Last week I wrote about donations at the Ashram. We have sometimes even heard of people that what we ask for covering expenses is a very high amount and too expensive for an Ashram. That gives us an even stranger feeling, especially when we hear it from someone who has paid ten times as much to stay in a hotel.
We are very clear about it that we are not a hotel and not a guesthouse. What you give here, is a donation for covering what is being spent for you. You come to the Ashram and you think you are in India, so eating and living must be very cheap! You are not in Europe or America, so you believe covering your expenses should not cost a big amount of money. At the same time however you want to have a good standard. Please realize that you are thinking wrong there!
If you have stayed in five star hotels before, you obviously expect the Ashram cost to be much cheaper. I don’t say that you should not stay in five star hotels! Please do and please enjoy it! But also realize that at the Ashram we ask you for a tenth of what you paid in a five star hotel! How come it looks expensive to you? It should actually look cheap to you!
Many people have heard of others who lived in India on a budget of a few Dollars daily. Is this the reason that the Ashram looks expensive to you? Then ask them how they stayed, what they paid for, if they had such a nice place to stay as our Ashram, if they got such good food as you received at our Ashram and whether they were so lovingly welcomed by their hosts as we welcomed you, providing whatever we could and had?
I can tell you that we have made our calculation a hundred of times and the expenses that we tell our guests to cover is exactly what we need to keep the Ashram running when guests stay here.
The final aspect for me is always that you stay in big and expensive hotels that obviously are out for profit and then complain about our Ashram, where we only would like to cover our costs and maybe get an extra donation for our charity projects. You love the projects, you love our children but already covering your expenses is too much? Who would not love the children when one sees how happily they eat their lunch? You wish us that we get a lot of support but what about you? Can you not generously support the life of these children, too?
Again I have to say that this also happens sometimes. In the next days I would like to explain a bit more about this topic, though, and about the reasons why some people get this impression that living in an Ashram in India should cost nearly nothing.
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Dear Swami Ji. It seems you had some bad experience in your Ashram because you write a lot about prices and money.I can tell you that in your Ashram is low prices compare other yoga retreats. You should not explain where money go to. Get away from people who think that they paid too much. It is lots of strangers everywhere. I have some rich friends which can make me very expensive gifts but when I say “please do not buy for me these expensive things and better give money to poor kids” they simply do not understand it. Then they do not make gifts and anyway do not help poor
Dear Helena,Thank you for your comment. It’s true, we sometimes make experiences which are not so nice with people who come to stay here at the Ashram. I write this to give people a clear idea about what happens here, what is the surrounding and what we think and experience. So people who don’t fit here don’t even approach. We get lots of inquries from many people daily but for their and our convenience I write openly beforehand so we both avoid bitter experiences. Expensive or cheap is always an individual perception. What is expensive for one person can be cheap for others. But we need to tell what you get here and why. And as you say, people can compare prices themselves and nothing is hidden these days anyway. Thank you again for your Love and support. Much Love to you.
It is all about the quality. You can of course live cheap but you always risk getting bad quality in water and also food. It is the same here in Germany, although the difference of good and bad quality is not that big as in India. You can in most areas of Germany drink tap water but that includes all kinds of chemicals which were used in purifying it. And other chemicals, such as those hormones found in contraceptive pills, cannot be filtered at all. This is why some people prefer buying bottled water – which is obviously more expensive! You would not get ill of the German tap water right away but the long-term effects are there and have to be considered. Sometimes you have to spend money to stay healthy.
It’s strange to think that some feel that the price of the Ashram is expensive, especially from people in western countries where 2 star hotels cost 5 times as much as what I have paid for my stay. I understand that when people travel it is usually on a budget, for I am in this exact situation, yet reason and rationality must not be forgotten all the same. I am aware of the more expensive, and the less expensive hotels, but I don’t think you can compare them, nor their prices to that of the Ashram, as they offer a different experience entirely. It is very rare that a guest in a hotel is offered the chance to eat their meals with the hotel owners! The guest here is offered a personal, Indian family experience, where meal times are not designated by the kitchen, the staff appear to be happy and treated well, and the family members greet you as though one of their own. When I arrived here, Grandma cupped my face in her hands with a great big smile, and then we hugged as though I was an old friend returning. What a lovely introduction! A hotel although may say they offer the personal experience, is unlikely to be able to offer you this!
The only thing I might add as to the possible reasoning behind why some might think the Ashram is expensive, and I may well be wrong on this but it is just a suggestion. People know of India to be cheap, as it is also massively poverty stricken. Tourists including myself are all too aware that the chances are they will at least once get taken advantage of, in order to gain more money from them, as life here is often about survival as much as anything else. Now I can only imagine that a tourist’s first point of call to this country, is generally through their accommodation, and it is perhaps at this first introduction that they’re cynicism grows, and they already start to question whether they’re being ripped off. They have heard of people staying in places for very very little, and yet the prices they are being offered here are cheap, but not amost nothing, which is what might be expected. I suppose the main success of selling any service/product to someone is to make sure they know exactly what the benefits are for them paying for it. I read an interesting blog by Swami Ji informing of the superficial and modified foods that make their way into Indian culture such as synthetic milk, and hormone injected vegetables. I had not realised before coming here that synthetic milk for example was even possible outside of baby products, let alone that I could be ingesting it unknowlingly whilst outside of the Ashram. The guaranteed good quality producer of these items that the Ashram abides by, and the less certain alternatives outside, are certainly worth a mention, which may not only deter people from staying in other cheaper accommodations, but also make them appreciate all the more their choice to stay at the Ashram.