Sacred India Retreat – A 12 day Cultural and Spiritual immersion in the Shiva Shakti traditions of India
Embark on a Profound Spiritual Journey at the Sacred India Retreat, Ganeshpuri, Maharashtra State For Men and Women, Singles and Couples.
A Sacred Exploration of The Divine Within You
This retreat is an invitation to step into the heart of India — to explore, both inwardly and outwardly, the living Shiva–Shakti traditions as reflections of the sacred masculine and feminine within each of us. Over 12 days, you’ll be guided into the culture, practices, rituals and community that have shaped this ancient spiritual landscape for centuries.
Guided by Daniel Sowelu, Chandu Bickford, and warmly hosted by the Jadhav family, you’ll stay in their peaceful guesthouse in the small pilgrimage town of Ganeshpuri — a quiet, devotional village in rural Maharashtra known for its temples, natural springs, and deep spiritual lineage.
Our days unfold with a rhythm designed to open you gently and powerfully from the inside out.
You’ll experience:
Daily meditation and grounding practices
- Group circle work and inquiry
- Chanting, mantras and embodied rituals
- Ceremonies drawn from the Shiva–Shakti traditions
- Cultural immersion with local families, temples, customs and community
This is a rare chance to be held in an authentic Indian homestay environment — to explore sacred sites, learn ancient practices, and allow the grace of the tradition to move through your own inner work.
Across these 12 days, you’ll cultivate greater stillness, clarity, intuition, and the capacity to take aligned action in your outer world.
A pilgrimage of culture and spirit — and a homecoming to yourself.
✨ Sacred Highlights
- Visit ancient Shiva and Shakti temples, rich in history, devotion and living tradition
- Explore sacred natural sites, rivers, hot springs and pilgrimage pathways
- Meet local spiritual leaders, elders and community members who continue these lineages
- Learn the stories, myths and teachings of Ganeshpuri — a village steeped in grace
✨ Ceremonies & Rituals
- Participate in gentle yet powerful rituals designed to support your growth and inner unfolding
- Experience traditional mantras, chanting and fire ceremonies
- Receive guided practices that honour the masculine and feminine energies within
- Engage in embodied ritual spaces that cultivate clarity, courage and self-trust
✨ Joy, Play & Fun
- Enjoy local dance lessons full of rhythm, colour and laughter
- Join a guided shopping expedition to nearby markets and artisan stalls
- Take part in group outings that bring levity, adventure and delight to the journey
✨ Cultural Immersion
- Learn to cook traditional home-style Indian meals with your host family
- Create fresh-flower garlands in a hands-on workshop
- Experience traditional Indian dress for our final ceremony and celebration
- Visit the local buffalo for early-morning milking — a family ritual
- Spend time in the family’s flower farm, learning the stories behind daily rural life
✨ Rest, Relaxation & Renewal
- Bathe in the local hot springs — a longstanding healing tradition of Ganeshpuri
- Enjoy daily guided meditations to quiet the mind and restore your energy
- Take spacious downtime to wander the village, journal, rest or simply be
- Walk through the surrounding farm and fields for reflection and gentle grounding.
A Facilitated Program
The foundation of our Sacred India Retreat is a fully designed spiritual program developed over many years and is professionally facilitated by Daniel Sowelu and Chandu Bickford.
Each day we will be learning and practicing the traditional local meditations, mantras and visualisations to access these parts of ourselves, whether we call them archetypes or gods and goddesses. These will be supplemented with experiential astrology, meditation, chanting, dance, and movement.
These are all transformative and healing processes and Daniel brings over 45 years of gathered spiritual, healing, groupwork, and therapeutic skills to care and nourish these processes in you during the course of the 12 days. His facilitation is supported by the brilliant Chandu who’s 20+ years of womens group leadership, her pioneering work around feminine insight and cross-cultural experience put her in a unique position to embody the awakened Shakti.
🌿 For Men — A Return to Stillness, Strength & Authentic Power
This retreat invites men into a rare space of grounded inner work — a place to cultivate true stillness, clarify direction, and reconnect with the deep, steady masculine at the core of who you are.
