You don’t have to go far to lose yourself. Being home, going through the daily motions, work, children, home, meals, husband, parents, friends… Daily tasks can drown your very identity if you give them a few uninterrupted months. This is why psychologists the world over suggest quick breaks from your daily routine, which are also more feasible than one long holiday a year, planning which takes half the joy out of it.
As someone who travels regularly, I can vouch for this. The biggest joy about taking a staycation, a holiday in or near your city, is avoiding boring transit hours waiting at airports or railway stations. On the return, by the time you get home, you’ve pretty much forgotten the joys of your holiday. The trend of short breaks is picking up, with travel websites like Cleartrip reporting a distinct hike in long weekend hotel bookings. In August last year, the company claims hotels bookings were up 72%, as opposed to earlier months, because that month had more long weekends than usual. But it’s not just enough to go on a break — it is important to choose a break that you need at the moment.
This is why, ITC Grand Bharat in Manesar (packages start at ₹28,000 for a couple in one of their 104 suites) made for a good option for me. It is located just an hour away from the capital, which is fantastic, but I chose it for the hotel’s healing ambience. I badly needed downtime.
Over the couple of years of its existence, ITC Grand Bharat has modelled itself into a wellness resort, centring on their fantastic world-class spa, Kaya Kalp. Over my birthday weekend last month, I opted for one of their recently introduced Reconnections packages. Meant to reconnect — whether it is with yourself, your partner, your family, or even your friends — the idea is to encourage people to spend some time finding their connections again.
Here, you don’t go haring about town trying to take a selfie with a world heritage site, you just slow down, and enjoy doing little restoring tasks together. Why am I even in this relationship? If you find yourself asking this question but not having the time to sit down and answer it, perhaps such a weekend is in order. Spending a couple of days in the green, peaceful environs of the resort, I found stress slowly leaving my body. You don’t even realise how much stress you take on in the everyday until you actually get rid of it and feel light and refreshed. The all-suite resort, built from locally-sourced stone, is designed to represent the grandness of India: different blocks of rooms are named after iconic places. I stayed at the Hampi block.
There’s a water body at the entrance of the hotel and there are gazebos with steps going down to the water, shaped like ghats, where every evening you can join a small prayer ceremony.
At Kaya Kalp, with its lovely wall frescos of trees and birds, the signature massage or the deep tissue massage, both of which I went for, release tangible stress, from joints and muscles (ask for Ishi at the spa, she is super), while yoga, meditation, the endless green views of the on-site 27-hole golf course, gently flowing water in the water-bodies across the resort, long corridors, high ceilings, and attention to detail, work on the intangible stress inside your mind.
The point is to focus on the little things — the food you eat, the way the therapist kneads away knots in your muscles, each stroke of a leisurely swim. Instead of a wild party to (temporarily) forget you’re officially in midlife, go away, think about life, and make a few decisions, big and little.
The writer was at the resort on the invitation of ITC Grand Bharat
