Overview

Every year, thousands of German citizens travel to India, hoping to have a spiritual awakening of their own. In turn, they end up taking bits and pieces of Indian culture back home with them, creating a distorted version of Indian religion that’s practiced widely across Europe. The number of yoga institutes, ashrams, and Sanskrit institutes in Germany indicates that younger generations are far from giving up on this trend. Some are so enamored by this version of Indian culture that they travel thousands of kilometres to meet their spiritual advisors in tents, attend yoga sessions at 5 in the morning, and, in some cases, even adopt Indian names and clothes to try and connect more with this Eastern way of living. But exactly how prevalent is this trend?