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real retreats

About Real Retreats

Travel that leaves something behind in you

The team behind the Journeys

We design small-group and private retreats across India and Asia — journeys built around stillness, culture and genuine encounter.

Real Retreats began with a simple observation: most travel fills a calendar, but very little of it changes anyone. We wanted to build the other kind — journeys with enough space to think, and enough real contact with places and people to widen how you see.

Interior of a Himalayan Buddhist monastery on a Real Retreats journey
Prayer hall detail from a monastery in the Indian Himalaya

Our story

Fifteen years of learning the road

Real Retreats is built on the foundations of Spiritual India Tours, a company that has been designing journeys across India and Asia for more than fifteen years. In that time we learned something that shaped everything we do now: the moments travellers remember are almost never the ones on the itinerary.

They are the unhurried conversations. The morning nobody rushed. The guide who was from the village, not from an agency. So we started building trips backwards — protecting those moments first, and arranging everything else around them.

We plan the space as carefully as we plan the schedule.

That is why our groups stay small, our days stay unhurried, and our guides are people who actually live in the places they show you.

What we believe

Three things we won't compromise on

These aren't marketing lines. They are the rules we plan every itinerary against.

Places, not attractions

We work with local guides, family-run stays and community hosts. You meet a place through the people who live in it, not through a queue and a ticket window.

Space is part of the plan

An itinerary crammed edge to edge is a schedule, not a retreat. We deliberately leave mornings open, keep drives short, and build in days with nothing scheduled at all.

Travel that gives back

We book locally owned accommodation wherever it exists, pay guides properly, and keep group sizes small enough that our presence doesn't change the places we visit.

How a Real Retreat comes together

Every journey is shaped around the person taking it. Here is what that looks like in practice, from first message to the day you fly home.

01

We listen first

Your dates, your pace, what you want more of and what you'd rather skip. No template, no fixed departure list to choose from.

02

We draft a route

A day-by-day plan with accommodation, guides and transfers, plus an honest note on what each day will actually feel like.

03

We refine together

Swap a city, add a rest day, extend the wellness section. We keep adjusting until the shape is genuinely yours.

04

We stay with you

Local coordinators on the ground and someone reachable throughout, so a delayed flight or a change of plan is our problem, not yours.

In practice

What that adds up to

15+Years designing journeys across India and Asia
9Destinations, from Ladakh to Bali
SmallGroup sizes, kept deliberately intimate
LocalGuides and partners in every destination

In partnership with

Made by Spiritual India Tours

Real Retreats is backed by Spiritual India Tours, a travel company with more than fifteen years of experience designing authentic journeys throughout India and some of Asia's most inspiring destinations. Together we combine deep local knowledge, trusted partnerships and carefully crafted itineraries to create travel that goes beyond sightseeing.

15+ yearsAsia-wide networkCrafted travel

Our people

The team behind the journeys

Planners, guides and coordinators who have walked these routes themselves.

Real Retreats founder portrait

Name here

Founder & retreat planner

Two or three lines on what they do, where they've travelled, and why they build trips this way.

Real Retreats India destination lead portrait

Name here

Destination lead, India

Two or three lines on what they do, where they've travelled, and why they build trips this way.

Tell us where you'd like to go

Share your dates and interests, and we'll suggest the retreat that fits.