- Six Senses Vana is a wellness retreat located 33 km from Dehradun airport
- Meals focus on seasonal, portion-controlled food with an emphasis on mindful eating
- Phones are restricted in common areas, and photography is discouraged to maintain silence and privacy
It's not every day that you are asked to not pack much for a business trip. A retreat, sure; but was I not going to carry any fancy clothes to wear? What would the lunches and dinners look like? What was I to wear to the common areas? And more importantly, what was I going to be photographed in? What about Instagram?
The brief from Six Senses Vana, which arrived two weeks before my trip, was not quite a brief. It was extensive. There was a wellness consultation that asked for what I was looking for from my three-night stay at the retreat, the shortest duration you can stay there, and that's really where the journey to Vana began. There wasn't much on Instagram. The website did not betray much of what it was going to be like. Curiosity got the better of this cat and I boarded a half-hour flight from Delhi to Dehradun one sunny November morning.
A Hard Landing Into A Softer World
The Air India flight had barely taken off, and halfway through my coffee, it was time to re-buckle our seatbelt. The aircraft had begun its descent. A few minutes later, the pilots braked hard on landing to navigate the short runway at Jolly Grant Airport, and we were out. I was met by a hybrid car waiting curbside, the six dots of the hotel logo on its door, with 'Daddi's Candy', a tamarind-salt-jaggery-cumin concoction, meant to cure the nausea of the ride.
'Daddy's Candy'. Photo: Author
There was no nausea. In fact, the therapy began right as the Innova got on to the road through the Thano range, within the Rajaji National Park, with the greenery on both sides doing their job. An hour or so later, the car pulled up in front of a gate that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere. The city was right there!
Once the gates swing shut, Dehradun is a distant memory.
It was almost as if I had slipped into Shambhala. Sunlight glittered on treetops as I was taken to the welcome area and handed a compendium with details of my day. "We would request you to turn your phone on silent and keep it inside your pocket till you get to your room," is the primary takeaway from the first conversation at Vana. A buggy then takes me through this forest within the city, and it is almost like I couldn't even remember the life of insanity I was part of just a few hours ago.
A Forest Within A City
For over a decade, the city of Dehradun has crept up right on to the walls of the 21-acre retreat. But Vana kept itself insulated from all the chaos of the outside. In doing so, it created a world that was quite unlike any other. The seclusion inside Vana is ashram-like. It is still; quiet in a way that is undemanding; unassuming; the kind that burrows deep into your mind and threatens to stay there forever. No incessant WhatsApp pings to disrupt your train of thought. No noise save for the chirping birds and monkeys leaping from one branch to another. The buggies are quiet. The humans taking care of Vana, quieter.
Clusters of reserve Sal forest surround the retreat, which sits on its own valley, with the Mussoorie hills to the north and the city of Dehradun to the east. Vana, which began as a world-famous wellness retreat in this corner of the country in 2014, found itself a new badge in 2023, when Six Senses got on board to run the place. Most of Vana's core team is still instrumental in running the retreat and the care shows in the way the place is managed. The Rs 325-crore behemoth, the brainchild of Veer Singh, is a well-oiled instrument that runs with the precision of a Swiss watch. With a strong Indian heart at its core.
Inside the forest suite. Photo: Six Senses Vana
Designed by Spanish architects Esteva i Esteva Arquitectura, Vana's early beginnings in 2014 was as Vana Malsi Estate. Its 66 rooms and 16 suites are done up to soothe your eyes; in shades of cream and brown, offset against the dark green of the Sal leaves outside your balcony. Stone tubs in the en-suite bathrooms look out to the forest, as does the living area in the forest suites. There are mango and litchi trees outside, and you are asked to keep the balcony doors closed to keep the one too curious primate away.
What Does Freedom Look Like?
