An Eden in the foothills: Guest blog by Jai Arjun Singh

Please welcome SPAlendor's first guest blogger. Since charity has to begin at home, my husband dearest (Jabberwock in blogosphere) has very graciously agreed to contribute this post. He had written it for Outlook Traveller's Wellness series and I was mad at him when he'd gone to Ananda all by himself. We weren't married then but I'm hoping to visit Ananda sometime in the near future. BTW, Yatra.com has announced a new summer package for Ananda. At Rs 13,628 (inclusive of all applicable hotel taxes), per person, you can get a room for three days, with inclusions of meals (daily morning tea, breakfast and dinner). Apart from this, you also get scheduled yoga, meditation, Pranayama and Vedanta classes and hydrotherapy facilities including the use of jacuzzi, steam, sauna, plunge pool and Hydro foot bath too. Log on: log on for other details.

Having given you readers some news on deals, please read and enjoy Jai's piece.
It's 7 in the morning when I reach the gates of Ananda – in the Himalayas. It's been a nearly hour-long drive up from Rishikesh and I didn't get much sleep the previous night, but everything about the environment is instantly invigorating – starting with the efficiency of the staff and their non-intrusive politeness. After checking in at the front desk, I'm taken (by a quaint, battery-operated cart) down a long road that leads to the spa area and the accommodation quarters. Peacocks dart across the path, to the left is Ananda's seven-hole golf course and for some reason I can't stop thinking of William Wordsworth taking long, placid walks through the verdure of the Lake District.

As it happens, walking is one of the things I avowedly do during my two-day stay at Ananda, but there are plenty of other options.

In my room, after a long and stimulating shower, I change into the special white kurta-pyjama provided for guests to wear on the premises. These aren't mandatory but they are so comfortable and so apposite to the general serenity of the surroundings that nearly everyone opts for them over their regular wear (unless, of course, you're planning to work out in the gym).

As part of the spa orientation, I'm shown around the hydrotherapy division of the men's spa. In the centre is a little footbath divided into four quarters, with round pebbles of different shapes and sizes at the bottom, and the water temperature in each quarter varying subtly. Walking in the pool in a 360-degree arc is recommended since it helps moderate your body temperature and stimulates the pressure points on the soles of your feet. "This exercise is a form of self-therapy," I'm told. "You become aware of the pressure points and the way the pebbles are acting on them." Incidentally, the stones have been collected from the Ganga bed.

To be honest, this isn't the most comfortable of exercises, so I'm perfectly happy to slip into my pampered city-slicker avatar and try the other facilities – namely the sauna, the Jacuzzi and the steam room – and follow it up with a quick dip in the open-air pool just beyond. A brief shower is required between any two activities (you can't, for instance, move directly from the sauna into the Jacuzzi) and the upshot is that in just two hours I've come into contact with more water (in different forms) than I usually do over a week of normal living. It probably helps soften me up for the main course.

The two-hour spa treatment lined up for me in the afternoon is preceded by a dose of traditional hospitality, Ananda-style. As I immerse my feet in rose-water, the lady masseuse performs an elaborate aarti, complete with a small plate, a diya and kusum. To poor nihilistic me, this is like a scene out of Hum Aapke Hain Kaun, but what follows certainly isn't: a 45-minute full body scrub done with natural sea salt infused with pure rose essential oil. The idea, I'm told, is to exfoliate my skin – "to remove the dead skin cells" – and it seems to have worked. After an intense 10-minute-long shower to wash all the granules off, I find my skin is smoother than I've ever known it to be: "like a ripe fruit", as the masseuse puts it.

The scrub is followed by a long and relaxing Swedish massage, which involves the manipulation of the superficial layers of the muscles against the bone. Since such massages involve much tweaking and pinching of muscles, I'm asked beforehand if I have any "sensitive spots" that need to be treated with care. My calves tend to be stiff and cramp-prone, I tell my therapist, so she's extra careful with them.

It's late evening by the time I'm done, and darkness has descended on Ananda. It has an unanticipated effect on me: being a lover of greenery, I had figured that the place must necessarily look its best during the day. But it turns out to be just as beautiful, in a different way, in the dark. The key buildings – the accommodation quarters, the spa and the palace in the far distance – are lit up, not ostentatiously but with tasteful restraint; a dim light falls on the pathway where people, clad in their white kurta-pyjamas, are taking long walks; staff members, waiting for their car drive down to Rishikesh (where some of them stay), are whispering quietly to each other. There's a wonderful sense of quietude everywhere, and tired though I am, it's almost a pity to have to return to my room. The spirit yearns for a long night walk, but the carefully kneaded flesh protests.

