Guest Reviews

From Sri Lanka to Switzerland: five of the best destination spas for 2022.

Wellness is something worth travelling for. These destination retreats offer some of the best rejuvenating experiences in spectacular locales.

#1. Ulpotha Yoga & Ayurveda Retreat, Sri Lanka. For yoga in the wilderness

A rotating roster of yoga teachers and masseurs offers two-week stints of pure relaxation at this spa retreat that sprung up in the lush jungle in the midst of a traditional agricultural community. The yoga takes place in an open-sided shala, with curious monkeys peering in, and the massage table can be set up in a multitude of outdoor locations — perhaps on the peaceful banks of the beautiful ‘tank’, a lake man-made thousands of years ago, or beneath the surrounding trees. Expect delicious vegetarian food from local produce, showers open to the sky — and no electric light. Go to bed as the sun sets and wake as it rises to see buffalo ploughing the mist-drenched rice fields from your hut. A programme of expert ayurvedic treatments is available and part of the proceeds raised are used to fund a much-needed medical clinic for the villagers, so you’re doing some good for others, as well as yourself.

#2. Les Près d’Eugénie, Eugénie-les-Bains, France.
#3. Body Holiday, St Lucia, West Indies.
#4. Wolgan Valley One & Only, Australia.
#5. Guerlain Spa, The Woodward, Geneva, Switzerland.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2022/03/from-sri-lanka-to-switzerland-five-of-the-best-destination-spas-for-2022

I remember distinctly the night I first heard of Ulpotha. It was July 1998 and I was on a hotel rooftop taking in the sunset, silhouetted palms, jangling temples and urban thrum of Mysore, India, during a month-long yoga holiday.

A handsome stranger told me of a magical, lake-fringed place high in the hills of Sri Lanka that, for a few months a year, opened to a handful of yoga holiday-makers. I vowed I would get there. Years later, I arrived in Colombo and sat jet-lagged and wide-eyed as our Jeep snaked past the dawn beachfront and deep into the heart of Sri Lanka's jungled hills. And then we arrived at Ulpotha and the lush, ecological, electricity-free community that would be my home for two weeks. There were tree houses where you could sleep in white-sheet simplicity high in the palms.

'I went home eased, soothed and inspired by the beautiful setting. There was a little cabin over the lotus lake where you could lie in bed listening to the creaks and whispers of the fauna. There was a shower "room" where you stood, enclosed in an outdoor palm grove, turning a cleverly fashioned bamboo handle to release the freshest water from above.

The main meeting and eating point, the Ambalama, was a Balinese-style open building with generous, colourful cushions and delicious home-made food - mouthwatering coconut pancakes and morsels of lightly spiced potatoes and chickpeas. The Ayurvedic healing centre had smoking wicker baskets, massage rooms and steam treatments.

Before the yoga session on my first afternoon, I unwound in my "room", a spacious open-plan hut with no walls but cleverly designed palm-frond shading to ensure privacy from human and animal eyes. An elegant bedhead presiding over a floating canopy of mosquito netting doubled as a storage area for my clothes.

The yoga took place on a graciously canopied open-plan floor, set among the greenery.
Sympathetic about our jet lag, our teacher took it easy at first. The type of yoga here changes every two weeks and our group was on an Ashtanga Vinyasa retreat, which promised an intense series of yoga sequences. Everyone in the group had done yoga before but the levels - as so often on such holidays - were varied. Stiff from the plane, and with 15 years of yoga behind me, I knew I should be gentle with myself.

As the first week flowed, the yoga became more challenging: sequence after sequence in the heat, stretching and contracting time and time again; hovering almost supine above the floor; balancing only on my palms and the toes on one foot, the other foot, as instructed, shooting skywards; my mind losing sense of what my body was doing, surrendering what I thought I had been capable of previously; finding my breath, surpassing old limits. Towards week two, as my muscles surrendered, internal cobwebs were swept away and along came the customary yoga-retreat "stuff".

I've learnt there's a regular trajectory to a yoga retreat: de-stressing at the start, settling in, getting a bit antsy mid-way and surrendering to all that peace-love-and-happiness just as you are about to depart. My "stuff" manifested itself as a very itchy, angry rash. I went for cooling swims in the lotus lake; I sought refuge in the Aryuvedic cupboard sitting on a wicker grill over special smoking herbs; I took homoeopathy. My yoga got stronger, and so did my rash.

It got angrier and pricklier. Finally, someone gave me some good old-fashioned antihistamine cream.
The cream - and four hours of yoga a day - worked their magic. I was released, my body supple, strong and calm. Marvellous. I danced and danced at a party by the shores of the lake, free of all discomfort, celebrating a renewed and flexible body.

When not being massaged with oil dripping on my forehead, reading by the lake, swimming or bicycling, I found time to forge a new friendship with someone who has remained one of my closest friends.
And the handsome stranger, now not so strange, who just happened to be working there during my stay, has just asked me to be godmother to his first son.

I went home eased, soothed and inspired by the beautiful setting, the ethos of the place, the people I met and the yoga I practised there. I still practise that form to this day. Ulpotha changed my life.

The country’s historic heartland, known as the ‘Cultural Triangle’, contains a mind-numbing array of ancient sites with impossible-sounding names: Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa, respectively capitals from the 3rd century BC and the 11th century AD, Mihintale, a sacred monastic center of caves and temple ruins; the great cave complex of Dambulla, housing hundreds of Buddha images, its walls coated with 16th-century paintings; and the extraordinary rock palace of Sigiriya. Other, less visited places range from the monumental Aukana Buddha, a vast statue hewn out of solid rock face purportedly in the 5th century, to the royal hunting fortress of Ritigala, so hidden in dense forest that it remains semi-secret. It would require superhuman effort to take in more than a few of these shrines, palaces and monuments; and besides, in the sapping heat the density of history and legend becomes bewildering – which makes relaxing accommodation all the more desirable.

Over on the western fringes of the Cultural Triangle, Ulpotha offers perhaps the ultimate blend of relaxation and ecological commitment. This hidden haven is not designed to appeal to everyone, but those seeking tranquility tend to get hooked – when I was there one guest was on her third visit from Britain in less than a year. It is a working village rather than hotel, whose community was founded on an abandoned coconut plantation in the mid-1990’s. Its mission was to develop the surrounding farmland so as to revive traditional agricultural practices for the benefit of both the land and the people.

Since 1997 paying guests have been welcomed for the part of the year, helping to fund the non-profit-making operation. The lifestyle is basic: there is no electricity, hot running water or alcohol (unless you take your own). This may sound absurdly ascetic, particularly give that a holiday here does not come cheap by local standards. Yet Ulpotha is far from being a boot camp. Traditional accommodation has been adapted for considerable comfort. The open-sided mud-hut bedrooms are beautifully and simply furnished with local fabrics, rush mats and pottery. Each grouping of three huts shares a stylish bathroom area complete with wooden-seated flush loos and outdoor showers where, in the heat, the water is naturally tepid. And the lack of electricity seems a bonus in the soft, lamp-lit evenings. There are no waiters or maids, yet the discreetly attentive hospitality of the villagers during my stay rivaled the best service offered by Sri Lanka’s formal hotels.

In a health-farm-meets-house-party atmosphere, meals are nutritious, vegetarian feasts served communally to guests (the maximum capacity is 19) in a central pavilion. Yoga, mainly led by teachers from London, is the chief attraction for most visitors, although there is no pressure to join the classes. Reading, snoozing in hammocks, swimming in the reservoir, visiting the local temple, and receiving massage and Ayurvedic treatments are the other principal entertainments.