Across our time together you will:
- Discover your authentic power — not through force, but through clarity, alignment and inner steadiness.
- Clarify your path and capacity to act, learning how to take decisive, meaningful steps in your outer life.
- Explore the sacred masculine within, meeting both the fierce and tender aspects of your inner nature.
- Deepen your relationship with the feminine — the intuitive, generative, creative energy within you, and the women in your life.
- Learn from ancient stories and archetypes, drawing on time-honoured role models that inspire healthy, modern masculine leadership and integrity.
This is a powerful opportunity to come home to yourself — to strengthen your centre so you can walk through life with more presence, purpose and calm authority.
🌺 For Women — Harmony, Intuition & the Radiant Feminine
For women, this journey is an immersion into the beauty, power and wisdom of the sacred feminine — a chance to reconnect with what is tender, intuitive and fiercely transformative within you.
During the retreat you will:
- Find inner harmony and balance, softening old patterns and returning to your natural centre.
- Reconnect with your sacred feminine power, allowing your intuition to become a trusted guide.
- Be inspired by ancient stories of women who transformed themselves and their world.
- Strengthen your inner capacity for change, gaining confidence in your ability to choose, create and act from a place of truth.
- Experience deep rest and stillness, awakening a quieter, wiser knowing beneath the noise of daily life.
This journey brings you back to what is essential — your wisdom, your softness, your strength, and your quiet intuitive intelligence.
Outer Tour Details
From Ganeshpuri village we will be visiting temples in the region to the different deities, including Shiva, Laxmi and Ganesh, Rama and Sita, Saraswati, Krishna and Radha, Lalita, Kali, Parvati and their local representatives.
Our daily program includes meditations, astrological circle work, chanting, mantras and ceremonies to prepare ourselves inwardly to open to the grace of the sacred marriage, to open to the possibility for life-changing spiritual, emotional, and tantric awakenings.
The outer adventures include day long trips and a 5 day yatra or pilgrimage to significant goddess temples, including the great mountain temple of the Saptashrungi Devi, one of 51 Shakti Peethas of the goddess found across India and Tibet.
To honour the sacred masculine, the trip will also take in the ancient Jyoti-linga Shiva temple in Trimbakeshwara and the Kumbla Mela pilgrimage site in the town of Nasik.
EXTEND YOUR STAY! AN OPPORTUNITY UNIQUE TO 2026!
Not only does the retreat take in part of Navratri the nine-day festival to the goddess but this year is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for people to experience the Kumbla Mela, the largest spiritual gathering on the planet which happens every 12 years according to the cycle of Jupiter. This is happening at Trimbakeshwar, the source of the sacred Godavari River, the southern equivalent of the Ganges, only three hours drive from our home base of Ganeshpuri.
Due to logistical issues, our formal retreat finishes on day five of Navratri, so you are invited to extend your stay to take in the last four days and grand finale of the festival in the village. For the hardy adventurers amongst you the Kumbla Mela starts on October 30 and our hosts have secured some scarce accommodation at Trimbakeshwar for those who get in early enough.
If either or both of these options are of interest to you, contact Karan directly
ganeshpurigurudevchaya.com +91 86983 32942
Your Guides
Daniel Sowelu has been involved with the Shiva Shakti traditions for 45 years, having received a radical and life-changing initiation into the tantric path at 20 years of age, followed by another initiation into a goddess mantra 20 years later. He lived in the Ganeshpuri ashram for periods between 1982 and 1990 along with other trips through India.
His work as an experiential and evolutionary astrologer/therapist has had him specialise in the last 20 years with working with the light and dark faces of the sacred feminine, with the sacred marriage and collaborating with the pioneer of Sacred Activism Andrew Harvey.
Daniel created the first of these yearly retreats in 2015.
Chandu Bickford is a gifted medicine woman, alchemist, business coach, cultural educator, artist, poet and dancer who has been leading groups, particularly for women, for over 20 years. She has lived as a traditional farmer in Africa and travelled extensively through India, Nepal and Tibet, practising Vipassana meditation intensively for a decade and is a great lover of the sacred feminine in all her forms.
