Today I want to share a resort I have never written about before, one that had a profound impact on me.
It's called Manaltheeram Ayurveda Beach Village.
Courtesy of Manaltheeram Ayurveda Beach Village
When I was a teenager, my parents and I flew several times to the far south of India, to the state of Kerala. It is a beautiful place, full of jungle and palm trees. We would land at the airport and climb into a car with no windows, winding through tiny streets and hoping the old vehicle would survive the ride. Then, finally, we arrived.
A large gate was carved into the jungle. Staff in brown and beige uniforms greeted us with bright white smiles, welcoming us as if we were family.
From there, you walk in on foot, and all you see is green. Somewhere between the trees sit small houses, each under 300 square feet, and many under 200. The one we stayed in was a simple studio with a bed, a bathroom, and a hammock strung between two palm trees in a little garden.
Courtesy of Manaltheeram Ayurveda Beach Village
The houses looked as if people had built them with their own hands just yesterday. Nothing about them was fancy, and nothing was missing in their beauty. The simplicity is exactly what made them feel so authentic.
Courtesy of Manaltheeram Ayurveda Beach Village
Courtesy of Manaltheeram Ayurveda Beach Village
Surrounded by all that greenery, you turn your head to the left and there it is: the ocean, stretching out below the cliff where the hotel sits.
The path to the beach is long. You descend by carved stone stairs, but the breeze on the cliff lifts every worry away before you even reach the sand. Further along, there is a platform where people practice yoga at sunset. It is quiet there. You hear only nature. Nobody rushes, and nobody talks loudly. You would not want to.
For me, this was one of my first hotels immersed in nature, and being surrounded by that vast greenery healed something in my soul. Why is nature so therapeutic? Why does it appeal to so many of us? I think it brings us back to our primal roots, to a more authentic self, one that can disconnect from the outside world and everything it imposes on us.
Maybe it works because nature asks nothing of us.
A jungle does not care about our title, our inbox, or the version of ourselves we have been curating all year. The ocean does not need us to be productive or impressive. For once, we are not being evaluated, so the guard we carry everywhere comes down. Healing seems to begin the moment we stop being watched, even if the only one watching was ourselves.
I have never experienced transformation in all-inclusive resorts, in transit hotels, or even in hotels with beautiful views of famous monuments. But I have experienced it in places like this, and more than once. You arrive as one person and, a week or two later, you leave as someone changed. That happens because of the environment. The places we stay shape us.
I have often wondered what exactly changed us there, and I think it was subtraction. There was no television, no schedule, nothing to be impressed by. The houses were so small that we could not retreat into separate rooms, and the silence was so complete that we did not want to fill it with noise. With everything extra removed, what remained was attention: to the ocean, to the breeze, and to each other. We usually think a great stay is one that gives us more. Sometimes the stays that change us are the ones that give us less, and leave room for us to feel again.
When I think about that hotel and those trips, I realize it was not only the nature. It was the time with my family. Those moments felt so ordinary then that I could not see how sacred they were.Now they are some of my most cherished memories. Even in the simplest hotel, with no nature around, that moment in time is something you want to hold onto and wrap around yourself like a warm blanket on the days when you cannot feel anything.
How many times have we gone to our favorite places, only to find them tasteless without our favorite people? Like soup without salt.
Maybe that is the connection between nature and the people we love: both ask us to slow down enough to notice them, and neither can be rushed.
That’s all for today.
Till next week, readers.
