Shillim, 2025
WE ARRIVED UNPREPARED. WE LEFT REWIRED.
Dharana: A Week Inside a Modern Ayurvedic Retreat in India’s Rewilded Western Ghats
Abhijith was breathing hard as he massaged the oil into my body from my feet to my hands, using elegant, elongated movements as if he were conducting a symphonic orchestra. The last rays of the afternoon sun drew chevrons across my upper arms through the wooden slats of the window blinds. In the background, a playlist of eerie voices and sitar beamed from an iPhone to a set of Bose speakers—only pierced from time to time by the single electronic beep of the induction plate upon which the oil was heated to precisely the right temperature.
Every hair on my arm stood up, glistening with a droplet of oil, just long enough for his huge hands to press them down again as he stretched to reach my fingertips. He scooped up another handful of oil and expertly drizzled it onto my shoulder, not spilling a single drop, until the dark medicinal herbs oozed from between his fingers. I submitted to the sensation and closed my eyes.
He thumped the hot potli—an herb-filled poultice—onto my back, shoulders, and legs. I felt the tenseness in every muscle of my body disappear after this morning’s session of extreme stretching at the Restoration Lab. If this is the life of elite athletes, I picked the wrong profession, I realized. If only I had the genetic pedigree.
The House of Healing and The Green Table restaurant
I’ve never been much of a therapy enthusiast, let alone one to let go and do as instructed. But the very first day at Dharana was enough for me to surrender and meekly lean into well-being and the Ayurvedic treatments that were tailored to heal the imbalances I wasn’t even aware of having.
I gave in without the slightest qualm, and simply relished the experience.
The House of Healing
The de Souza brothers were visionaries. When William and Denzil de Souza purchased a 2,500-acre mountain property in the Western Ghats between Mumbai and Pune in 1985, they didn’t see the barren land that had been scarred by years of slash-and-burn millet farming. Instead, they saw a challenge: to return the area to its historical beauty as a dense forest teeming with endemic fauna and flora.
Forty years later, the one million or more seedlings planted under the supervision of conservationists and landscape designers have grown to maturity. The ecosystem has been restored from the ground up. One hundred and fifty mostly native bird species feed on insects. Mongooses thrive on snakes that keep the rodent population in check. Leopards hunt wild boar and deer. Black-footed gray langur monkeys and bonnet macaques feed on nuts and fruits. You hear them bark and chatter.
Dharana, the family’s well-being retreat, sits in the middle of this native forest. Its 99 architectural villas lie dispersed over 350 acres of tropical park that combines designed gardens with sections of lush forest, an organic vegetable and herb farm supplying the three restaurants, and a nursery. The retreat is largely self-sufficient. A solar farm provides the energy for the villas, the service buildings, and the fleet of EVs that carry guests to their villas and the different ‘houses’ for healing, learning, gathering, or meditating.
A zen-like feeling of acute awareness permeates the entire property.
Vyoma pool
We arrived utterly unprepared. A last-minute dash to India, squeezed in between two trips to Greece. Massage is something our neighbors love; wellness, for us, means 15 minutes in the sauna or hamam after our morning swim. A physiotherapist is a practitioner you go to when you pull a muscle or sprain an ankle; Ayurveda, a traditional healing method in India we’d heard about. Total novices—if ever there were some—arriving with more than a healthy dose of skepticism toward complementary and alternative healing techniques.
One of the villas at Dharana
It may have been the jet lag, but the explanation of the principles of Ayurvedic medicine left us unconvinced, even if they sounded very plausible. But as we went through the consultations—combining traditional pulse diagnosis with spectrophotometry, bioenergy analysis, and bioelectrical impedance analysis—a pattern emerged that mirrored the results of our recent "Western" medical checkup and blood testing. Just as importantly, they also matched how we were feeling about our health.
Based on these results, the medical team created our dinacharya, the structured daily routines to help us find our natural rhythm and balance: yoga and meditation, therapeutic massages, physical restoration sessions, and immersions in nature and the local culture. A team of nutritionists created a personalized dietary plan for every single meal.
The Library Lounge at Oja’s Restaurant
It didn't take us long to understand that Dharana is not just a wellness retreat; it's a proper holistic experience based on age-old Ayurvedic principles, underpinned by data from state-of-the-art medical equipment. Its modern architecture and landscaping, set in a vast rewilded ecosystem, enhance the experience—which I can only describe with the French term dépaysant.
Sometimes, you have to be dragged out of your ordinary environment to be able to embrace a new one.
Nowhere was this holistic experience more tangible than during our visit to the Bedse Caves—Buddhist monuments carved from basalt cliffs near the property. The purest of minimal aesthetics, created over two thousand years ago. A place to contemplate.
Dharana works in harmony with the communities of the Shillim Valley. The Shillim Institute at Dharana is a not-for-profit cross-fertilization platform that is dedicated to conservation and sustainable development. Deeply rooted in the local culture, artists, academics, policymakers, and business people from around the world learn, share, and co-create towards sustainable communities. It’s where classical Indian dance meets hip hop, where Western textile artists learn about natural dyes from village women, and where classical musicians discover age-old Indian instruments.
Jouney To Conscious Being
Buddhist monuments in the Bedse Caves near Dharana
“How do you and ma'am feel, sir?” Abhijith asked as he accompanied me back to the House of Healing after the last session of our stay: a tan lepa, a four-handed massage followed by a steam bath and an herbal body wrap.
Glowing would have been my typical wisecrack reply, but I bit my tongue.
“We've learned a lot this week,” I said. “But there’s so much more to learn. Guess what? We’ve got our lives ahead of us.”
At least what’s left of it.
So we’d better live it right. We may even get to yoga and meditation before it ends.
Locations:
Dharana at Shillim, Pawana Nagar, Taluka Maval, Pune, India
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