditation hall.

Gradually, I feel a searing pain in my leg as though a small Tibetan child is giving me a Chinese burn. She is unrelenting, I want to prise her chubby fingers off my shin, ironing out her dimples into a scowl.

I realise I’ve lost the moment.

With a decidedly un-Buddha-like frown, I open my eyes to scan the fifty or so other aspiring Buddhists from around the world.

The mostly pale faces are in varied stages of the spiritual battle. Some faces look scrunched up, creased and constipated in concentration. Others’ eyes are lightly closed with expert serenity, while a poor few are slumped over, defeated and spilling over their cushions like a potters’ blunder.

We have traded the freedom of the wind and mountains in order to ‘catch a moment’ through a nine day silent Buddhist meditation retreat. For many, our self inflicted institutionalisation is in order to emancipate ourselves from what Buddha called our inherent state of suffering. This is a human condition caused by our attachment to and grasping for more than the present moment.

How can people travelling across the globe in one of the most beautiful parts of the world be suffering? Surely, away from the plastic faces, cards and lives of rampant western consumerism, perched atop the bleeding dirt roads and restless trees that run down the foothills of the Himalayas, we should be in a perpetual state of cosmic bliss.

But still we suffer. My rupees may be crumpled, but they can buy almost anything on India’s travel aisle. I buy or chase every possible travel experience from yoga classes, eco-tours or the most silent of meditation retreats, as though desperately stocking up on tinned goods prior to the apocalypse.

I wonder whether this retreat is just another item on the shelf.

Through meditation can I truly learn to accept the present moment and be grateful and satisfied with what I have?

Yet without this suffering, would I have ever left my lack-lustre job and come to India to chase and find the moments I am increasingly eager to catch?

I close my eyes again and breathe deeply, trying to focus. The child is still there. She looks at me, giggles, and twists harder.