Writers’ retreats | Finding their muse, from Goa to Himachal  Premium

Writers’ retreats are on the rise in India — with big-name mentors, masterclasses on the beach, and yoga and heritage walks to spur the imagination. But is there value beyond networking and bragging rights?

It was on the remote Scottish island of Jura that George Orwell found the perfect “extremely un-get-able place” to write 1984. Virginia Woolf wrote her stream of consciousness novels from a shed at the edge of her family’s Sussex estate Monk’s House. Ian Fleming wrote his pacy James Bond thrillers in the languor of his estate in Jamaica. Barack Obama chose the South Pacific island of Tetiaroa, an estate once owned by Marlon Brando, to write his post-POTUS memoir.

For as long as writers have been writing, they have been retreating — away from the daily grind, far from the madding crowds, cut off from urban noise. But solitude, it seems, is not necessarily what modern-day writers’ retreats are offering; nor is it necessarily in demand.

For Yagna Balaji, carving four days out of her busy schedule to decamp to Cabo Serai in South Goa, had less to do with isolation and more with seeking inspiration. “As a journalist, writing has become more a function of our jobs, formats, patterns… We are commissioned to do things,” says the former editor and CEO of DT Next, and now marketing professional. “I wanted to reconnect with the kind of writing that drew me to a profession like journalism in the first place.”

Balaji found what she was looking for at KYO Spaces’ first writers’ retreat in mid-September. She was one of a group of 16, who were under the mentorship of Kolkata-based writer Karuna Ezara Parikh. “Cabo Serai was the perfect sort of organic, pollution-free, isolated space. Karuna is a very generous, very involved guide. Unlike most artists’ retreats, KYO Spaces didn’t have rigid rules as to who could attend. So, the biggest revelation for me was meeting this collective of people — scriptwriters, poets, filmmakers — who were just passionate about writing.”

Writers’ retreats are often luxurious, even expensive experiences. Unlike the more serious-minded writers’ residency — a longer-term, structured commitment that allows a writer to focus on a project, in the company of like-minded folk, with a hefty price tag that is occasionally supplemented with financial aid — the retreat is mostly open to anyone who aspires to be a writer of any sort or even simply to improve their storytelling skills. Remote, beautiful backdrops are mandatory, they last for fewer days, and there’s often a lifestyle element involved — KYO Spaces’ retreat also focused on yoga; others are leveraging the destination as a travel incentive, or incorporating food trails and such.

Retreats such as this have punctuated the subcontinent’s landscape for a lot of 2023, resorting to picturesque Himalayan valleys and the Arabian seaside alike. In March, award-winning author of Shambala Junction, Dipika Mukherjee, led a course in “international immersion writing” at the Himalayan Writing Retreat in Nainital. In May, Mandodari author Koral Dasgupta led one at Te Aroha, Dhanachuli, in Uttarakhand, around the theme of ‘Power Women in Indian Mythology’. In September, Meera Ganapathi, editor of Soup magazine, helped a small group understand the “why” of writing at Slow Garden, Leh.

“Each retreat has a different flavour,” says Tara Khandelwal, founder of Bound India, an independent brand that helps writers get published, which began with a writers’ retreat five-and-a-half years ago in Goa. “We chose Divar Island because it was still very ‘writer-ly’ and isolated back then. Someone I knew had just opened a boutique hotel inside a 200-year-old Portuguese villa. I wanted to organise a retreat with 12 writers and three mentors, and the villa had exactly that capacity. It felt like serendipity.”