Additional Highlights Of The Retreat
*may be subject to change
- Discover facets of yourself and others through captivating storytelling and ancient myths and legends.
- Embrace the sacred feminine and masculine energies that reside within you.
- Forge connections with like-minded individuals who share your journey.
- Embark on adventures through the enchanting tapestry of an ancient land.
- Delve deep into your personal inner landscape for profound self-discovery.
- Traverse pilgrim paths leading to revered temples and other sanctified sites.
- Witness the breathtaking dawn vistas from time-honored temples and actively partake in traditional ceremonies.
- Relax into the rhythm of daily village life and join the evening dance celebrations
- Enjoying downtime in a serene and secure pilgrimage town, hosted by a welcoming local family.
- Indulge in delectable homecooked meals prepared with great love by our hosts.
- Explore vibrant markets and local shops to uncover unique gifts and keepsakes.
- Additionally your journey will encompass daily outings to local temples and a special four day pilgrimage.
- Immersion in the rituals and ceremonies that invoke the divine presence.
- Participation in a traditional Vedic ceremony honoring the goddess Saraswati.
- A culminating Shiva Shakti ceremony that venerates the sacred union within.
- Revering the sunrise from the mountain temple of Saptashrungi Devi.
- Embodying the Goddess through a day of adorning saris and makeup for women.
- A dedicated Shiva Day for men, featuring a traditional Vedic Shiva fire ceremony.
- Chanting the Guru Gita, a profound dialogue between Parvati and her consort Shiva, at a local ashram.
- Optional shopping excursions to Vasai, Nasik, and local markets for those interested.
A Journey of a Lifetime
Your Investment
- 2026 Fees: Early Bird ends March 31st. All fees ex Mumbai in AUD:
- $5390 per Individual Twin Share. Early Bird $5190.
- $6540 for Individual Private Room. Early Bird $6340.
- $4990 for Concession Rate, Individual Twin Share. Early Bird $4790.
- Deposits of $880 to be paid with your initial booking and are non-refundable after April 1st 2026.
- Early Bird balance due April 30th. Later balances are due by August 1st. Bookings are cancelled if not paid.
- Cancellation Policy: It is recommended that you have cancellation costs covered in your travel insurance.
- Refund Percentages on fees paid: Cancelling before May 1st: 80% refund. Cancelling before July 1st: 70% refund. Cancelling before August 1st: 50% refund. Cancellations after August 1st: No refund.
- Payment Plans: For people on payment plans, early cancellations after April 1st, a refund excludes your deposit and the same percentages as above for your post deposit payments.
- Force Majeure: There is a full refund, minus deposit, should the tour be cancelled due to extraneous circumstances.
- Deposits of $880 per head to be paid with your booking to secure your place.
- Payment Methods: You can book directly with Daniel, paying via bank transfer (including for manual payment plans), or via this website, where at the checkout you have three options:
- Direct Deposit – OUR PREFERRED OPTION – to the business account DanielSowelu.Com BSB:012 742 Acc No 477675451.
- Credit or Debit Card via this site.
- Automated Payment Plan, at checkout, using a Credit or Debit Card, with an added 5% processing Fee.
The Retreat Fees Include
- Accommodation on all nights of the tour dates
- Breakfast/lunch/dinners while in Ganeshpuri (all lovingly homecooked meals)
- Transfers to and from airport
- Transfers to and from outings
- Day tours
- Ceremonies
- Meditation/chanting in sacred spaces
- Down time for shopping and rest.
- Four day Yatra (Spiritual Pilgrimage) to Saptashrungi and Trimbakeshwara Temples.
- Circle facilitation, ceremony leaders and local guides.
- Local environmental levy.
- Donations to mountain orphanage, ashrams and temples.
Please note: Dates may slightly vary. Contact us for more details and to embark on this life-altering journey.
Join Us For An Experience That Transcends Ordinary Travel
The Sacred India Retreat promises spiritual growth, self-discovery, and a profound connection to the divine energies that shape our existence. Reserve your place today, and let the sacred dance of Shiva and Shakti awaken the depths of your being.