HOW IT STARTED
Shantini, the Initiator and founder of the Nalanda Retreat Center, remembers:
¨Having followed meditation retreats in many centers in India, Thailand, Burma and Sri Lanka, the idea was running through my head to one day build a bungalow in Asia in a place charged with Dharma to retire to when I would stop my activities in Switzerland¨
Why isolate myself completely?
I might as well share this place with friends and meditate together.
The idea matured and resulted in building a small Retreat Center. When I told Tilmann Lhundrup – my master of Mahamudra – about it, he provoked me by saying: “You are not going to wait another 10 years to do it!” It was in summer 2017. I immediately contacted Kumar, whom I had met in 2004 during the time when the Tsunami happened.
Kumar spoke English, was familiar with Western mentality and had already built several houses. I knew I could trust him and asked him to look for a land near a lake
When I arrived in December 2017 ...
When I arrived in December 2017, Kumar still hadn’t found anything interesting. But the next day, a friend told him about land for sale near a lake. We immediately went to visit it and it was wonderful – just perfect! Nothing in me could argue. It was “Yes, yes yes!”
There was already a house with 2 large rooms built on the first land but the construction had been stopped 6 months before – probably because construction was prohibited on a big part of the land as it is too close to the lake.
The purchase was completed on March 21, 2018. Everything was going well but it did not feel complete: the fence of the neighboring land was very close to the house and above all, a big magnificent Ficus tree was pricked with 6 rows of barbed wire of the fence.
Fortunatly...
Fortunately, this neighboring land was for sale at that time and rumor was that people who were interested in the land wanted to build a chicken farm there! This idea was inconceivable! This land was expensive but it also had to be acquired… to free the Ficus from its nails and so that the house would be in the middle of the land. We had to pass a few obstacles, mainly because of the high cost, but also because of the Easter bomb-attacks which shocked the whole country in 2019.
In the early days of the Retreat Center, it was mainly necessary to clear the land from all the bushes and woody roots of mimosas while waiting for building permits involving complicated procedures for more than one year.
And then the Center took shape
Brick by brick, with a team of assiduous workers, the land was cleaned up and buildings rose from the ground: the grandparents’ house, the main house, the workers’ house, the carpentry workshop, the magnificent circle around the ficus tree, an individual bungalow then the residence, the villa, the jungle bungalow and the round meditation hall.
By the end of December 2025, all of that is completed and ready to welcome everyone in search of Inner truth..
97a Meegolla Rd
hello@nalanda-center.org
0041 76 479 30 60