After a very relaxed night's sleep and a refreshing ginger-lemon morning drink, I head straight for the gymnasium to attend a session called "Full Moon Stretches" – a series of Thai exercises – wherein an instructor twists my limbs into numerous outlandish positions until I can't feel them anymore. It's fun, but it is a one-off session after all, so I decide to do something more productive while I'm at it: 20 minutes each on the cross-trainer and the treadmill, followed by a series of abdomen exercises – all with the Beatles's Abbey Road playing in the background, and John Lennon singling eerily resonant lines such as "He got feet down below his knee". After which, it's back to the wet spa…and the swimming pool.

Come noon it's time for my second treatment, this time an Ayurveda one: a synchronized massage called the Abhyanga followed by the famed Shirodhara treatment where a regular flow of warm herbal oil is poured on the forehead.

A personal aside here: I'm not the sort of person who relaxes easily during his waking hours; my mind is always ticking over with something or the other. But the two hours spent during this treatment are the most soothing I've experienced outside of actual sleep. The massage – with hot oil being rubbed into my skin by two pairs of hands simultaneously – is wonderful, gentler and more soothing than the Swedish massage the previous day. But it's overshadowed by the Shirodhara treatment, during which I enter a sublime phase where I'm incapable of thinking about anything other than the soothing effect of the oil pouring onto my forehead. No worrying about train tickets, about packing luggage and getting back to Delhi on time; I exist purely in the moment, drifting in and out of consciousness. It's a fitting way to end the trip.

When you're leaving a place you've become attached to, there's often a moment of epiphany, a moment that brings the experience and everything it stood for in clear focus. For me, that time comes as I prepare to check out. Practically the last thing I do before leaving the room is to doff the white kurta-pyjama (I've delayed this till the last possible moment) and put on my regular clothes. What were, just two days ago, my most comfortable T-shirt and jeans now feel like a suit of armour. It's like I'm being expelled from a modern garden of Eden.

Contact details
Address: The Palace Estate, Narendra Nagar, Tehri-Garhwal, Uttaranchal-249175, India
Tel: 91-1378-227500
Fax: 91-1378-227550/227555
Email: sales@anandaspa.com
Website: www.anandaspa.com
STD code: 01378

Caution: A medical questionnaire has to be filled prior to all spa treatments. The spa consultant must be notified if a guest suffers from any physical ailments, or is pregnant.

LIST OF TREATMENTS AND TARIFFS(Selected list)

Ayurvedic therapies

Abhyanga (synchronized full body massage performed by two therapists, with herbal oils): Rs 3,500 (duration 60 minutes)

Udwarthana (a deep, dry massage using herbal powders to stimulate hair follicles and tissue. Helps in slimming): Rs 2,100 (45 minutes)

Shirodhara (lukewarm herbal oil poured in a continuous stream on the forehead. Relieves stress and improves memory): Rs 4,400 (60 minutes)

Massage therapies

Aromatherapy massage (full-body aromatic energy therapy): Rs 4,300 (90 minutes)

Swedish massage (helps in loosening and soothing tight muscles and increases blood circulation): Rs 3,600 (90 minutes)

Thai massage (combines assisted Yoga postures, gentle rocking and rhythmic compressions with targeted pressure point massage): Rs 4,800 (120 minutes)

Hydrotherapy

Hydro jet body blitz (a high-pressure shower blitz directed at the body to activate circulation): Rs 2,500 (60 minutes)

Ananda body therapies

Wild rose salt glow (exfoliation with vigorous rose oil and dead sea salt cleansing scrub): Rs 1,800 (45 minutes)

Ancient Indian body mask (dry exfoliation with therapeutic clay application): Rs 2,300 (45 minutes)

Aroma cocoon (after each part of the body has been massaged, fresh rose petals are dropped onto the skin and the body is wrapped in a heated blanket, followed by a head and scalp pressure point massage): Rs 2,900 (90 minutes)

Picture courtesy: Ananda