Teaching in Monastery

What is monastery teaching volunteering in Nepal?

Teaching at a monastery in Nepal means living and working inside an active Buddhist monastery as an English instructor. You teach student monks aged 8 to 25, typically 3 to 4 hours a day, five days a week. Placements start at 2 weeks and are based mostly in the Kathmandu Valley, with remote options available. No teaching experience is required.

TravAction Nepal has been running monastery placements since 2004. Volunteers from over 30 countries have taught at our partner monasteries. The average volunteer teaches approximately 60 contact hours over a 4-week placement.

Who should volunteer at a Buddhist monastery?

This won't work for everyone, and we'd rather say that now than have you arrive expecting something different.

You'll get the most out of it if you're comfortable with real immersion — not the curated kind, but the kind where the monastery bell goes at 5am and that's just how mornings work now. Meals are simple. They're the same every day. Your students look at you and you look at them and you both have to figure out how to start a conversation from scratch.

It's a good fit for gap year travelers, career-breakers, and language teachers after something different. It's also a good fit for anyone who has been curious about Buddhist monastic life and wants more than a day visit.

Your students are student monks, mostly boys aged 8 to 18, though some monasteries also house older students. Their days revolve around religious study, meditation, and ritual. English sits alongside all of that as a practical tool that matters — a way to communicate with donors, visitors, and eventually a wider world.

The English level varies by class. Volunteers are assigned to groups aged 9 and above, so students generally have some basic exposure and can follow simple instructions. What you're building on depends on which class you're placed with.

• Teach spoken English — conversation, pronunciation, sentence building
• Lead reading and writing exercises — short passages, letter writing
• Share your own culture, food and country to fuel conversational lessons
• Build your own lesson plans alongside the existing monastery curriculum
• Work with the local coordinator to adapt your approach as you go

What are the living conditions like?

You'll stay inside or directly beside the monastery compound. A private room, a bed, basic furniture, shared bathrooms. Three meals a day from the monastery kitchen. Electricity is reliable in most placements, less so in remote ones.

This isn't a guesthouse, and it's not supposed to be. Some volunteers find the simplicity calming after the first few days. Others find it hard, then get used to it around week two. We say this not to put you off but because it matters for whether this is the right choice for you.