Walking the Edge: Bringing Wilderness Rites of Passage to India
Listening for how the wild wants to return through us.
Across cultures, wilderness rites of passage have carried a simple pattern: leave the village, meet the unknown, and return changed.
From deserts to forests, mountains to rivers, each land holds its own doorway to the unknown. Though the forms differ, the gesture is the same: to leave what is familiar, to be met by what is greater, and to return changed.
To go alone onto the land, to fast, to listen, to face the elements and one’s own mortality — these are ancient ways of remembering what it means to be human. They remind us that growth is not only about expansion, but also surrender; that maturity is born from humility and relationship.
These are not romantic or nostalgic ideas. They are the foundations of a sane and mature culture.
The Indian Context
To bring this work to India is both a remembering and a risk.
Our ancestors — rishis, munis, forest-dwellers — once sought wisdom through retreat into the wild. But today, much of that landscape has changed. Forests are fewer, borders tighter, and solitude is rarely safe or accessible.
Here, wilderness is not just geography; it is a social and cultural frontier.
For many, especially women and queer people, being alone on the land can invite danger — from wild animals, from humans, from systems that do not yet understand why someone would go to the forest simply to be.
The practical challenges are real:
unpredictable weather and terrain,
limited public land and permits,
lack of emergency infrastructure,
the social risk of misunderstanding or scrutiny.
To hold this work responsibly in such a context asks for creativity, care, and courage.
Our Approach
At Vanaprastha, we walk this edge with deep respect.
We adapt the traditional rite-of-passage container — keeping its essence intact while grounding it in the realities of India today. This means:
Prioritizing safety through site-specific scouting, emergency planning, and Wilderness First Responder training.
Working in relationship with local communities and the land, seeking permission and reciprocity wherever we go.
Creating inclusive spaces where women, queer people, and those new to the wild can meet nature safely and in their own way.
Honoring cultural context — allowing this modern expression of wilderness rites to converse with India’s ancient forest lineages, finding new forms of ceremony that belong to this time and place.
The wilderness is never entirely safe, nor should it be. It is alive, unpredictable, and uncontainable — qualities that make initiation powerful. Yet our role as guides is to ensure that the risk remains meaningful, not reckless; that what participants face is the edge of transformation, not harm.
Why It Matters
Modern life trains us to control, to consume, to insulate ourselves from discomfort. In such a world, even a short encounter with wildness can be revolutionary.
When someone sits alone under the open sky — unmediated by technology, unshielded from silence — something ancient stirs. The individual begins to feel their smallness, their belonging, their grief and gratitude.
This is the medicine our time needs.
Not escapism, but re-engagement.
Not another self-improvement method, but a remembering of relationship — with death, with land, with life.
Walking Forward
To bring Wilderness Rites of Passage to India is to walk between worlds: the remembered past and the uncertain future, tradition and innovation, safety and surrender. It is not easy work, nor should it be. But it is necessary.
If we can learn, even in small circles, how to meet the wild with reverence and care — how to listen, how to stay, how to return — then perhaps we can begin to heal the disconnection that runs through our time.
At Vanaprastha, we hold this work as both prayer and responsibility: to create safe pathways for those called to the land, and to remember, together, what it means to walk as part of the living world.
