“Are you OK, madam?” The question came gently, somewhere above my left shoulder. I came back into the room. Rekha, my therapist, needed me to turn over — I had, apparently, gone somewhere she couldn’t quite reach. I did as she asked, slowly, the warm, herbalised sesame oil still moving across my skin. It took me a moment to locate myself: a treatment room at the Anaha wellness centre, late afternoon.
I had been in that particular suspension between thought and no-thought, between consciousness and sleep, that I had been chasing in my own start-stop-again meditation practice for years. I had hoped, perhaps, to find it somewhere toward the end of my five-night stay at Shreyas — a holistic wellness retreat, as they describe themselves — not within the first three hours of arriving.
This was the Abhyanga: warm, herbalised sesame oil poured continuously, long sweeping strokes that follow the body’s energy channels rather than working against them. The herbs in the oil had been chosen that afternoon by Dr Greeshma, following my arrival consultation.
The session ended with five minutes in a traditional timber box, into which herbalised steam is introduced while you sit with only your head free. Walking out into the garden afterwards — the sun down, the full moon already clearing the coconut palms, the birds still at full volume in the trees — I found it hard to believe that only three hours earlier, the retreat’s driver, Ponnappa, had collected me from the airport.
A week before that, I had been trying to get to Sicily. The Middle East conflict had grounded the flights; the trip fell apart. Within days, Shreyas had come together instead — a visa approved in less than 24 hours, a booking confirmed, flights to Bengaluru booked. What felt like chaos was, in retrospect, a correction.
I had first tried to come here twelve years ago, living then in Macau, but a visa application through Hong Kong stalled, and the trip fell apart. The dream never quite left me. I was forty when I first tried, fifty-two when I finally arrived — ready, at last, for a proper reckoning with a body I had been working around rather than with: an arthritic knee with opinions, a spine vocal about its complaints, and a growing suspicion that the limits I had accepted were ones I had invented.
Founded in 2004 by former banker Pawan Malik, Shreyas sits on 25 acres in Nelamangala, north-west of Bangalore, with no more than 33 guests at a time. The ambition was unusual from the start: yoga at its centre, serious Ayurvedic and naturopathic care, and the comfort of a luxury retreat. Malik has described it as his spiritual headquarters. What it is, in practice, is a functioning wellness hospital that happens to be extraordinarily beautiful — restorative for those who have arrived overworked, genuinely clinical for those managing serious conditions.
Upon arrival, a staff member in a white kurta placed a mala garland nearly a metre long around my neck — mogra jasmine buds threaded tight, clusters of deep red roses and bright yellow marigolds at the centre. The scent announced, before anything else, that I had arrived in India. Then came the puja thali: a brass plate scattered with rose petals, a small oil lamp burning at its centre. He moved the flame in a slow circle before my face and pressed a kumkum mark onto my forehead at the third eye. That night, I returned from dinner to find the mala hung on the wall of my cottage by turndown staff. By morning, it had filled the room with scent.
More than half the guests were couples. I felt a slight pang — my husband was working in the Middle East, and with everything going on, he couldn’t easily get a flight out, so I had come alone. Little did I know that first day that this would turn out to be exactly what I needed.
“Holidays come from the idea of holy days — days that are sacred and devoted to rest and renewal.”
— a note left on the bed at Shreyas
My home for the next five nights was a garden cottage called Karuna, which translates to compassion. Each of the garden-tented cottages at Shreyas is named for a Sanskrit virtue, and each carries a verse from the Bhagavad Gita mounted inside. Mine read: bearing no animosity toward any being, amiable as well as compassionate, be free of ‘I’, holding pain and pleasure as equal, be forgiving.
There are just 15 rooms at Shreyas, across four cottage types — a number that helps explain why the place feels so serene. The garden tented cottages, such as the one I was in, are perfect for two: a spacious veranda with two chairs and a table from which to watch the sun come up through the trees, the birdsong ever-present, a bathroom opening to a private walled courtyard.
For something more indulgent, the recently added Garden Suites are a step up entirely — more spacious, more lavish, and dressed in wallpaper by Sabyasachi, India’s celebrated couturier, whose signature heritage motifs — drawn from classical Indian art and craft traditions — bring an unexpected glamour to the rooms.
First, the Doctor
All stays at Shreyas begin with a doctor’s consultation. Mine was with Dr Greeshma, who ran through my health history, medications and recent diet with the kind of attention that made clear this was not a formality. I had been honest: three weeks moving through Bali, Penang and Bangkok, eating rather well, drinking more than I should, exercising not at all. She absorbed this without visible reaction. Then, surveying the full picture, she looked up.
“So — no dessert, then?”
I said perhaps a small one, here or there. She smiled. We both knew that even the dessert at Shreyas — fruit-based, light — would bear little resemblance to anything I might call dessert at home.
I told her I wasn’t there to lose weight; that I wanted to work around physical limitations in my knee and spine, to move past the belief in my body’s limits rather than its actual limits. She listened, asked more questions, and designed the week accordingly. The herbs in the sesame oil for my Abhyanga that afternoon were her prescription. The light evening meal — khichdi, spiced rice and lentil with a clear vegetable broth — was also hers.
With a staff-to-guest ratio that means you are never a number, the care at Shreyas is unlike anywhere I have stayed. By the second morning, I could sense a dreaded allergic reaction — I suffer from a mysterious allergy that no blood test has been able to pinpoint, often starting with a deep headache and subtle facial swelling. A staff member noticed and alerted the doctors; Dr Anvitha and Dr Greeshma were at my cottage within minutes. They applied acupressure patches at the sinus and pressure points across my forehead, temples and jaw, and administered herbal tablets. Both checked in again, unprompted, over the following days — ginger water each morning, a warm foot bath each evening. Within 24 hours I felt fine.
In the Shala
The yoga shala at Shreyas is a wide-open pavilion: terracotta-tiled floor, thick rendered columns open on all sides to the garden, a ceiling fan turning slowly overhead, a small Buddha head on a timber plinth in the corner. No walls. At 6:30 in the morning, when the light is still low and the birds are already at full volume across 25 acres of trees, it is one of the more beautiful places I have been asked to be still.
Guests at Shreyas join twice-daily group sessions as part of their stay: 90 minutes each morning and one hour each afternoon. The Wellness for the Soul package includes two additional personalised one-on-one sessions. Shreyas describes its yoga as open to everyone — fit or unfit, young or younger, experienced or not. I arrived as a self-described beginner: a start-stop practice over many years, arthritis diagnosed young, and a habit of pre-empting what my body might struggle with rather than finding out. The first classes met me where I was. As the days went on, the teachers pushed a little further.
There are seven yoga teachers at Shreyas. One of them, Ramakant, has been with the retreat since before it opened — one of a handful of original staff who arrived in 2001, three years before the retreat welcomed its first guests, with years of ashram living already behind him. Toward the end of the week he told me that he had been sent to an ashram as a young boy; his father, worried that with five sisters he wouldn’t be strong enough, knew the discipline of ashram life would change the course of his life. In a one-on-one session, Ramakant found my alignment, guided me carefully into position, then pressed deeper than I had allowed myself to go in years. It is not about limitation, he said afterwards. The limitation is never the body. It is the alignment. Get that right, and the pose opens.
My two one-on-one yoga sessions were with Dr Nandakumar, a naturopath and qualified yoga instructor, who, after we completed our Surya Namaskar spent the last half of each session focused on opening my back. There were moments when he was physically holding me in position — not guiding, holding — while my mind caught up to the fact that my body could actually do it. The aerial yoga came towards the end of the session. I immediately thought: I can’t do this. He assured me he’d be there. Before I knew it, I was suspended, stretched and hanging upside down in ways I would not have thought to attempt on arrival.
Perhaps the most telling thing about my five days at Shreyas: although my body did things I thought it could never do, my knee — which can sideline me for weeks after a gym session at home or one squat too deep — did not register a single complaint across the entire week.
My package also included two pranayama (breathwork) sessions, in which I learned seven techniques in total, along with a one-on-one meditation session, four massages and a facial.
What the Farm Grows
Much of what arrives at the table comes from the property’s own farm — a working concern, with a dirt path circling it wide enough to walk in the late afternoon, which I did most afternoons. The food is sattvic: prepared according to yogic principles, in season, vegetarian, and — while I was there — mostly Indian, although the kitchen moves fluently across cuisines and works with dietary restrictions.
Lunch at Shreyas is the largest meal of the day, though all are generous. One afternoon brought lemon rasam — thin, intensely fragrant — alongside kosambari, a Karnataka salad of lentils, cucumber and fresh coconut, and sambar with brown rice. The next, polenta with roasted bell pepper sauce. Another, Hara Bhara Kebab with pearl millet roti. On my last evening, unexpectedly, Mexican — vegetarian quesadillas, a spinach and mushroom burrito, finished with chocolate cake and fresh fruit.
The Universe, In Its Own Time
On my last afternoon, I treated myself to a facial included in my package and an extra Swedish massage, then walked the dirt path that circles the farm as the light softened. Three small girls appeared ahead of me — the gardeners’ children from the local village, out for the afternoon. They came straight over, giggled, and held out two deep pink roses and a white bird feather. I took them, slightly overwhelmed: by how lovely they were, and by how completely, unmistakably, I was in rural India. We said Namaste to each other, and they ran back across the grass.
A gentleman from New York at the communal lunch table on my first afternoon was on his fifteenth visit. A couple two seats along return for a month every year. The woman who joined us for dinner was on her third stay, had just completed five nights of total silence, and was eating with people again for the first time. By the end of your stay at Shreyas, you begin to understand why so many guests aren’t just repeat visitors, but serial aficionados.
I had first imagined coming to Shreyas as a gift to myself at forty. At fifty-two, standing on a dirt path in Karnataka with two roses and a feather in my hand, I understood why it hadn’t happened then. I wasn’t ready. I needed the years in between — raising two children, moving countries twice more, losing people I’d loved, keeping a business alive through Covid while launching another, learning to find an identity outside of being a mother and my career. I needed to arrive with enough weight to feel what it means to set it down.
What makes that possible is the people. From the magic-fairies — the staff who would slip into my cottage to leave warm ginger water, refill my water bottles and ensure fresh fruit was always on hand — to Ramakant, Dr Greeshma, Dr Anvitha and Rekha: they don’t act out the Shreyas philosophy. They live it. That authenticity is what makes the experience what it is.
Shreyas means the fortunate. By the last morning, that felt less like a name and more like a verdict.
TRAVEL INFORMATION
Shreyas Retreat, Santoshima Farm, Nelamangala, Bangalore 562 123. All stays include accommodation, all meals, twice-daily group yoga, daily meditation and chanting, and yogic kriyas. The five-night Wellness for the Soul package adds two personalised yoga sessions, two pranayama sessions, one meditation session, four rejuvenation massages, one Abhyanga, one fruit facial, and return airport transfers. Use of the infinity pool, sauna, steam, gym, reflexology path and home theatre is included for all guests. Priced from USD 2,706 for a single or USD 3,806 for a couple, valid until March 2027. shreyasretreat.com
Photography supplied by Shreyas Retreat
Tanya co-founded Holidays for Couples with her mother Rhonda in 1996. For more than 25 years, the magazine defined romance travel in Australia before Tanya reimagined it as a digital platform with a strong SEO and social media presence. Tanya has lived in Canada, Japan, Abu Dhabi, Macao and now Saudi Arabia. When not in the office working on Holidays for Couples magazine, she is either planning her next trip or already boarding the plane.
