Heading to India and like to volunteer along the way? Want to do something besides TEFL? Check out these surprisingly different gap year opportunities for travel volunteers.

Heal Through Art

Famous as the home of the Dalai Lama, Dharamsala is also the centre of Tibetan exile and home to more than a hundred thousand Tibetan refugees (many of them children).

At the rooftop of the refugee reception center, Ama Adhe runs the Art Refuge Programme for children, providing creativity and healing during their transition from their traumatic journey. Here volunteers can work directly with the children in art programmes, develop classroom content, help build new classrooms, and follow-up with Art Refuge alumni.

Canadian Mariellen Ward spent a month volunteering and was surprised by what she found. “I was nervous,” she admits. “I had never worked with children.”

Thankfully her worries were unfounded. The children simply needed her love and attention. “I had prepared myself for difficulty, not for love. I spent the next month, each morning and afternoon at the reception centre, playing with the children, loving them, allowing them to love me and just being there for them. It was love they needed – not art, not therapy.”

Attain Nirvana Through Yoga

For those who practice yoga, India is the motherland. If you’ve ever considered becoming a yoga teacher, volunteer teaching is a great way to get started and gain experience.

American Lisa Knaffla experienced this when she took up the challenge to lead yoga classes to more than a hundred kids at an orphanage in Jharkhand, in northeastern India. After simplifying her own life, she traveled with the Miracle Foundation hoping to offer something; when she was asked to teach the kids yoga, she found her calling.

“Picture 6:29 am, 55 degrees Fahrenheit, outdoor-slate floor patio, no mats,” Lisa recalls. “At 6:30 one little boy came and asked, ‘Yoga?’ I said yes, and he turned the music on. Within two minutes the patio was full with 50 or more kids. I spoke no Hindi but only from the heart, and we did Sun Salutations to the sunrise. It was the most awe-inspiring hour of my trip.”