The first sense of freedom at Vana comes from knowing that you don't have to worry about clothing. Once you check in and get to your room, that's the last time you will wear your own clothes. A pair of white kurta-pyjama and a pair of slippers are waiting in the wardrobe for you. The rest of the makeup, which seems necessary on Day 1, is all a figment of the past once you have had your first few hours at the retreat. The constructs of getting dressed, wearing foundation or eye-liner or lipstick, drying your hair after a shower - you see the mental blocks melt into the easiness of being that is at Vana.
No one cares who you are. No one cares what you look like. No one cares about anyone here. Everyone is in the same attire. This sense of freedom; this dissolution of vanity; is perhaps the biggest achievement of the retreat that claims to cure restless minds.
A Whole-istic Affair
The wellness team at Six Senses Vana takes care of the rest. After my introductory de-stress massage, a consultation with the in-house doctor follows. It is sobering, but "not yet alarming", I'm told.
There's a breakdown of the elements that dominate my mind and reactions. I'm handed an analysis of all the problems that I have asked them to find me a cure for. It has to begin with certain tweaks in my lifestyle, is the verdict. A sigh escapes my lips.
"At least for the next few days that you are here, let us try and realign your life," an amiable Dr Arun tells me at the end of our 45-minute chat. My stay at Vana from that consultation on is tailored by the doctor and his team.
Over the next two and a half days, my itinerary comprises walking from breakfast to a 24k gold facial, to a natural alignment class, to a breathwork session, to a five-elements acupuncture hour, to Ekanga Patra Pinda Swedana at the Ayurveda centre, to a sound healing session, with meals in between at one of the two on-site restaurants, Salana and Anayu.
Eat Like A Human
The food philosophy at Vana sits right at the top of its wellness pyramid. There's no mindless eating here. At Salana, the retreat's breakfast-lunch-dinner restaurant, an 'Eat With Six Senses' programme curates the day's menu. The breakfast and lunch buffets are crafted using seasonal food; and the a la carte menu too changes to reflect the changing seasons. Information about what you're eating is right in front of you.
Portion sizes here are not the kind you're used to: rotis resemble flat panipuris, and cookies are bite-sized. Coffee mugs are half that at the average cafe, and drinks are capped at two per person per meal.
Wine, the only liquor available at Vana, is served in opaque glasses to keep other guests from being 'influenced' by your (unhealthy) influence. In the rooms, snacks are replenished once every two days. There's no Zomato to fall back on for late-night junk cravings. You are not shamed into acceptance here. You are nudged, lightly, towards a healthier lifestyle.
By Day 2, it is wilful surrender.
Between Control And Chaos
The detoxification of the body at Vana is in tandem with the detoxification of your mind. In common areas, where you would want to spend most of your free time, phones are not allowed. There are designated areas to check texts. To make a call, you need to push a several-ton door to a room to keep the noise out. You cannot take photos in the common areas at Vana, and photos inside your room aren't exactly encouraged. No Instagram. No Twitter. The silence is absolute. It is also absolutely important.
Before my three nights at the retreat, it was a different life. After them, I didn't know if I was calmer, but I was certainly more aware of the worldly shackles that had chained me to it. From within the vast spaces in that forest, time seemed suspended between that Shambhala-like world and the real, grey one waiting to prey on me outside those gates. Vana was a kind of entrapment I would any day choose over the kind I end up choosing every day.
As the drive back to the airport neared, I knew I was returning to the same chaos I had left behind three days earlier. I knew I was being pushed back into it headfirst by circumstance. But it was no longer a mindless dive. Bedlam was real, yet it didn't threaten to erase what was essential: a life no longer enslaved by the accoutrements that do not matter.
FACT SHEET
Where: Six Senses Vana is located 33 kilometres from the Dehradun airport. It's an hour's drive through the stunning outskirts of the Rajaji National Park. From Delhi, it's at a distance of 250 kilometres or a 5-6-hour drive.
What a stay includes: The retreat requires a minimum of three nights' stay, with packages starting at Rs 1.3 lakh per night (subject to change). The package includes daily full-board meals for two, one private treatment per guest per night, arrival wellness consultation and screening, use of wellness facilities, return airport transfers from Dehradun airport, and group retreat activities.
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