Everyone leaves there having made at least one change in their lives. That’s what I’m told about Kamalaya health spa in Koh Samui, Thailand. Guests rid themselves of multiple pounds (in weight and currency), have a turn of direction in their heart-attack-headed lives, and rejuvenate bodies more burnt out than a forest fire.

The hottest trend in travel is to invest in your body. And Kamalaya, one of the world’s leading destination spas, is the place to do it.

It offers healing hands aplenty and Eastern traditions alongside the best of the West, including state-of-the-art diagnostic procedures. This translates into diverse healing and spiritual approaches: a holistic combo that is targeted at the mind, body and soul.

There is a crack squad of practitioners, encompassing traditional Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, Ayurveda and energy healing, as well as registered nurses, an allopathic doctor, Thai therapists and visiting guru types.

Shoulders and chakras
I’m at Kamalaya to release shoulders that have more knots than a yacht covers in a storm, to catch up on several lifetimes of deprived sleep, and perhaps to buff my soul and open my chakras. My companion, my Ritalin-filled 17-year-old nephew Henry, wants to find alternative approaches to his ADHD (or rather, that’s what his mother wants).

The location on its own starts the healing process. The spa is on a hillside of swaying palms and tropical foliage borrowed from a Gaugin painting. It sits beside a crescent-shaped beach and an aquamarine lagoon. It’s a Garden of Eden with plants that probably talk, lotus ponds and ginormous orange butterflies

There is a herbal steam cavern hewn into the rock and a Buddhist monks’ cave. It’s a close to heaven as you can get while still alive.

Who’s here…
Here you’ll find the likes of Annie Lennox, Oliver Stone (who lost more than a stone), stressed-out investment bankers and ladies who don’t lunch. There are singletons who meet at the dining table for singles, and couples on a health kick. And the hard-core detoxers whose treatments include the dreaded colonics.

Then there’s the founders: Karina Stewart, a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine who also trained in anthropology and wafts around on a spiritual cloud dispensing healing energy; and her husband John, a yogi who devoted 16 years to spiritual studies in a Himalayan community.

…and what they’re doing
The spa offers 70 treatments and programmes, from weight loss to yoga. The latest is the sleep programme, using naturopathy and Chinese therapies to take people to the land of zizz on a buckwheat pillow.

Days are also sugar-free-jam-packed with activities, from aqua aerobics to mediation and Qi Gong. Recalling a meditation session at Kamalaya, Fergie, the Duchess of York, wrote in her memoir: “We sat cross-legged on mats around the fire, with everyone chanting Om.” Bring on the incense, bruv.

The food is organic and fresh, combining ancient Asian healing traditions and the latest Western nutritional research, and including diets derived from Ayurveda and naturopathy. The precept is that when the diet is wrong, medicine is of no use; and when the diet is correct, there’s no need for medicine.

The chef works from the belief that we are much more than what we eat – but that what we eat helps us to be more than what we are. It’s to this end that the mini-bar contains roasted pumpkin kernels and aloe vera juice.

My programme starts with a body bio-impedance analysis (which measures body composition electronically and rudely informs me on a printout that I’m a little overweight) and after which I have a delicious meal. Black cod and banana blossom salad, where have you been all my life?

I also have a wellness consultation with a naturopath, magic-handed massages (including Chei Nei Tsing, a Taoist tummy massage), and nutritional advice. I spend a particularly interesting hour with Smitha Jayakumar, a one-time Buddhist nun who lived in a monastery for ten years and is now a spiritual life coach.

All the treatments work on an energetic, emotional and spiritual level. But does it do the trick?

Well, yes and no. I am shadowing Henry (in the interests of journalism and at the instruction of his mother) and writing articles. So I don’t really experience the essential switching-off element of the programme.

But by the end there’s definitely a spiritual spring in my step and a luminescent quality to my face. Not to mention a trimmer body, achieved partly by so often climbing the hill to the dining area and treatment rooms.

Some people say they leave Kamalaya with reignited spirits and hearts, and with more than Band-Aid to deal with their wounds. We leave feeling healthy, happy and relaxed. (So that’s more than one change in our lives, then.)

Most spas claim to make you feel well; Kamalaya actually delivers. It does what it says on the tin. And more.

There are few more curious spectator sports than vomiting to order. But I have swallowed a litre and a half of warm, salty water — glugging seven glasses in rapid succession under the watchful gaze of my yoga teacher, Sandeep Aggrawalla. (Early in the morning and on an empty stomach and after breathing deeply.) Then I’ve tickled the back of my throat with my fingers. And now I’m throwing up like an elephant, puking saline water in one huge wave. “You’re a natural,” Sandeep enthuses.

The aim of Kunjal (as voluntary regurgitation is known) is to cleanse the stomach, oesophagus, throat, lungs and chest. It’s said to wash out strong acid and excess mucous and, in yogic therapy, it plays a key role in alleviating asthma and preventing ulcers. It takes me about ten minutes, but a pro can do it daily in three. Frankly, it leaves me feeling rather shaky and offcolour.

Then it’s time for Jal Neti — allegedly to alleviate sinusitis, bronchitis and negative thinking. This involves filling a doll’s house teapot with another brew of warm saline solution, tilting my head, popping the spout up one nostril and pouring. The water goes up one nasal cavity and comes out of the other nostril, first in a drip, then in a steady stream. Afterwards my sinuses are born again and I feel clear-headed.

If this sounds crazy, mostly the treatments are wonderful. I’m on the new Yogic Detox programme at Ananda in the Himalayas, one of the world’s loveliest destination spas. Ananda is on a palace estate near Rishikesh, India, a place of pilgrimage. The stupendous location overlooks the Ganges and is filled with music, flowers and an endlessly helpful staff.

