Buy on the island of dreams

Country & Town House | 23 Apr 2018

Imagine a palm-fringed beachfront retreat. An 8,500 sq/ft tropical villa built in 2005. One boasting a massage temple – with sides open to the jungle foliage – and a colonnaded walkway. An outside sitting room with a chandelier and a 49ft dining room overlooking monkeys swinging in the Khomba tree and the courtyard swimming pool. Add to this six colonial bedrooms with soaring ceilings and inside/outside bathrooms open to the fireflies that sparkle in the inky sky.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Escape to Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort

The Luxury Channel | 21 Mar 2018

It’s not often that there’s a resort hotel that boasts an unusual welcome ceremony, a Nature Guru who’s a conservationist with a Masters in Environmental Science, and a great Ayurvedic doctor too. I’ll start with the first: a greeting that involves singing, drumming and three Sinhalese ladies in a lobby. That’s the welcome I get at the Anantara Peace Haven Tangalle Resort. I guess it means, “Hey! You’ve just arrived at a corker of a resort,” or something like that. At any rate, that would be true…

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Kandy Samadhi Centre – for the luxury of tranquillity, beauty and simplicity

The Luxury Channel | 7 Mar 2018

It’s almost possible to touch the white clouds that move slowly across the hilltop in front of my terrace. There’s a hammock hanging between vintage wooden pillars and monkeys swinging in trees watching me watching them. Lying there is great too for listening to the orchestra of birds and crickets. Sweet music conducted by tree frogs, with backing vocals from a singing river and wild boar rustling in the bush. There’s a view of the Knuckles Mountains and of paddy fields, bamboos, forests of mango, jack trees and guava. It’s like waking up in Heaven a few years too early…

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Paradise for investors

The Sunday Times | 28 Jan 2018

Children play cricket on the beach with a homemade mango-wood bat. Fishing boats of sun-bleached blues and ocean greens rest up on the sand, and enticing smells advertise just-caught crabs and fish coconut curry. Nearby, at the edge of the beach, there’s a gate fashioned from crooked cinnamon branches.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

24 hours in Colombo

The Luxury Channel | 27 Jan 2018

They’re serving afternoon tea on cake stands with fans circling overhead and the Indian Ocean as a backdrop. There’s a lawn for croquet. Beyond this — and framed by 19th century columns and palm trees — there are ladies sashaying in gold and purple saris to watch a wedding on the promenade. The sound of traditional instruments fills the warm air and the sun is setting, a crimson ball in the sky. Who would imagine that this is just steps away from a vehicle-clogged city of dust, concrete and bustle?

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Escape to the Park in New Delhi

The Luxury Channel | 11 Apr 2017

‘Do not spit here’ and ‘Carrying tobacco products is prohibited,’ read the signs. This is the Gurdwara Bangla Sahib temple, New Delhi, India; a peaceful Sikh temple with acres of white marble and a gigantic holy bathing pool. Originally it was a bungalow for an important military leader of Mughal emperor, Aurangzeb. It’s as close to my hotel as, say, just 100 turbans rolled out end to end: call it half a mile. But let’s rewind. I’m staying in a hotel known for being Anything But Ordinary. There’s coconut juice, candies, comics and Wi-Fi in the hotel transfer car from Delhi airport. A welcome in the lobby by a sari-clad lady — with a dish of red powder on a rose-petal strewn copper tray — who places a marigold garland on me and a decorative Hindu bindi mark on my forehead. A lift with clouds on its walls and mirror on its ceiling: sort of Alice in New Delhi Wonderland.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Escape to Somatheeram Ayurveda Village in Kerala

The Luxury Channel | 10 Apr 2017

There’s a Chinese lady sitting at lunch slavered in a red face pack. Fabric is wound around her crown, like bandages, and she’s wearing a green overall and sipping fresh pineapple juice. Nearby a Russian man wanders around the garden sporting banana, egg white and mango painted on his face. He has also just enjoyed a Thalapothichil treatment, in which the head is covered with herbal paste and topped off with a lotus leaf — a procedure that’s said to be good for depression and stress.

I’m at the Somatheeram Ayurveda Village — India’s first Ayurvedic hospital in a resort setting. Opened 35 years ago, it boasts more awards than I’ve had hot curries (a lot, in other words). It’s situated in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala, above a golden beach that extends to eternity and beyond — and where groups of fishermen gather to untangle their Himalayan-size fishing nets.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

A little lost love on board the Ayeyarwaddy Discovery

The Luxury Channel | 10 Apr 2017

There are naked children splashing innocently in the water by the river’s edge – why would anyone waste much-needed kyats, the local currency, on swimwear? Others are climbing like mini Tarzans on anchor ropes that run high above the water from a ship to the shore.

My family and I clamber aboard a traditional wooden longtail boat — used locally for transporting custard apples, dragon fruit and piles of mustard leaves as well as for ferrying people. Nearby young men in longyis (like sarongs) stand waist-high in the water washing their hair with acacia bark (a natural shampoo) and scrubbing their bodies. This is the scene at the riverside in Mandalay, Myanmar (Burma).

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

The spirit of place

Chewton Glen | 29 Oct 2016

The men in saffron robes walk the streets holding out their begging bowls. It is called tak bat. I get up at 5.30am to see it. The monasteries are empty and their monks are seeking aims. The pious – and tourists – sit on low plastic stools, as if kneeling, and hand out sticky balls of rice and cereal bars to these holy men. In this way, the former gain spiritual merit and the latter demonstrate their vows of poverty and humility.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Escape to the Park Hotel Chennai

The Luxury Channel | 11 Apr 2016

Think of a place of dreams that transports the viewer. Imagine its being in the erstwhile location of Gemini Studios, a leading Indian movie studio. Then picture somewhere that has cinematic themes incorporated in its décor. This is the five-star art-concept THE PARK hotel, Chennai (Madras). Its grand atrium is like walking on set, with its ‘stage’ the seating area — as if guests are part of the performance — plus there’s a huge screen onto which movie images are projected silently as dusk falls.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Elephant Yoga at the Anantara Golden Triangle

Harper’s Bazaar | 16 Feb 2016

Calling all yoga bunnies: I’ve tried everything from ashtanga to tantra. I’ve done postures on Nicaraguan beaches, atop a Moroccan riad, in an Indian ashram and sailing down the Dalmatian Coast. But now, I’ve found something completely different. A first. Welcome to yoga on an elephant.

• Health, Beauty & Spa,
• Travel: Asia/ Oceania

Passage from India

Chewton Glen | 19 Oct 2015

The impact of Indian fabric and jewellery design is ubiquitous. The reinterpretation of a paisley design in one of the suites at Cliveden. The heavy brocade in the drawing room at Chewton Glen. The emerald on one guest’s finger. The pashmina draped over another’s shoulders.

• Travel: Asia/ Oceania