After a decade of illness, grief and anxiety left her nervous system at breaking point, Maya Boyd returns to Ananda in the Himalayas, the retreat which helped pioneer modern wellness travel. Here’s her story…
Set high above Rishikesh in a former maharaja’s palace, Ananda in the Himalayas blends Ayurveda, yoga and Traditional Chinese Medicine into a rigorous programme of restoration that extends far beyond the surface of traditional wellness programmes.
Fifteen years after her first encounter with the valley, our writer travelled back to the foothills of the Himalayas in search of much-needed recalibration. What she discovered was the reset she’d been seeking for years.
The Lowdown
On my first night at Ananda, I stand on the terrace of my room and gaze down over the valley towards Rishikesh. The Ganges cuts a dark, deliberate line through the lights below. The evening aarti has drifted up from the ghats, leaving incense and chants still hanging in the air as a storm gathers over the Shivalik hills. Earlier that evening, upon my arrival, I’d been blessed with smoke and sandalwood, given ginger tea to sip and a mala was placed around my neck, the wooden beads cool against my collarbone. A gong sounded somewhere in the distance. Staff bowed, gracefully, with quiet precision. There is something quietly monastic about the welcome here, though the setting is pure mountain grandeur, a former maharaja’s palace reimagined as one of the world’s most exacting wellness sanctuaries. A dramatic location indeed, but Ananda’s power lies less in theatrics and more in structure.
Now in its 25th year, Ananda has had time to refine that structure. Founded by hospitality visionary Ashok Khanna and run by his daughter, Aashica, the retreat has always positioned itself at the intersection of classical Ayurveda, yoga and Vedanta philosophy, along with an increasingly meticulous programme of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
“Ananda’s integrated approach addresses every aspect of a person – spiritual, mental, emotional and physical,” Aashica declares. “The point is integration, not simply indulgence.” It’s a rigorous system, and that distinction matters to the many guests who, like me, do not come to Ananda for pampering. They come because they cannot continue as they are.
A Personal Journey
This is not my first visit to this valley. Travel has always been the axis on which my life has turned. Not the gentle, summers-in-Devon kind, but the untethered, months-on-the-road kind. Childhood months in North Africa in a VW camper van. Teenage Ibiza summers recorded in grainy Polaroid shots. Sultry summers mixing drinks on the Côte d’Azur during my first year away from home. Ski seasons in Val d’Isère. Backpacking through Southeast Asia, camping on beaches in Koh Samui. Exploring Mexican jungles and sleeping in tree houses near ancient ruins. Eighteen months crossing oceans as deck crew, followed by years in the Caribbean, Argentina, Miami. A month spent with the indigenous Ticuna people deep in the Colombian Amazon. Years and years and years in Ibiza. Movement has been my education and the transformation has been near-constant. I have never been afraid of immersion.
Thus, when I first came to Rishikesh fifteen years ago with the man who would become my husband, I thought I was prepared. I was not. The crush of humanity. The heat. The noise. The collision of sweat, diesel, marigolds and swirling river water. I had always found solace in vastness, and in Rishikesh I felt swallowed whole. My nervous system recoiled. My husband still jokes that he had to medevac me back to the old-world grandeur of New Delhi’s Imperial Hotel to revive me before we could continue our Indian odyssey. Rishikesh, back then, was too much for me.
Life since then has been seismic. The past decade has been defined by extremes: my eldest son’s leukaemia diagnosis when I was nine months pregnant with our second child, followed by years of chemotherapy, late effects and the constant fear of relapse. Moving back and forth between Ibiza and the UK for almost ten years as I wrote books, edited magazines and celebrated epic career highs, but also juggled anxiety, addiction issues and insomnia alongside autoimmune Hashimoto’s disease and the hormonal reckoning of my mid-forties. Grief became cyclical. Too many friends lost, too young, in circumstances too brutal to make sense of. By December of last year, I was still working, still functioning, still mothering three young children. But I was grieving something I couldn’t seem to name. It felt as though I was coming unstitched at the edges, my nervous system biting too close to my skin. After yet another house move, this time to Mallorca, my seven-year-old daughter drew a family picture for her Christmas card. In it, I was crying.
