This Luxury Retreat In Kerala Combines India’s Wellness And Gastronomy

Like so many of the best hotels, Niraamaya Retreats Surya Samudra Kovalam began with one eccentric dreamer. In 1982 a professor at the Indian Institutes of Technology had an idea for his own winter residence in the far south of Kerala. He oversaw the careful restoration of a tharavad (ancestral home), then had it shipped and reassembled in a cliff-top coconut grove above the Arabian Sea.

His first, octagonal cottage is still there, now one of the top accommodations in the resort that opened a decade later. The owners brought in more traditional cottages and transformed the hillside into a celebration of ancient Keralite architecture, heritage and culture. By 1995, the government classified it as a Heritage Hotel, and in 1996, it was named the best Heritage Hotel in India’s southern region.

But nothing about the 31-room hotel feels like a 1990s resort. Rather, it exists out of time. Four-posted beds are draped with billowy mosquito nets. Dark wood furniture and ceilings gleam with years of polishing. Silk cushions are plopped on the sofas.

The hotel is now part of the Niraamaya Retreats portfolio of about a dozen wellness and Ayurveda hotels around India, including five in Kerala. Each has an exclusive location, such as the coconut grove for this one and a coffee plantation for another. They also have signature experiences, like sunset cruises and morning jaunts to the fisherman’s beach, as well as serious yoga and meditation classes every day.

The Kovalam hotel is the only one in the group to be invited into Relais & Châteaux, which the property manager attributes to its clifftop location and traditional architecture. But the excellent cuisine certainly helps. The coconuts­—starting with the one that greets arriving guests as a welcome drink—could not be any fresher, and the fish, from the nearby beach town of Kovalam, is straight out of the sea.

The main restaurant, Café Samsara, is blissfully open-air and overlooking the Indian Ocean. (Samsara can be translated several ways, but I’ll go with “rebirth” here for poetry’s sake.) The menu is long and ambitious, taking in Kerala, pan-Indian and Western fare. As always, it’s best to go local.

And to go all-in. The traditional Kerala lunch option is a sort of southern thali, with special rice mounded on a giant banana leaf, then surrounded by spoonfuls and dollops of various curries, dals, riatas, pickles and chutneys. At the same time that it’s delicious, it’s meant to be healthful and balanced from an Ayurvedic standpoint. (It’s also meant to be eaten with your hands, according to local custom, but they’ll bring cutlery if you ask.)

That’s in line with the overall approach to Ayurveda, the ancient Indian medical system that complements yoga. Although the program can rigorous, with Ayurvedic doctors on staff, hot boxes for steam baths and copper pots for shirodhara (dripping warm oil on guests’ foreheads), it can also be a light introduction to the practice that’s heavy on pleasure. The spa is Green Leaf Certified (the highest classification for Ayurvedic centers in Kerala) for those who are looking for the real deal.

And for them and for everyone else, Niraamaya in Kovalam is the real deal for South Asian relaxation. Days follow a languorous rhythm. Palm trees sway; secluded beaches beckon. Staff can take you outside for a backwater cruise through the mangrove forest of the Poovar estuary to a golden sand beach, where they’ll set up a picnic and pop open the sparkling wine.

Back at the hotel, there’s a swimming pool with a perfect oceanic backdrop, secluded sitting areas and a clifftop bar for sundowners of Indian beer and wine. There are winding pathways and gently sloping lawns. And there’s still the same spirit of rest that drew an academic technologist some four decades earlier.