“Caroline Phillips is a tenacious and skilful writer with a flair for high quality interviewing and a knack for making things work.”
I am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed to expose myself to cracking jokes solo in public when I’d rather eat my own prostate, if I had one, or face the Covid-19 inquiry naked? I fear stage fright, hecklers and farting near the mike.
As we sail away from the medieval coastal town of Kotor, Montenegro, all ancient walls and 12th-century churches, with a dramatic backdrop of mountains, the warm breeze is filled with the sound of altos and baritones. One minute they’re singing Bellini, the next it’s Bizet. There’s a piano on deck too.
The Gstaad Palace, Switzerland, is full of European royals, Greek ship owners and tuxedo-clad waiters. Liz Taylor loved it and so does Valentino. But when people with kingdoms and Ferraris tire of socialising, dancing and the spa of all spas, they can pay a princely sum to stay in a mountain hut with an outside lavatory.
We pull up at the ashram. A bare-chested man in a dhoti walks past as monkeys and peacocks wander around. “I’ve been here before,” I say, startled. “In another life,” replies a distant cousin, Alan Lawrence. No, two years ago, en route to Kerala. I visited for nanoseconds and thought: “Golly, how could anyone stay here? So boring and uncomfortable.” Now I’m here for two weeks.
Caroline Phillips tries a radical detox treatment in India, while, overleaf, we suggest the 20 best spas to beat the new year blues.
View transcriptI am onstage in front of 65 strangers who think I’m a stand-up comedian. I’ve never done anything like this before. Why have I agreed…
We develop a spring in our step on the island of Symi. No wonder – there are apparently 374 steps from its harbour, Yialos, to…
It’s a place of Olympian beauty where emerald isles rise languidly out of a patchwork turquoise and wine-dark sea. But my two teenagers and their…