Please Note: Our team of website editors have decided to remove this older biographical informatrion regarding Swami Venkatesananda later years in South Africa. And we have also decided to remove all the previous biographical information and reincorporate some of it in our new photo galleries, and also provide some stories told in part by Swami Venkatesananda himself, and by those friends and devotees who knew him when he travelled the globe after leaving India in 1961. We have done this in order to provide our website visitors something more meaningful than simply dates and the usual travelog histories. All this will then be available on our new forthcoming webiste which are hoping will be live by the end of 2025. We believe your patience will be rewarded with more illumining, practical, and therefore, more useful material than has previously been available here and elsewhere. Ananda Kutir Yoga Centre run by Yogeshwari played host to many of his evening speeches. From modest beginnings in a small hall in the back garden of a suburban house, Ananda Kutir Cape Town later grew steadily and soon an ashram took shape. Today it is a vibrant hub of community service and an ashram in the truest sense of the word.