You feel over-dressed, red-faced, and sweaty among the barely-dressed yogi folk wafting past in the Om peace reception area. Jetlag is hitting and the ‘shanti welcome’ chai that you have been given

For the sake of this argument we’re in India. It could be anywhere in Asia but India is good. The setting is part stripped down resort-white, part indigenous Indian village (the gentle jangle of local women’s wedding bangles in the background for soothing authenticity). You feel over-dressed, red-faced, and sweaty among the barely-dressed yogi folk wafting past in the Om peace reception area. Jetlag is hitting and the ‘shanti welcome’ chai that you have been given in an unfired terracotta cup tastes as though it might have been strained through the undies of the old fella who helped carry in your bags.

Five ways of knowing you are in a tricked-up ego camp rather than the eco yoga retreat you thought you were up for:

1) If, as you try and sip pant tea and register, you are made to feel that you have brought far too much luggage by a floaty girl with a name that sounds like a plant seed.
2) If there was a section on the registration form asking you for the name of your guru.
3) If there is a mat moment when you look around (by mistake) and realise that you are not in a yoga asana session but at the Cocky Contortionist Olympics.
4) If, during the daily meditation session, you are given frustrating variations on a theme of ’empty your mind’. This becomes increasingly difficult as you spin through visions of your cat dying of poo-poisoning because you forgot to change the litter before you left, why whales sing, whether your tax return was filed, and whether the unfeasibly ripply man next to you really is that colour all over.
5) If you are told that you must give up your name and take on one that sounds like a plant seed.

Five more on knowing that you lucked out and are at the real thing

1) Your teacher will not wear curious robes or expect you to prostrate yourself every time he or she enters the room.
2) When you almost pass out on your mat during inversion time on the first morning there will not be a trim little Miss from Jivaperki tutting to your left, nor a hippy on the other side with such bad personal hygiene standards that it is debateable whether it was the five minute headstand, or his BO that brought on your dizzy spell.
3) There will be a great deal more on offer than just Olympic bendy mat time: scripture classes, cleansing practices, cheery singing (watch out, even hard core cynics get caught out by this one), and of course there are somewhat gentler ways of getting towards meditation than lobotomising your thought processes.
4) You will not be asked to give up your name. In fact you will hardly even be asked what you do, where you come from, how old you are, or which of the Booker short list novels you have read.
5) You will probably want to run away on about day three but by day seven you might start to feel as though someone opened a door and let out all the bad air, the patronising smell of competitive gymnastics, even the ache in your lower back. Be warned though as you will probably make absurd and unattainable resolutions during the final day.