A Yoga Retreat Venue at Adrasan: Hall, Garden and Whole-Hotel Buyout

Why Adrasan, of all places

Retreat venues on the Turkish coast tend to sit either in a town, where you practise to the sound of a beach club, or so far out that transfers eat two days of a seven-day programme. Adrasan is the rare middle: a bay in the Kumluca district of Antalya, an hour and a half from an international airport, reached by one road through pomegranate orchards, with pine-covered mountains closing it off on three sides.

The hotel is 1.8 km inland from the beach, which is the distance that matters. You get the sea as a day trip, not as a soundtrack. What you hear instead, after dark, is nothing much — the generator if the village power goes, and cicadas in summer.

The site is 8,000 m² of pine and palm garden with no vehicle traffic inside it: twin-villa wooden bungalows along gravel paths, rose beds, hammock corners and shaded pergolas. People who come to sit still for a week notice that there is nowhere on the grounds a car can reach them.

Where a group practises

Indoors, there is one multi-purpose hall. The hotel's Ministry of Culture and Tourism licence rates it for up to 60 people, and it is the room used for seminars, group work and company meetings out of season. It is the obvious space for a morning practice in April, when the mornings are still cool, and for anything that needs a roof.

Outdoors, groups use the garden: the shaded pergolas and lawns between the bungalows in the early morning, the poolside terrace at dawn before anyone swims, and the pool's own surround at the end of the day. The garden has flat, grassy sections and the pines give real shade by mid-morning.

One honest note, because it decides bookings: the hall is a general-purpose room, not a purpose-built shala with a sprung floor and a wall of props. If you are choosing between venues, write to us and ask for its dimensions and current photographs, and tell us what your practice needs on the floor and in the way of equipment. We would rather send you measurements than have you arrive to a room that does not fit your programme.

The rooms, and taking the whole place

There are 29 rooms in three types. Eighteen are 42 m² duplex bungalows with a separate bedroom upstairs and a sofa bed in the living room — the type that works for two retreat guests sharing without either of them sleeping in a corridor of a room. Seven are 35 m² deluxe rooms nearest the restaurant and pool, and four are 24 m² eco rooms, the simplest and cheapest, which are useful when a programme is priced in tiers.

Every room has air conditioning and heating, a balcony, a safe, a minibar, hot water around the clock, a hairdryer and mosquito screens on the windows. There is a laundry on site, free Wi-Fi throughout, free parking inside the grounds and a generator for the power cuts that any Mediterranean village occasionally has.

Because the hotel is small, a group of roughly 40 to 55 people fills it. Outside July and August that means a retreat can have the entire property — hall, garden, pool, restaurant and all 29 rooms — with no other guests in it. For most leaders this is the deciding factor, and it is the thing to ask about first, because the dates it is possible on are limited.

Food

The standard concept is Full Board Plus: breakfast, lunch, an à la carte dinner and all soft drinks between 08:30 and midnight included in the rate. Dinner is soup, a choice of main, salad, meze and dessert, served in the stone-arched restaurant or on its terrace. Alcohol is not part of the concept and is charged separately, which for most retreats is a feature rather than a limitation.

In April, the first half of May and October, room-and-breakfast is also available, which gives a group the option of catering its own lunches around a practice timetable.

Retreat groups almost always need something other than the standard menu — vegetarian, vegan, no gluten, no onion and garlic, early breakfast after a dawn practice, fruit between sessions. Tell us what your programme needs when you ask about dates, and our kitchen will tell you honestly what it can and cannot do for a group of your size. We would rather agree a menu in writing beforehand than improvise it on the first evening.

When to hold a retreat here

April, May, September and October. The mornings are cool enough to practise outdoors, the sea is swimmable from late May to late October, the village is quiet, and these are the months when a whole-hotel buyout is actually available.

July and August are the family season: hot, full, and the wrong month for a programme with two practices a day. Winter is possible for a small group — the hotel is open and the rooms are heated — but expect rain and short days, and plan the programme indoors.

One practical consequence of the season: a retreat in April or October competes with no one for the garden, the hall or the restaurant terrace, and the Lycian Way is at its best in exactly those months.

What a day can look like

This is not a programme we run — retreat leaders bring their own. It is what the place makes possible.

Practice at first light on the poolside terrace or the lawn, before the heat and before anyone else is up. Breakfast. A free middle of the day: the pool, the hammocks, a shuttle-free walk through the orchards to Adrasan beach (about 25 minutes on foot, a few minutes by car), or a full day on a boat to Suluada and the coves that have no road to them. Late-afternoon practice in the hall as the light goes orange. Dinner. Then the firepit in the garden, or the open-air cinema, or nothing at all.

Groups that want a day out of the programme usually take either the boat or a stage of the Lycian Way, which climbs out of this bay — a walking day that most retreats find fits their week better than a bus tour.

Getting here, and what we need to quote you

Antalya airport is about 100 km away, an hour and a half by road. A private transfer costs €85 per vehicle; for a group we can arrange a coach, and the per-person cost drops accordingly. There is asphalt road right to the hotel, and parking inside the grounds is free.

To give you a real price rather than a range, we need: your dates and the number of nights, the size of the group, how you want people housed (singles, sharing, which room types), whether you want the whole property, which meals and what kind of menu, how many hours a day you need the hall, and your airport arrival times. Send that in one message and you will get one answer.

• Dates and number of nights
• Group size, and how many rooms single vs shared
• Whole-hotel buyout: yes or no
• Meals and dietary requirements
• Hours per day you need the indoor hall
• Arrival and departure times at Antalya airport