INTO THE WOODS

IT'S ONLY IN THE NIGHT THAT the secrets are revealed. The daylight hides everything. But there is no escaping the starstudded sky, lit up by the moon, during the dark hours.

- NITIN CHAUDHARY

It's in those hours that the universe is accessible, its limitlessness felt. These thoughts crossed my mind as I walked in the hills of the Black Forest in Germany. There were no streetlights, and despite their absence, the trails were washed in the cool moonlight. Has the moon ever been so bright, I wondered? In the cities, we hardly recognise how calming, how brilliant, the moonlight could be. But here in the forests, the marvel dawns.

I had come to live for ten days in a monastery, an ashram, in the village of Bad Antogast. Hardly a village it was, though. At its heart is the monastery, encircled in the distance by a few wooden houses that speckle the hills around it. Life in the city had become overwhelming, and I was searching for respite. It was then that I decided to come to the forest to do a meditation course. "You will be in silence for the next ten days," our meditation teacher explained to us, a group of 30 individuals from all over Europe on day one, "Not a word to be spoken. You can walk in nature in the breaks, but do not strike any conversations."