To Big Sur, with love: a monastery stay on the north California coast | California holidays

I get into my car outside my mother’s home and drive up into the mountains. Past the estate where Ronald Reagan kept his Western White House, past Michael Jackson’s Neverland and the mock-Danish town of Solvang. On to Highway 101, which stretches all the way from Mexico to almost Canada, and then, after an hour, on to Highway 1, the two-lane road that winds around the coast of central California. Very soon there’s nothing to my right but dry hills and a few cows grazing in golden meadows, nothing to my left but the great blue plate of the Pacific Ocean.

I pass the turn that leads up to gaudy Hearst Castle, at the top of one of the peaks, and then the beach below the road where dozens of elephant seals lie along the sand like fallen boulders. At last I come to a single-lane path that winds for two miles up to the top of a hill. Each curve discloses a fresh view of the blue-green waters stretching to the south. Not a soul to disrupt the stillness. The silence, when I arrive, seems almost to vibrate, a positive presence.

There’s nowhere else I’d ever want to be. Not just because a donation (of a little over £100 a night) provides me with a room with a long desk, a private walled garden overlooking the sea, and hot food and showers a few feet away. And not only because there’s no phone to answer, no internet to distract, no TV to turn me into a fretful fool.

The place is heaven simply because all the deadlines I was worrying about on the road below, all the arguments I was conducting in my head, the worry about next month, that fear for my ageing mother, are gone, completely gone. I’m encircled by more stars than I could ever count, a rabbit standing on my splintered fence and the occasional sound of tolling bells behind me.

Over 50 years of constant travel I’ve been lucky enough to visit Antarctica and Tibet, to feel shaken by the pilgrims of Ethiopia and spooked by the stone faces of Easter Island. But nowhere has so transformed me as the Catholic hermitage, New Camaldoli, to which I keep returning, more than 100 times over the past 33 years. I’m not a Christian and I don’t attend any of the services on offer. But simply taking long walks, sitting in my little garden watching the sun scintillate on the water and chatting with other retreatants feels like the greatest adventure of all. A true trip is one that sends you home a different person from the one who left – more directed, more joyful, more calm – and nowhere has this effect on me as does this simple monastery.

The first time I visited – February 1991 – the world was much less noisy and distracted than today. There were no smartphones, no social media, no constant updates; email was in its infancy. Even so, a few days in silence felt like radiant liberation. All the chatter in my head dissolved and I could remember what I truly love. And all my little plans and hopes and frustrations disappeared, so I could remember what I ought to be. The monks call this “recollection”, the recovery of a truth, a self, that’s always at hand but too often forgotten.

Of course the 60-mile stretch of coastline known as Big Sur is already one of the most transporting places on Earth; the calendar falls away, as do thoughts of the frantic world, as you begin nosing around curves for hours on a tiny road above the sea. The tall redwoods, the high cliffs, the ocean stretching across 30% of the planet – no boats or oil rigs or anything here but migrating whales – makes you feel a tiny part of a very big picture.

“There being nothing to improve on in the surroundings, the tendency is to set about improving oneself,” as Henry Miller wrote, having settled in a convict’s cabin here after travelling around Greece. We can “make our own Bibles”, he went so far as to write; the good-natured bum famous for slouching around among the sex-workers and gutters of Paris even admitted that “it was here at Big Sur that I first learned to say ‘Amen’.” It’s no surprise that the Esalen Institute, widely regarded as the birthplace of the “human potential” movement, is 20 minutes up the coast from New Camaldoli; among the tall trees farther north you’ll find funky inns, campgrounds, tiny churches, even the hidden homes of billionaires.

Inevitably, there are times when the days and nights in the wilderness can be terrifying. Soon after I began staying regularly at the Hermitage, I checked into one of the retreatant’s trailers on the hillside as a winter storm began to shake its fragile foundations. All night the rain beat against the roof. The ancient heater spluttered and I could not see a light or any sign of human habitation. I’d heard of mountain lions prowling through the hills, and just to get some milk would require a walk through the torrential dark.

But light returned soon enough and even the storm was less fearful than if I’d been skidding across the highway below or caught in rush-hour traffic. Most of the time, a friendly monk is waiting in the monastery bookstore if you want company, and the days after rain shone with a rare and polished sharpness.

I sometimes worry that we’re so anxious to stay up-to-the-moment these days that we lose sight of the essential. We’re in such a rush that we can’t stand back far enough to put the world – and ourselves – in perspective. We’re so caught up in that tweet that just came in, that update from Ukraine, that we can’t hear ourselves think – let alone what’s deeper than our thoughts.

Over the years I’ve found that the silence and clarity I relish at Big Sur is available in a monastic institution or retreat-house wherever you happen to be – you don’t have to travel somewhere exotic that requires visas or injections, or worry about jet lag or inflicting fresh damage on our planet. I’ve sampled it in Kent, in New Mexico, Western Australia and close to where I now live in Japan. The silence in all these places was almost palpable, clarifying (although communal meals or tiny rooms – or other guests too eager to chatter – sometimes broke the spell).

The radiant sense of calm and joy I find when spending three days without words doesn’t last long. Within two days I’m back in the roar of traffic and fretting over that tax form I have to complete, that invoice that just got bounced back. But simply knowing that there’s medicine available makes everything a little less unsettling. As I write this in Japan, I’m looking at a postcard of the silence above the sea that reminds me of where I could be and who I could be at my best. The memory, the prospect – the image alone – remind me that I’m never far from home.

The New Camaldoli Hermitage is a working monastery with rooms in a main retreat house, cottages and guesthouses.

Pico Iyer is the author of Learning from Silence (Cornerstone, £16.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply