Remarkable Ceylon

BENTOTA · KANDY · TANGALLE

The Slow Cure

Ayurveda taken seriously, for long enough to work.

Duration
14 Days
Party
PRIVATE · 1–2
From
US$4,620 per person
Ayurveda is a medical system with a consultation, a diagnosis and a course of treatment, and a spa menu of ninety-minute massages is not it. This is the real version: a doctor, a plan, a diet you will not choose yourself, and fourteen days, because the treatments do nothing in three.

What it is built around

  • A consultation on arrival with a registered Ayurvedic physician, and a plan built from it
  • Panchakarma proper, daily, with the same two therapists throughout
  • A kitchen cooking to your prescription rather than to a buffet
  • Herb gardens at Kandy, and the pharmacy where the oils are actually made
  • A week on the coast at the end, with nothing required of you at all

The shape of it.

An outline rather than a schedule. The days move around you once we know your flights, and nothing here is fixed.

  1. Days 1–2

    Arrival and diagnosis

    Met and driven south. The consultation happens before anything else, and the rest of the fortnight is written around what it finds.

  2. Days 3–9

    The course

    Seven days of treatment, twice daily, with the diet to match. Slow, repetitive and the entire point. Phones are yours to keep, but most people put them down.

  3. Days 10–11

    Kandy

    Up to the hills for the gardens and the dispensary, and to see where the oils on your skin for the last week came from.

  4. Days 12–14

    Tangalle

    The coast, a quiet house, and three days of doing nothing so that you go home rested rather than freshly travelled.

What is included

  • Physician consultation, diagnosis and the full prescribed treatment course
  • All meals, cooked to the diet you are given
  • Thirteen nights, with the treatment week at a single centre
  • Private vehicle and driver-guide for every transfer and excursion
  • 24/7 direct line to your trip designer while you travel

Best for

Anyone who has done a spa week and found it did nothing, and who can give a fortnight to something that works slowly.

Probably not for

Travellers who want to see the island. This is a stay, not a tour, and the sightseeing is deliberately thin.

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