From a remote hillside retreat in northern India, Tibetan Buddhist nun Tenzin Drolma's online classes on meditation drew more than 1,000 people from across 57 countries recently. It was a happy surprise, since she was expecting only about 100 to tune in, she told the AFP news agency.

The US-born teacher said she sets up her classes in the prayer hall where she used to hold in-person sessions before the lockdown.

"I think that makes it as real as when I have actual people there," she said from the retreat in Dharamsala.

And in Rishikesh, a city in the Himalayan foothills often called the yoga capital of the world, instructors from the Parmarth Niketan ashram have moved their classes from the banks of the Ganges to the web.

Sadhvi Bhagawati Saraswati, originally from California, lives at the ashram. She said she hoped the yoga classes would help people feel "healthy, stress-free and anxiety-free".