CHERAI BEACH RESORTS
Health In Hammocks
By Juhi Saklani
If health has much to do with moderate exercise and un-indulgent food, Cherai Beach Resorts is a surprising choice for this book. Of course one could argue that, forget moderate exercise, getting out of a hammock is very hard exercise. Especially when holding a newly plucked tender coconut in one hand. You could also argue that the very tasty prawn curry the resort gives is in keeping with the best tenets of health: it is fresh food (they just caught it) and, in Kerala, prawn is practically a vegetable.
So yes, we do recommend CBR for a health holiday. Especially since the owners of the place are doctors and have planned to cunningly keep you moving all the time: get out of the easy chair to pick up the phone and request room service; raise a hand for ordering more parotta, turn over on your back while having the Ayurvedic massage; have a bath after the said massage; and walk or swim on Cherai Beach.
Well, they don’t actually make you do the last but they have placed one of the longest and least-frequented beach stretches in India right outside the gate of their resort, so walking or swimming or general cavorting in the water is pretty much a compulsion.
They have also managed a location that’s rather rare: simultaneously on the sea and on the backwaters. At the average backwater resort you will not be able to get up from your room and stroll over to the beach so casually. The fun of bathing in foaming waves in front of the resort and of boating in placid ripples behind it, are both at hand. Finally, they have also managed to choose the one spot in Kerala that is not teeming with resorts; in fact CBR is the only big one here, among mostly seaside village life.
I wake up early and go for a long beach walk, as long and endless as I like, making friends with fisher folk and their children along the way. Watching crows bring busy-ness to an otherwise languid shore. Learning from the dignified solitude of the fishing boats not in use. Carrying with me the wind and sand and a sense of infinite space and the wonder of being able to see the horizon. I lie in a hammock shaded by the trees, book in hand, but only after setting up all the pillows I’ll ever need, and other essentials (such as some cool drinks) close at hand. I pedal the afternoon away in a boat on the still backwaters that seem to practically hold up the resort. I sink into the generous armchairs on offer. I stroll out again to watch one of those spectacular Arabian Sea sunsets, all drama and technicolour, in the evening.
An extra ‘health’ aspect plays on my mind. This is the time of serious dengue and chikungunya in the country, and much advice and Odomos has been pressed on me before I leave for what is seen as ‘dangerous Kerala’. But there’s not a mosquito in sight. The manager explains the seeming paradox. The huge backwaters river I sit next to in my hammock, and the pools of this water that dot the resort itself, are flushed by the tide every day so the water is not stagnant and the pests don’t breed.
Sometime in all this languid revelry, I remember to book myself in for an Ayurvedic massage. CBR’s Ayurvedic spa Ayurmana, built by the backwaters, is a pleasant 5-min boat ride away. It approaches to the splash-splash of oars, a greenery-laden, thatch-and-wood structure, pretty and welcoming. Ceramic pots, pans and jars for storage of Ayurvedic preparations, herbs and roots being dried, glowing wooden massage tables, all add to the atmosphere.
If you want to consult the doctor, you should inform the desk beforehand. Otherwise, pleasant and efficient therapists treat you to an hour or so of sheer bliss. The relaxation massage starts with a powder application on the head for warding off colds, continues with a 10-min head massage (which really makes me believe that Malayali therapists have something extra in their fingers that the rest of us lack), and moves on to the main business — a rhythmic soothing, strong massage of the whole body with an oil smelling of camphor. It promptly puts me to sleep. It is followed by a medicated steam and herbal hot water bath till I feel, clean, detoxified, sleepy, and content for the rest of my life. As if this wasn’t enough, I then get to waft away on a boat, feeling like a dreamy song, back to the resort.
Many foreign visitors come to CBR for long-term treatments for diseases; I hear of the centre’s specific success in treating back pains and psoriasis. These treatments require massages but also other therapies (such as internal cleansing procedures like emesis or purgation, as and when required), Ayurvedic oral medication, and much more time. I see a Sri Lankan back-pain patient, now residing in Norway, from where he comes every year for an extended stay.
As far as relaxation and de-stressing goes, however, Ayurveda is not the only thing that works its magic at the resort. For many of us, the most relaxing aspect of a stay here are the prices. Most of Kerala’s main attractions — beach, backwaters, seafood, Ayurveda, ethnic-style cottages — are available at reasonable rates. For a middle-class tourist, not able to afford Kerala’s expensive charms such as the swanky Kumarakom resorts but wanting to have a ‘Kerala vacation’, wanting to test the waters of Ayurveda, as well as to have a good time with family or friends, this is a really good option.
ABOUT CBR
Initially called Cherai Beach Health Resort when it was set up six years back, this project was initiated (and is still run) by doctors who felt that it could serve the needs of the growing medical tourism in India. Its medical treatments are now exclusively Ayurvedic in nature, but as one of the owners, Dr N Madhu, points out, Allopathic tests and diagnostic tools are of great help as a back-up, if needed. The word ‘health’ has been removed from the resort’s name.
Foreign tourists (90 per cent of the visitors) and Indian honeymooners are its main clientele, but the doctor-owners are the same, and there is always a proportion of patients who come primarily for Ayurvedic treatment, which had benefited them on a previous visit.
TREATMENTS AND TARIFFS
Cherai Beach Resorts offers a menu of individual treatments for those who wish to try out Ayurveda. If you go for treatments to address specific ailments, the physician will decide the course and combination of treatments you need and charges will be calculated on the basis of these prices.
Uzhichil (full body massage) Rs 650 Rejuvenation Rs 1,200 Relaxation Rs 650 Foot massage Rs 400 Head, face, neck and shoulder massage Rs 400 Kalari massage (mostly on men, done by male masseurs using their feet) Rs 1,200 Shirodhara (oil poured on the forehead; a very profound experience) Rs 1,300 Kadivasti (oil kept on a specific spot such as the back, held by walls of dough) Rs 600. Special combinations include Uzhichil with Shirodhara, Rs 2,000 or Uzhichil with Kizhi (massage with hot linen bundles full of medicated herbs, leaves or rice, as needed), Rs 2,200. Each treatment is followed by medicated steam and bath
CBR 3N/4D Ayurvedic package for a couple, in season (but not between Dec 10 and Jan 10, which is peak time), costs between Rs 18,000 (non-AC) and Rs 22,000 (AC). 15 per cent taxes extra. It includes pick-up/ drop, three meals a day, three days’ massage, two days’ sightseeing, boating, beach facilities. For treatments for specific ailments, it’s advisable to discuss on phone first
THE THERAPISTS
The Ayurvedic spa-cum-therapy centre, Ayurmana, is run under the aegis of the experienced Ayurvedic doctor S Nanappan, now old enough to be called Acchan Doctor (‘Father-Doctor’) and an early alumnus of the Government Ayurvedic College at Thiruvananthapuram. His son, Dr Madhu, an allopathic doctor, is one of the owners of the resort and is available on phone for patients all the time. The family has been running the Udaya Pharmacy at Ernakulam since 1957; medicines made at this pharmacy are used in the resort. There are four therapists here, pleasant and skilled, most of whom have been trained at Ayurvedic hospitals in Ernakulam.
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