LeapYear India: Naropa University's Gap Year

This program includes a semester of group travel and a semester-long internship bracketed by several intensive retreats. I traveled to Nepal and northern India with nine other students and two trip leaders in my first semester and returned to India to study a form of art known as Thangka painting in Dharamsala during my internship. I learned more about myself and the world around me during my year in this program than I have at any other point in my life.

Housing ranges from staying at retreat centers, living at ashrams, camping in tents, guesthouses, and homestays with local families. One of the most important aspects of the program is a deep cultural immersion, and we got really close to the people we stayed with. Even over a year later, I am still in contact with many of the people I met during my travels.

I personally felt very supported during my time with LEAPYEAR. Although the program may seem a little short-staffed at times, the majority of the staff members care about the students on a deeper level than I have ever experienced. Even when problems did arise, I felt very safe.

The program was both fun and really challenging. Things were not always comfortable. Many of us got sick, and being sick while away from home in a foreign country can be a really difficult experience. The self-reflection aspect of this program can get quite intense sometimes. However, I also had the opportunity to sing, dance, and laugh harder than I ever have. I adventured to places I never knew existed and got to know some really incredible people. LEAPYEAR taught me my own limitations and encouraged me to grow past them.

This program helped prepare me for future academic pursuits and the work I am hoping to do in the future. Every time I reflect on my experience, I learn more and more. LEAPYEAR was easily one of the best things I could have possibly done for myself, and I am so grateful for my experience. I feel much more confident and grounded after my time in this program. It was a completely life-changing experience overall.

My trip to Nepal and North India with LEAPNOW was my very first time traveling outside of the country. It was intense, it was beautiful, it was life changing, and I wouldn't trade that experience for anything else! I recommend this program if you are ready to change your life, listen to your heart, and see the world with clear eyes. The work you do during group travel is such a humbling and unique experience. The staff (which is more like family) thoroughly and carefully crafts the schedule to make your experience abroad the most culturally rich and special as possible.

This program was one of the greatest experiences of my life. I chose to travel to India and Peru during my time at LeapNow and had the opportunity to explore new countries while having an incredible system of support and guidance that helped me navigate challenges and encouraged me to face my fears and difficulties without ever feeling alone.
While in India on group travel, I got take language classes in the foothills of the Himalayas, spend time with a wonderful homestay family in Varanasi, help build houses in the South Indian tropics, and far, far more than I could ever say in a simple review.
In Peru on my solo internship I chose to volunteer with the Sisters of Charity of Mother Theresa in a home for the dying, disabled, abandoned, and learned about caretaking and what it takes to live and travel independently.
Within the program I learned communication and problem solving skills, conflict resolution, cultural and social justice education, emotional literacy, group and solo travel skills, how to understand and maintain my own integrity, how hold myself accountable, how to create a healthy relationship with my own body, and how to create healthy, generative relationships with the people around me.
I use what I was taught in LeapNow virtually every day and will never be able to truly express my gratitude for this year of my life and all I learned from it.

Hello Everyone!
It's strange to think that a year ago I was in your position, furiously researching study abroad programs. I remember how overwhelming it was and how I didn't believe I would ever find the right one. Then by a chance of fate a family friend recommended Leapnow to me. Participating in this program was the best decision I have ever made. I was fortunate enough to travel through Nepal and Northern India during my group travel where we were exposed to different cultures in a way I have not witnessed in any other program. We lived and worked among the people, learning their language and customs.

Then coming back to the US Leapnow helped moderate the transition and provided a safe container to re-acclimate to society before going home. The retreats have given me tools I feel will be valuable for the rest of my life such as communication, leadership, emotional literacy and facing myself. I have also never before bonded to a group of individuals like I did my group. We are a family.

I would recommend this program to all students going through transition who want to really learn about themselves and the world we live in. It is not for the faint of heart, but I believe everyone has the capability to find true passion and potential through this incredible process.

I completed the LEAPYEAR program four years ago, and I can still feel the positive impact the experience has on my life every day. Upon graduating High School I felt lost and aside from travelling and exploring during my gap year, I wanted a chance to emotionally develop, get to know myself better and clarify what I want in life. LEAPYEAR delivered as advertised and was as much an inner as exploration as it was an outward exploration. I spent six months traveling in Nepal, India, Nicaragua and Costa Rica gaining new experiences, skills, and perspective about myself and the world. LEAPYEAR gave me the support I needed to learn how to confidently and competently travel and navigate a foreign place where I don’t know the language or the culture by myself. These lessons carried over to other areas of my life and have been serving me ever since. The four retreats helped me to process and integrate my experiences traveling, as well as dive deeper into my inner exploration and develop emotional intelligence. I feel like I got a head start on becoming my adult self which has served me throughout university and especially now that I am transitioning from college life to what’s next. I am forever grateful for my LEAPYEAR experience and the gifts that keep on giving.

The year was just so beautiful... nights stargazing on ashram rooftops in Nepal, Himalayan sunrise treks, delicious food EVERWHERE, misty mornings at the maacama campus in California...

Even deeper than that, for me, was softening into who I am as a human being. Learning that I'm not the only one who feels broken a lot of the times, learning to feel this deep sensation in my bones that I'm not alone in the universe - that I have friends all around me. The year itself was such a beautiful (and super FUN) exploration of not only the physical world, but my own heart.

The entire program itself was a springboard - it seems to have shifted my life in irreversible ways. Now I'm so much more capable of deicing for myself who I want to be in the world, how I want to relate to others, and what incredible life I want to build for myself. The power is in my hands, and LEAPYEAR gave it to me.

Every single day I think about my LEAP year experience, and when I do I am filled with gratitude. In LEAP every day is a unique way to grow in a way I lack the space to describe. Every day is wide awake

Every day on the land in Maacama during the retreats, or out in group travel in India and Nepal, or on my solo internship in Seville, Spain...every day was physically and actively different and yet the constant was a feeling of support, a passion from the staff and group leaders, love of travel and life in general, openness, patience, willingness and wisdom. Everyone brought themselves, their excitement, humor, creativity, genius(!) to the stage and it was an incredible time. Either sitting and writing a paper in India, or California, I felt proud to turn something in because I knew it was going to people who were reading it out of my own learning experience, not our of a systematic and literal grading...it was out of what did I do, what did I learn from it, who am I now? Every day is full of wonder, newness and a total sense of "holy cow, what I am doing is amazing!"