:: June 2006 Volume 5/Number 4

Journey to Ayurveda Special Section:

The Ayurveda Tourist
Where Science Meets Consciousness and Ayurveda meets tomorrow.

By Bob Belinoff

It emerged out of a mist at 6 A.M. as we stopped the taxi we took from the train station at Trivandrum. We pulled up at the end of a dirt road in route to the sea coast town of Kovallam.

There in front of us, appearing out of a mist on a stone calm lake, sat an island dripping in palms. We could barely make out lodgings, palm trees, a bank of sand and then the sea behind it. Fishermen were on the sand in a long line tugging in their haul and chanting. It felt like India, 1857.
I am still not sure how we ended up here. It is certainly one of the most beautiful places on earth. Actually Isabelle sent us.

At the Ayurveda conference in Mahabalipuram we had met an Ayurvedic practitioner from Poland who referred her European patients to a Dr. Franklin, who was well known in this part of Southern India (his billboards can be seen everywhere). The doctor apparently had medical arrangements with several resorts and apparently many Assistant Dr. Franklins. These Franklin approved Ayurvedic physicians would make what amounted to house calls at resorts, creating a kind of roving Ayurvedic treatment, taking place in the lushest of places.

Beach and Lake was one of those places. From the other side a long wooden boat is coming toward us, a man standing pushing a pole into the river moves the boat toward us without nary a ripple or a sound. The boat drifts in sideways to the little stone dock, and feeling just a little like Siddhartha, we are taken to the other shore.

Isabella had mentioned this place and now we found ourselves there, such is the interconnected world of Ayurveda in India. I am not sure about the quality of the Ayurvedic care offered since there is no one on-hand forever watching over you and changing your medications. But I can speak to the paradise of the setting and the idea of what appeared to be a kind of Ayurvedic self care. There were eight cottages at the resort, and all the guests were undergoing one Ayurvedic treatment regimen or another.

Beach and Lake Resort offers Ayurveda, luxury accommodations, impeccable
service and a palm grove strewn with hammocks and patients ‘taking rest’.

Every morning it seemed, a physician would come over on the pole boat for a short visit with our neighbor, an Italian hotelier it turned out, who was there for a month with his wife. The hotelier and the doctor would meet at a picnic table and decide the course of treatment. The hotelier might then experience any of a number of treatments offered at the resort from a kind of Ayurvedic menu, complete with prices.

There were treatment rooms, massages available and packages like a 30 day pancha karma treatment package for about 1020 Euros. Or what they call the Rejuvenation Massage, a 90 minute massage of head, face and body professionally by both hand and foot. Every day I was there I did this one, actually it was done to me.

Beach and Lake was run by Sasi, an Ayurvedic sadhu himself who also knew Isabella as well as most everyone else in this part of India. Ayurveda, it seemed was a kind of world roving community that attracted a completely unpredictable following. Sasi had worked for Air India and lived in Brooklyn. Isabella meanwhile would soon be jetting off to ski in the Spanish Alps.

The appeal at Beach and Lake with its setting and servants and hammocks between palms seems to be more to sensate pleasure and relaxation than to healing or the treating of disease. But that may not mean there are no Ayurvedic benefits. All worlds are connected in Ayurveda and the appeal to outer beauty, is simply a call to inner wholeness in a material world.

Decide for yourself, contact Sasi at
www.beachandlakeresort.com

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