Caroline Phillips

Journalism

Caroline Phillips
“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”

Caroline Phillips

Journalism

Caroline’s favourite Travel: Asia/ Oceania articles

Soukya: the Bangalore health retreat drawing a starry clientele — and interest from the NHS

FT Weekend | 29 Apr 2018

I am lying on a wooden massage bed as two women rub my naked body with hot pouches of cooked rice, milk and medicinal herbs. They massage in tandem my legs, hip joints and up to my neck. A little gloop escapes the poultice bags each time and soon my body is covered with a gluey white residue. This is navarakizhi, a treatment claimed to reduce joint stiffness and relieve depression.

I’m at Soukya, a health retreat outside Bangalore that offers traditional Indian cures for conditions from hay fever to diabetes and strives to “restore the natural balance of your mind, body and spirit”.


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Out of this world

Scotland on Sunday | 5 Jan 2014

People say one of two things when I tell them I’m going to Bhutan. Either: “Where the hell’s that?” Or: “oooh, you’re so lucky, I’ve aways wanted to go there.” To the first, the answer is: it’s a kingdom in the Himalayas between India and the Tibetan plateau. To the second: yes, very lucky – it is one of the most magical and beautful places on Earth where truly you travel back in time.


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Kamalaya: is this Thailand’s best spa?

High50 | 8 Aug 2012

Everyone leaves there having made at least one change in their lives. That’s what I’m told about Kamalaya health spa in Koh Samui, Thailand. Guests rid themselves of multiple pounds (in weight and currency), have a turn of direction in their heart-attack-headed lives, and rejuvenate bodies more burnt out than a forest fire.


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Bangkok without the bang

Spear’s | 22 Jun 2012

I’m not ordinarily a fan of Bangkok – too much heat, too many knockoffs – but then there’s the Sukhotai hotel. Yes it’s surrounded by high-rise buildings in one of the noisiest and most traffic-choked cities in the world. But stop a while – inside, it’s pure orchid filled Zen and The Art of Hotel Living. Plus it offers something that’s as rare as a paragliding saffron-robed monk: it’s a resort hotel set calmly in the centre of the city.


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Heat, holy men and chanting at dawn: are you tough enough for an ashram?

The Times | 3 Sep 2011

We pull up at the ashram. A bare-chested man in a dhoti walks past as monkeys and peacocks wander around. “I’ve been here before,” I say, startled. “In another life,” replies a distant cousin, Alan Lawrence. No, two years ago, en route to Kerala. I visited for nanoseconds and thought: “Golly, how could anyone stay here? So boring and uncomfortable.” Now I’m here for two weeks.


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A spa so beautiful it’s enough to make you sick – literally

The Times | 8 Jan 2011

Caroline Phillips tries a radical detox treatment in India, while, overleaf, we suggest the 20 best spas to beat the new year blues.

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The spice is right in Kerala

Evening Standard | 6 Jan 2010

Coconut with everything. That’s how my youngest daughter happily sums up our culinary tour of Kerala, south India.

Our first lesson takes place in the kitchen of a colonial bungalow overlooking the Arabian Sea.

Wearing a blue sari and apron, our cookery teacher, Faiza Moosa, stands next to 16 dishes of pungent spices, from fiery chillies to local cloves.


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Kaleidoscopic impressions of India

E.S. | 5 Jan 1993

A cow is aborting at the side of the road. Nearby sits a man with a sawn-off arm and no hands. He is covered in flies, and his body is bent from the waist so his face rests on the tarmac. The next day both man and animal are in the same positions. They are in a street in which a woman buckets out the contents of an open sewer and piles it by the side of the road, then a dog starts to eat it.

We’re staying in a rose sandstone Umaid Bhawan Palace amid the splendour in which the maharajah still lives, with Art Deco suites and tigers’ heads on the walls.


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