The week-long programme includes different Hatha yogic techniques for cleansing internal organs (Shatkriya), asana (yogic postures), pranayama (breathing techniques), meditation and an Ayurvedic diet. I follow a food plan prescribed by an Ayurvedic doctor for my specific dosha, or constitution. The helpings are small and inventive. I have a detox headache on the third day but don’t feel any cravings between meals.

First-rate treatments facilitate further detoxing, with Abhyanga (four-handed synchronised massage) to Choornaswedana (a dreamy massage with warmed herbal poultices). I also practise daily yoga and trek to the nearby temple.

I leave floating on a spiritual cloud, feeling calm, happy, with luminescent skin, having lost a few pounds and with my sinuses and (supposedly) chakras cleared. It seemed like an extreme programme, but it’s a Yogic Detox-lite programme.

Wellbeing Escapes (wellbeingescapes.co.uk) offers a seven-night Ananda Yogic Detox package from £2,400pp, including full board, flights and transfers. British Airways (ba.com) flies to Dehli from £537 return.

COCONUT with everything.

That’s how my youngest daughter happily sums up our culinary tour of Kerala, south India.

Our first lesson takes place in the kitchen of a colonial bungalow overlooking the Arabian Sea. Wearing a blue sari and apron, our cookery teacher, Faiza Moosa, stands next to 16 dishes of pungent spices, from fiery chillies to local cloves.

A fan redistributes the breathless heat. Sandalwood incense burns and a lizard crawls up the wall. We’re a long way from the sanitised industrial kitchens and cookery courses of Europe. “These coconuts come from our garden,” adds Faiza, Kerala’s premier cookery teacher. “They’re in most of our dishes.”

We are at Ayesha Mazil, our first gastronomic stop, in the town of Tellicherry. A colonial-style guesthouse with four-poster beds, it is also home to Faiza, 50, and her husband.

I’m with my two young daughters, Anya, 13, and Ella, 11, learning basic Indian cookery in three different venues ‹ without paying a fortune, and enjoying sunshine, too.

Before we start our lesson, we go to the market near the Moosas’ home, to buy our ingredients and discover endless varieties of exotic local fruit and vegetables: from banana blossom (like maize) and long green drumsticks to karela, with its gnarled skin.

Then Faiza’s husband, who likes to be called “Moosa”, whisks us down a crowded alley to the fish market ‹ for kingfish, stingray, shark and pomfret. “Fishing boats come in three times a day,” explains Moosa.

Back at the guesthouse, Faiza stands amid ready-prepared ingredients (there are nine staff in her home). Keralan cuisine is subtle, different from anything else in India, and combines alchemical combinations of spices with influences of Portuguese, Syrian Christian, Jewish and Arab cuisine ‹ introduced by traders over the centuries. Faiza teaches the Moppilah (Muslim) cuisine of her Arab forefathers.

We make Chemmeen Varattiyathu (tamarind prawns) ‹ marinading the crustaceans in coconut oil, orange chilli powder and turmeric. We squeeze tamarinds and sizzle onions, green chillies and mustard seeds for sauce.

Meanwhile, Faiza speedily produces a chicken dish with aniseed, ginger and garlic. A cinch. Afterwards, we whisk jaggery (unrefined sugar), coconut milk and eggs, steaming them in a copper “vanduchembu” for Moppilah crème caramel. Our lesson (producing one meal) takes nearly three hours.

The next day, after breakfast, it’s time to leave. Driving to Sultan’s Battery, we see our ingredients growing ‹ from turmeric plants to cardamom shrubs. Kerala is a lush land with abundant rainfall and paddy fields, spice plantations, coconuts and fresh waters.

We reach Tranquil, a guesthouse on a coffee plantation surrounded by rubber, fruit and spices. We sleep in a treehouse but cook on terra firma. Our hosts are former planters Victor and Jini Dey, newcomers at cookery courses but old hands at cooking.

Our classroom is a backroom with a corrugated ceiling and freestanding gas stoves. Here they teach old family recipes ‹ a mouth-watering fusion of styles. Servants wander in and out, giving us lime sodas.

Our lesson is with chef Sashi, Jini and her daughter, Neesha ‹ with Neesha translating the chef’s Malayalam. We cook Naadan chicken curry ‹ a Masala fish dish and spinach with onion flowers.

Various kitchen hands and dogs join us at different times. At lunch afterwards at a communal table, we eat our produce as monkeys play nearby.

Then we go by train to near Kanam.

Our final destination, Serenity, is a 1920s bungalow-style boutique hotel in Vazhoor, famed as much for great food as its pet elephant, Lakshmi.

On a hilltop with views over the Western Ghats, Serenity has colonial furniture and artefacts and an ayurvedic spa. The cookery demo room is equally elegant ‹ a dining room with gas rings atop its antique table. Our teacher is Rineesh, a fresh-faced young man wearing a tall chef ‘s hat, chef ‘s whites and an apron. It’s all very Swiss, like one of the hotel’s owners.

Before he’s finished teaching us to make local specialities of cashew nut paste and curried fish, we have an electrical blackout (not that uncommon in India) ‹ but somehow he talks and cooks through the dark. Afterwards we devour lemon and lentil soup, curry and stuffed bananas.

But our food odyssey doesn’t end here. Even flying home we eat delicious vegetable curry with warm nan bread. And when we get back, we manage to make our own delicious Indian feast.

There might not be any coconuts in our London garden but at least the children have learned to cook.

DETAILS KERALA

THE TOUR

Scott Dunn has eight nights from £1,957pp full board staying at Ayesha Manzil, Tranquil Plantation and Serenity, including cookery courses, return flights with Kingfisher Airlines and private transfers.