A Return to Ayurveda
At 44, in what feels like a new beginning, I wanted recalibration rather than rescue. Ananda – the mother of all wellness sanctuaries – felt like she was calling me home. In the hands of the uninitiated, Ayurveda is often flattened into the shorthand of “Indian wellness” but is in fact a 5,000-year-old medical system rooted in the balance of the five elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether – as they express through three primary constitutions, or doshas: vata (air and ether), pitta (fire and water) and kapha (earth and water). Each person is born with a dominant constitution. Illness arises when that constitution falls out of balance. Once an individual’s dosha type has been assessed, Ananda’s programmes are built around dinacharya, the Ayurvedic science of daily rhythm. Waking before sunrise. Oil pulling. Tongue scraping. Nasal cleansing. Eating in alignment with digestive fire. Moving at specific times. Resting at others. It sounds simple, but most modern lives are structured in direct opposition to this rhythm. Mine felt like it had abandoned rhythm altogether and fallen to the gods of chaos.
On arrival, guests at Ananda are assigned to an Ayurvedic physician who will remain with them for the duration of their wellness journey. Consultations are thorough, pulse reading and tongue assessment combined with detailed questioning around digestion, sleep, emotional tendencies and medical history. The tone is measured and authoritative, the questions verging on the intimate. I was crying before my consultation was halfway through. But as is the style here, there was no rush to soothe. The aim is diagnosis. Within moments, I was recognised as a ‘vata’ type, which I half knew already. We vata are creative, intuitive and agile, yet prone to anxiety, insomnia, digestive irregularity and nervous system overload when imbalanced. Vata, essentially, is the dosha of cool wind. When it runs unchecked, everything scatters. Mine had been running riot.
Most of my prescribed treatments were rooted in classical Ayurvedic therapy, and while the setting is palatial, the methodology is disciplined. Patra pinda swedana – a hot herbal bundle massage – involves linen boluses filled with medicinal leaves and powders that are heated in oil and vigorously applied to the body. Ingredients such as avanakku leaf (anti-inflammatory and antimicrobial), arka leaf (traditionally used for musculoskeletal stiffness), turmeric and kottamchukadi powder target joint pain, circulation and detoxification. The treatment is particularly effective for inflammatory and autoimmune conditions. Shirodhara, the steady stream of warm oil poured across the forehead, is prescribed for insomnia and anxiety. It works directly on the nervous system, inducing a parasympathetic state that modern life rarely allows.
Reflexology therapists work with focused intensity, reading pressure points along the feet and hands with extraordinary precision. It is less about relaxation – in fact it can be deeply painful – but is entirely focused on recalibration. Facials use warm oils and cooling stones – including amethyst in my case – to stimulate lymphatic drainage and restore skin integrity compromised by stress and hormonal fluctuation. The therapists themselves operate with a quiet authority. Movements are deliberate, speech minimal, touch assured. The Ayurvedic doctors in particular carry a steady gravitas that reinforces the serious nature of the programme: this is not wellness as entertainment. It is protocol.
For me, the real pivot came through Traditional Chinese Medicine, when Dr Uniyal recognised links that I had never been trained to see. “Your constitution is yang,” he told me, “But the imbalance is yin. The solid organs are weak in comparison to the hollow organs.” He mapped the relationship between lung energy and the large intestine, explaining that endocrinological – therefore hormonal – points lie along that meridian. “You have weak lung energy. When a lung is weak, an imbalance in the large intestine is anticipated.”
He then traced the lung meridian from the clavicle, through the shoulder, down the radial side of the arm to the thumb. I had been experiencing unexplained shoulder pain along precisely that line. “When there is a problem in the lung energy, you can find pain in the lung meridian,” he said matter-of-factly.
