My first days at Kairali

So here I am doing an ayurveda treatment for the first time of my life. The "Kairali Ayurvedic Healing Village" is in a very remote place, a few kilometers outside a town called Palakkad, which itself is 1.5hours by car away from Coimbatore in the south of India. Everything is lush green here, the whole surrounding looks healthy already. At the resort there are lots of palm trees, mango trees, beautiful blossoming bushes, huge butterflies are flying around, little squirrels hop among the trees and some majestic herons try to catch fish from the stream that is running through all this. The air is filled with birdsong and crickets. You can smell the damp soil from the last rain shower mixed with the scent of the flowers. In this setting little huts are placed hosting the guests, every hut individually designed according to Feng Shui... in short: it is SO beautiful here. My program is called "detoxification and rejuvenation" and for the next 3 weeks I will do exactly what I'll be told and see what effect is has on my body (and mind) at the end.
This is how my days look like, every single one:
6:30 Yoga
8:00 Breakfast
9:00 Massage and treatments
13:00 Lunch
15:00 Massage and treatments
18:30 Meditation
20:00 Dinner
21:30 Bedtime
In between the different events there's never more than 2hours gap. Just enough to take a walk or read a little, but definitely not enough time to get bored, which was my biggest concern in the beginning.
Apart from me there are 3-6 other guests only as it is low season. The staff however outnumbers the guests by far as the resort usually can capture around 30 guests. Within one day I gathered the other solo ladies around me and we were a nice group of one 34years old Brazilian living in Geneva, one 50something Indian mother living in Kuwait, a German in her late forties and me. Guests are coming and going, some only stay for 2 days, but by now we've never been more than 7.

Our Yoga-teacher is Santosh, a young Indian with the typical moustache. He comes in the morning on his motorbike, quickly changes into his Yoga-outfit and than it's all about stretching and breathing. We don't tie knots in our body, morning yoga only has simple exercises, and all we're listening to is Santosh's "Iiiiiiiiiiinnnnnnnhaaaaaaaaaaale - Eeeeeeeeeeexhaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaale" with closed eyes while stretching every single part of the body. It seems tough to do 1 hour exercise before breakfast but it is not hard and you barely break out in sweat. And still you feel nicely energetic afterwards.

After breakfast it's time for our first treatment. In the very beginning a doctor did ask me some questions, gave me some medicine and defines the treatment procedures. In Ayurveda there are many different type of massages, most containing different types of oils. Every massage is given on 3 consecutive days only.
My morning team consists of 2 Indian ladies. And it will always be ladies and always be 2 for all treatments. The men are treated in a different wing of the building by men. During the treatment (which is not always a massage) I only wear a kind of loincloth, nothing else and even that comes off during the massage. And then the 2 ladies are covering the whole body in oil, they massage, or tap or rub it and when I say whole body, I mean every single part. No time to be shy or embarrassed. These ladies are professionals and they have seen it all...
It took me a couple of session to be able to relax while lying fully exposed on a wooden bench, but as usual, I got used to it by now.
After the morning session I go in the "steam room" which is like sitting in a sauna cupboard and after every session I have a shower and wash the oil off with some green powder that is mixed with water for creamy texture. Every second treatment (so either every morning or afternoon) I wash my hair because they put oil in it. And then one hour is over and I have some spicy tea before I'm released.
During the whole sessions the ladies are SO sweet. Their English is very limited and mostly their sentences consists of 2 words. But still they give you every comfort you could ask for. They give me head massage before treatments, they tie my hair up, they wrap a cloth around me when I change from one room to another, they help me get in my shoes and turning my body on the bench, they adjust the water temperature in the shower before I go in, they clean the shower cabin after every single person using it, they make compliments about my nose or other features they like... I'm feeling like reborn Cleopatra, seriously.

For the afternoon session I always have a different treatment than morning and always 2 other ladies but with the same comfort... nah, I think the morning ladies are better.
And then comes meditation and Santosh comes again around on his motorbike, we sit in the same room, do lots of funny breathing exercises (inhale through right nose, exhale through left nose and vice versa) and again, there is no sound around us but Santosh's voice and the tropic birds outside. For beginning and finish he is chanting... and it feels completely normal in this environment.
The ayurvedic food is strictly vegetarian and not very spicy. It is specially defined for me only, the others get different diets and as I'm in the detox program it is not very much. I get strict portions for every meal, for breakfast only fruits. Except when they gave me the laxative that day I had rice soup for breakkie...
And there is no possibility to eat anything in between the meals. All I can do is drinking my specially prepared warm herbal water which I get in thermos jugs on my room every day.

And that is life in Ayurveda. The treatments might not be physical work for me, but they do something to the body which is new (blood circulation, activating organs etc) and hence I'm very exhausted after the treatments and need to lie down and relax.

I figured: Life could be so healthy if only I had my own cook, masseur and Yoga teacher :-)

my home:

 

my neighborhood: 

 

in the steam room:

 

the treatment room: