That the Soukya Indian spa, about an hour east of Bengaluru, is unique can be seen with a look at the long list of celebrities who have passed through the doors, including Dame Emma Thompson, Sting, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and, this week, King Charles and Queen Camilla: their eighth visit.
During a previous trip, the royal couple stayed in the same suite as mine. Spacious and comfortable, with a shower in the tranquil garden, it’s not five-star opulent or even stately. Although it has a four-poster bed with floating curtains, a huge bathroom with a hydrotherapy bath and a large living room, it looks relatively simple, decorated with traditional heavy wooden Indian furniture.
But you don’t come to Soukya for the rooms: you’re here to heal.
In a matter of hours, three doctors have seen me, starting with Dr. Issac Mathai, who founded the retreat in 2002. Just by examining me and taking my pulse, he concludes that I am breathing only at 60 percent of my capacity, that there is a blockage in my liver, something is not quite right with my kidneys and I have some neurological problems. “Most people over 50 have symptoms of future problems,” he says. “They can be reversed.”
The questions he asks all his guests are probing, stripping them of their naked emotions. Were you afraid of the dark when you were a child? Do you cry easily? How has grief affected you? What work stress are you going through?
The solution I was prescribed is a detox and rejuvenation program.
This is a daily morning dose of shirodhara, a deliciously calming treatment in which the oil drips onto the forehead to release emotions. An incredible Ayurvedic massage follows with two therapists who slather you in oil, leaving you feeling like a buttered chicken for the oven. Finally, warm poultices filled with herbs are applied to relieve tension in the back and neck.
The products are manufactured on site. Huge jars of oil are heated with herbs stored in a jar-filled room that looks like an antique apothecary. The herbs come from the medicinal garden with its 130 varieties of plants, from red berry serpentine to treat hypertension to leafy water hyssop to improve memory.
Jane Knight visited Soukya, where King Charles III and Queen Camilla enjoyed a wonderful break this week.
Previous guests also include Dame Emma Thompson, Sting and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
The retreat’s medicinal garden features 130 varieties of plants, from red berry serpentine to treat hypertension to leafy water hyssop to improve memory.
It is worth visiting the garden with a doctor and stopping at the flower bed in the shape of a human body, where plants designed to help a certain part of the body grow in the corresponding area.
There’s no gym (they advise against too much activity because it interferes with treatments), but there is a pleasant path to walk, passing sandalwood trees, grazing farm animals and through a bamboo forest.
Although it passes along a busy road, this 30-acre organic farm instills an instant sense of calm, with lush tropical gardens, sheep grazing on the grass, and tinkling wind chimes. It’s easy to see why Dr. Mathai says that “half of healing is being in nature.”
It’s also sustainable, producing enough solar, wind and biogas energy to make King Charles smile. The women work in the organic vegetable garden and everything they pick that day becomes the tastiest meal, low in spices, low in oil and fat, in the restaurant, where no meat or alcohol is served.
Guests are asked to eat mindfully, without socializing or discussing symptoms with those at other tables, or using mobile phones (a request blatantly ignored by a fellow visitor who chatted loudly over the loudspeaker for an entire lunch).
“Although it passes along a busy road, this 30-acre organic farm instils an instant sense of calm,” Jane writes.
Jane’s program included yoga twice a day in the outdoor thatched shala (pictured).
Soukya makes its own herbal products on site. “Huge vats of oil are heated with herbs stored in a jar-filled room that looks like an old-fashioned apothecary,” explains Jane.
Regular visitors: Camilla and Charles plant a tree in Soukya in 2019
A delicious soup is served to those on a liquid detox; It doesn’t leave you hungry at all.
Of course, detoxification doesn’t just happen through food: it starts in the colon (although the less said about this, the better).
And at the end of languid afternoons of acupuncture and reflexology, where pressure is applied to various parts of the foot corresponding to different parts of the body, guests head to the locker room to wash their eyes, mouth and nose (pour the contents of a small bottle of water). can in one nostril and, somewhat strangely, let it out through the other).
Then move on to yoga twice a day in the thatched-roof open-air shala, whose dark floor is supposed to absorb negativity.
Simply elegant: upstairs is one of the suites. “You don’t come to Soukya for the rooms, you’re here to heal,” Jane says.
A loudly whistling train passes by the resort every few minutes, notes Jane, adding: “This also happens at night – bring earplugs.”
It’s not normal yoga, but it is much, much slower and very meditative, although it is quite difficult to clear your mind with a train whistling loudly every few minutes (this also happens at night; bring earplugs).
There is also nighttime meditation, which takes place in a room beneath the chapel where we repeatedly roll our eyes to exercise them before gazing into a candle flame in a practice known as tumbaka.
And so, the days of pampering follow one another, starting with medical checkups, perhaps at some point a dip in the pool, and ending with a homeopathic remedy and going to bed at 9 p.m.
Although there is an excellent library, guests are advised not to read for more than two hours a day.
It’s hard not to love the place. Most people leave at least a little light in the body and much more light in the soul.
It’s easy to see how, like King Charles and Camilla, one could get hooked on Soukya, bank balance permitting.
The good news is that Dr. Mathai plans to open centers in Britain and Greece in the coming years.