It is true, places that are closest to your home - you often oversee them. This is what happend to us with France. OK, as a child I, Nina, have been to Strassbourg several times, we have visited a small part of the Alsace alread, I have been to Paris twice (but only for business - so, I saw the airport and the hotel). Markus also had spent some time near Nice. But we have never ever really visited France together. With very limited knowledge of the french language it never has been high on our bucket list. Once again, the reason why we finally decided to travel to France once again was because of our spiritual master Paramahamsa Vishwananda. He was about to give a satsang (where he answers questions people ask him) in Lyon. ... read more

Vrindavan is the holiest place in the world. And you can feel this around every single corner. Lucky enough, it was my 4th and Markus 3rd visit already. Wow, this is a great blessing and we both have a love affair with Vrindavan. It looks terribly dirty on the outside (although it has improved a lot recently), it has such a wonderful feeling and vibe. We always feel like coming home. The first full day of Vrindavan was wonderful, crazy and really special. In the morning we started early with a temple tour with Paramahamsa Vishwananda. For us photographers, the fun started right away. The old part of Vrindavan with its narrox streets is busy with people, cows, garbage and shit. And Paramahamsa Vishwananda is walking really fast. So it was jogging for us to be ... read more

When we read about this pilgrimage of our spiritual master Paramahamsa Vishwananda, we were having a grin on our faces. A silent retreat in one of the noisiest countries of the world - this sounded like a special experience. Well, just joking...... we know very well that there are regions in India you can find perfect silence, especially when you do not aim for an external silence but an internal silence. I am talking about a silence in your own mind. And this was what we were looking forward to. Well, coming back to the trip. From Delhi our group took a short flight up north to Dehradun. Here we were welcomed by 3 buses which finally took us to our amazing hotel near Haridwar which took about 1,5 hours. To name it a hotel is ... read more

We woke up in our little B&B in Premosello Chiovenda, a small village in the Ossola Valley between Lago di Mergozzo and Domodossola, with sunshine and a blue sky. Fantastic. This is why we came to Italy over the weekend - to escape the rain at home in the northern Alps in Switzerland. We had a shower, packed our few belongings and left. We still had not really an idea what to do today - well, do not get us wrong. There are many, many things to do in this region with great hiking, mountains and the Lago Maggiore close by. But we really enjoyed the Sacro Monte (Holy Mountain) we visited the day before in Domodossola. And we did not bring our hiking gear. What better way to discuss this with a breakfast in a ... read more

Our roadtrip through northern Germany was coming to an end slowly. The last city our spiritual master gave darshan (the 6th darshan in 12 days) was Leipzig. Definitely a new city for noth of us. The drive down south from Berlin was uneventful. The landscape was mainly flat, it was not much traffic and after about 2 hours we arrived in Leipzig. We quickly checked in in our hotel and then started to explore the city. First we went to a part of town called Altlindenau. Nothing special about this part beside one thing: there are many beautiful old hoses. Most of them are completely run down. One can easily see the reason why. It is simply because of the lack of money/investment. This is not a rich part of Germany. So for many, many years, ... read more