At night, the road from Thiruvananthapuram to Kollam seems like one long strip of flashing colored lights festooning shops and restaurants. Kerala is a state on the move. Every empty space is a building site; the plan is to transform the main coastal route from single-lane mayhem to a sleek superhighway. For now, makeshift markets huddle next to gleaming gyms and car showrooms, while wandering pi-dogs and kamikaze auto-rickshaws slow the traffic to a lurching stop-start crawl.
But Kerala’s move to modernize doesn’t extend to every aspect of life. The southern Indian state is famed as the birthplace of Ayurveda, the 5,000-year-old traditional healthcare system. Ayurveda remains mainstream medicine here, and hospitals, clinics and training schools abound. A sudden right turn and the lights vanish. The road becomes narrow, winding through villages and coconut groves, where palms arch over stone walls. Abruptly, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, a sign appears: Kalari Rasayana Ayurveda Hospital.
“No way out for three weeks—you’re trapped!” my driver laughs, as the gates close behind me. He’s not joking. Once inside, it will be 21 days of monastic seclusion. No sightseeing or sunbathing, no trips to the beach or shopping at markets. Kalari Rasayana is one of two Ayurvedic hospitals owned by CGH Earth, the family-run hotel chain. In the early noughties, managing director Jose Dominic became concerned Ayurveda was becoming diluted and debased. He had a point. Ayurvedic treatments were springing up on spa menus across the globe, often sanitised to the point where they bore little resemblance to the original. Panchakarma was a prime example. The stringent cleanse and rejuvenation regime, once the sole preserve of princes, is often shoehorned into a five-day flurry.
Kalari Kovilakom opened in 2004, in a renovated palace, with a two-week minimum stay and an unwavering adherence to authentic Ayurvedic protocols. It proved so popular that a second hospital, Kalari Rasayana, followed in 2013, stretching over eight acres of coconut groves facing serene Lake Paravur. Kalari Rasayana has the feel of a sanatorium merged with a strict boarding school. You’re assigned a doctor who prescribes everything from treatments to diet. There is zero choice involved, and pleas for changes are met with a broad smile and a polite shake of the head.
Days follow an equally intransigent timetable: 6:15 a.m. asana and pranayama practice; breakfast; doctor’s appointment; treatment; yoga nidra; lunch; another treatment; meditation; supper. There’s plenty of free time in between, but not much to do with it. Patients are a wide mix of ages and nationalities. If you’ve wondered where all the Russians who once frequented Clinique La Prairie and Lanserhof have disappeared to, the answer is here. We amble back and forth along the lakeside like languid caged tigers. “Ma’am, put up your umbrella!” I’m chastised for venturing out in the sun with a bare head. Silence is golden, and the dining hall is laid out like an exam room to discourage chatter.
Yet snatched conversations create moments of joy. When everyone is going through the same purgatory, bonds are formed swiftly, and you look out for one another in a way that never happens at a standard spa. “‘Are you OK?” I whisper to the young Indian woman a few days ahead of me on the program. She smiles weakly. “I’m struggling with the ghee.”
Everyone struggles with the ghee. An intrinsic part of the preparatory stage involves glugging and increasing large quantities of medicated clarified butter. Ghee supposedly acts as a scavenger, drawing out toxic waste matter (known as ama) and pushing it into the intestinal tract for elimination. By the time I face my fourth day, I am ghee—it is oozing out of every pore, and no matter how often I shower, I reek. “Excellent,” says Dr. Firoz Varun. “You’re at samyak snigdhata, saturation point.”
Next is purgation, aimed at flushing out the intestines. The tall glass of brown liquid smells sweet and spicy but catches in my throat: I have to struggle not to vomit. It’s followed by a day of cramping and painful explosive diarrhea. Only WhatsApp messages from my new buddies, Russian psychologist Katia and Lebanese gallery owner Nisrine, keep me going.
Once our bowels return to a civilized state, we break rank and sneak up to Katia’s balcony, giggling like schoolgirls. “We’re regressing,” says Katia. “I feel about five years old.” Nisrine rolls her eyes: “I’m at the rebellious teenage stage. Sod it; I’m not going to yoga tomorrow!”
Without distractions, watching emotions rise and fall becomes the main form of entertainment. Nearly everyone cries or has a tantrum at some point. An in-house psychotherapist might be a valuable addition.
Even the treatments are confrontational. I’m handed a langoti (a loin cloth-G-string hybrid) to put on and emerge from behind the curtain, bare-breasted, hyper-conscious of my softer layers. My team of therapists, Devi, Reshma and Sruthi, chant prayers while I sit on a stool. Devi spreads herbal paste reeking of mothballs over my forehead to relieve my sinuses, and I clamber onto the wooden Ayurvedic massage table, known as a droni. A massage-like pizhichil, which is a mesmerizing delight at spas, becomes uncomfortable gymnastics here. You slither into one of five positions—sitting up, lying on your back, your front,and each side—while every inch of skin is slathered in oil. Breasts, buttocks, nostrils, ears, eyelids: almost nothing is off limits.
The yoga, by contrast, is a serene delight. The practice is precise and pure, from the Bihar school. Everyone starts with individual lessons before joining group classes. It is the antithesis of power yoga. I become entranced by a different joint each day. There’s as much emphasis on pranayama and meditation as on asana, and I can almost feel my nadis (energy channels) clearing, and my chakras starting to glow.
There are no decisions to make, other than which bench to sit on to watch the lake. Every day a freshly laundered uniform of white cotton kurta-style pajamas appears. My blood pressure lowers, and my mind stops churning. The food comes in tiny portions of pleasure, albeit bland (spices are kept to a minimum to avoid aggravating the gut.)
At the end of three weeks, I’m discharged into the world like a wide-eyed kitten. I have strict instructions to take it very easy, as the toxin release continues for several weeks. I lose eight pounds—I had expected to lose more—and most hurtles back on once I arrive home. But I have shed a chronic cough and sinusitis, joint pain, and a persistent rash. Most noticeable is the effect on my stress response. I am sleeping better and deeper, my anxiety levels have plummeted, and I am not as reactive to major or minor stressors. That strict unwinding from the world has finally allowed my HPA axis to come off red stress alert.
I still wonder if all that ghee is really necessary. There is little impartial research into panchakarma, but it’s possible that part of the answer lies in butyrate, a short-chain fatty acid found in ghee that supports the immune system, reduces inflammation and boosts gut health. Understanding exactly why the practices of panchakarma are so vital would, I feel, make them more palatable. Maybe it’s time to stop relying on the “It’s been working for 5,000 years” line and question why Kalari gets such good results that patients return each year for an MOT?
Last year, the WHO Global Centre for Traditional Medicine was established in the Indian state of Gujarat, to support traditional medicine by advancing an evidence-based approach. It’s a smart move and well overdue. Watch this space.
A version of this article originally appeared on Condé Nast Traveller.
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