He went further. “Because of weak lung energy, spleen energy is also affected. That can increase the antibody index.” Elevated antibodies, he explained, can manifest as joint pain and are often associated with autoimmune disorders. It was the first time someone had connected my Hashimoto’s, my inflammation and my anxiety into one coherent energetic narrative.
Then came the emotional layer. “You try to control emotion,” he observed calmly. “But you are holding anger and fear inside you. That increases the mood element, which is connected to the liver. Anger and fear combine to create anxiety.” There was no mysticism in his delivery – it was pure diagnostics. It felt as though the veil had lifted.
“In a healthy person, there should be a free flow of energy in the body,” he continued. “Whenever the energy is stagnated, there is imbalance. Acupuncture unblocks the stagnated energy and reinvigorates the flow.” Dr Uniyal’s sessions were precise yet gentle, framed in both traditional and scientific language. “When beta endorphins are produced in an organised manner, they relax the body completely,” he explained. Cupping was used along my back to draw out inflammation and stimulate circulation. Moxibustion – the burning of Artemisia vulgaris, or mugwort – was applied to introduce medicated heat. “It boosts the spleen energy and can correct the antibody index,” he said. “And it is good for the soul.” By midweek, the shoulder pain had eased, my sleep had deepened and the persistent hum of anxiety was notable in its absence.
Food for the Soul
If Ayurveda is the spine of Ananda, then food is its daily language. The Healing Plate, an Ayurvedic cookbook released to coincide with Ananda’s 25th anniversary, distils decades of clinical experience into recipes designed to extend the retreat’s philosophy into guests’ homes. The emphasis is not on elimination but alignment. Each guest consults with the culinary team to tailor meals to their dosha. I recognised my vata signature everywhere: restless, scattered, light and unsettled. My diet was tailored to ground that flightiness; to wrap warmth around what had been cold and unpredictable. It wasn’t about restriction – although meals are intentionally light – it was about rhythm and listening. For me, this meant warm, cooked, grounding dishes – mung-bean kitchari rich in turmeric, slow-cooked vegetables tempered with cumin and fresh curry leaves, broths designed to support digestive fire without overwhelming it. As someone who routinely eats raw food, standing up, straight from the fridge, this was a revelation.
The To-Do List
One morning we hiked up to Kunjapuri Temple, a holy place high in the Shivalik foothills of the Himalayas. At the summit, monks blessed us with incense and marigold petals as snow-capped peaks cut a jagged line across the horizon and prayer flags blazed across the sky. The setting echoed the retreat’s philosophy: that Ananda is not about isolated luxury but about embedded spirituality, found daily in small rituals, small revelations, small moments of gratitude. Some days, in the lull between treatments, I found myself on the grass beneath the jacaranda trees, watching a praying mantis balance gently on a branch. Or kneeling in front of a garlanded statue of Ganesha as icy mountain water rushed by. Or chanting, hands together, in pre-dawn devotions. In those quiet hours, in the cool Himalayan air, I felt the fragmentation of the previous decade begin to knit back together.
By the last evening at Ananda, I knew I needed to visit the river once more. Back in Rishikesh, we made our way to one of the temple ghats as the evening ceremony began. The riverbanks were crowded – bodies and voices and flames and smoke – and a wild wind had set Rishikesh’s famous suspension bridges swaying dramatically. Mountain rain lashed into our faces. Yet when the great lamp was lit, its flame coiling up over the brass cobra’s hood, I felt an exactness inside me, as though every old version of myself was burning away right there in the heat of it all. I stood among the crowd with the ceremonial fire in my hands, the rhythm of bells and mantras all around, and something in me that had been tentative before felt calm. Not transcendent in some abstract way, but present. Rooted. Transformation doesn’t happen in a flash. It is the slow and often unsteady realignment of nerve and breath, of thought and body, of the resonance that hums beneath the surface of the skin. Ananda never promised to give me a new life. But in its depth and its wisdom and its subtlety of structure, it gave me the space to reconnect with the one I already had.
Lead image credit: Ananda in the Himalayas
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