Take a walk on the wild side…

You may have visited Gautama for your personal education, healing or to connect with friends at a party…but did you ever think of Gautama as an ideal adventure-holiday venue?

Well, if you enjoy spending days walking in the amazing surrounding nature, it certainly is!

This spring my girlfriend and I came to Gautama for a week of walking through nature and we loved it! We don’t have a car, so, after a call to Gautama, we were picked up from Luino train station and brought to Gautama where we arrived just in time for a lovely lunch. That afternoon we walked from Gautama up the road to the Refugio Campiglio where the owner provided us with the free map ‘Via Verde Varesina’ which gives excellent information of all walking trails in the area at a very detailed scale. At Gautama this map is now also available.

All you need here is this map, a compass, a pair of decent walking shoes, a walking stick (we picked up ours from beside the path), a little rucksack with enough water and some snacks for on the way and off you go into these wonderful mountains..! You may also bring a camera, since there will be plenty of stunning views and if you’re lucky you may spot some wild pigs or a deer on the way. And a phone may be handy, since a sudden change of weather or other circumstances may prompt you to make an emergency call (fortunately we didn’t need to).

Gautama is situated at an altitude of 929 meters and from here several marked walking trails lead you through the forests. On our first trip we descended the sometimes-steep mountain following a track from the Benedictine monastery Pragaleto, just 500 meters up the road from Gautama, down to Dumenza (432 m). Although the tracks are marked with red/white painted signs on the trees or rocks, you need to really be aware as sometimes the tracks may be covered in leaves or the signs are sometimes weather worn and barely visible, so it is easy to loose directions, as we found out on this first trip – we ended up descending the last hour through a dry riverbed which was a little tricky, but we got there in the end. It took us all together three hours to get to Dumenza where we enjoyed some sandwiches and a coffee + grappa at the local bar.

From there the Via Verde Varesina (3V on the map) led us back up the mountain, climbing quite steeply for another three hours up to a spot called Alpe Fontana (1147 m) from where we reached the Refugio and down back to Gautama where we were just in time for a lovely dinner.

This is what makes Gautama such a comfortable base camp: no worries, no shopping and no restaurants needed. Breakfast is served in the morning, plan a walk for the day, preferably with a lunch stop somewhere in the middle, and when you arrive in the evening you can just join the dinner in the commune and hang out with friends or go to your private room and relax for the evening.

Other walks you can undertake are to the peak of Monte Lema (1620 m) where on a clear day you have a spectacular view over the Alps and its many lakes or you can walk to the picturesque village of Sarona, to Curiglia, to Alpe di Dumenza, to Agra, to Due Cossani… all are walks in the protected forests where you rarely meet or see anyone else and when it was time to return to busy city life in Amsterdam, we were completely recharged by the fresh air, nature and the excellent food & company at Gautama.

So we can warmly recommend a walking holiday at Gautama: take a walk on the wild side!

Swami Prem Udghosh & Ma Deva Meeta