The good things in life
Mimi Spencer
PUNJAB
There are few more fashionable pursuits these days than detoxing. It’s a pastime perfected by people like Cindy Crawford and Jennifer Aniston, along with paddle surfing and looking fabulous in shorts. It is now, of course, a keen diversion of the masses too. We are a nation enthralled by herbal teas and cleansing tinctures, wedded to Pilates and Down Dog, ever on the lookout for a new celebrity tip to rid ourselves of the foul toxins of modern life.
Rather than struggle against the tide, I’ve generally found that the best option is to get the hell out every now and again, leaving the demands of urban England behind for a spell. So it was that I found myself in the emollient lakelands of northern India, in one of the world’s most peaceful, magical spots.
To get to Basunti (www.basunti.com), an informal guest-house lying like a dream on the banks of the vast Pong reservoir, you must first drive through the furious entertainment of Punjabi streets, weaving round brickworks, potholes, burning fields and the jumbled chaos of Indian street life. Before long, though, you reach the hillier, cooler domain of Himachal Pradesh.
Basunti takes its name from a delicate local flower that grows prolifically in these parts; the simple building, with its marble floors and dusk-pink walls, was built by expat Dave Butterworth, a man clearly adept at teasing out the good things in life. Butterworth is a local historian, archaeologist, horticulturalist (he is, perhaps, the only person in northern India to be growing olives) and adventurer, who knows the area back to front and is more than happy to chat and refill your glass as you flop contentedly in a wicker chair on the veranda. Basunti, you see, is an escape, but it’s not ascetic in the manner of classical Indian ashrams; instead, it is a peaceful place to stretch and laugh, to sleep late or wake early and catch the sun as it rises over the water’s edge.
Basunti could easily be a stop-off point for a visit to Amritsar’s Golden Temple, or to Macleod Ganj, the bizarre mountain refuge of the Dalai Lama in exile. Plan it carefully and you can engineer an audience with His Holiness, or catch him as he speeds past in his bullet-proof Range Rover. Or you can take a trip further into the foothills of the Himalayas, led by Dave, beyond the reach of the average tourist to the magical realm of the leopard and the black bear. Alternatively, of course (and it’s hard to say no), you can stay put and smell the frangipani, eat delicately spiced bhajis fresh from the kitchen, and curl up in a hammock with an edifying book, wrapping yourself in one of the elaborate local woollen shawls as the evening draws in. This, for me at least, is the perfect detox: no ring-tones, no alarm clocks, no socks to pair, but plenty of homemade lemon cake and good red wine.
Dave regularly runs yoga retreats here, using the purpose-built shala — a thatchroofed structure set in his gardens of cana lilies and lemon grass — for early morning omming and ahhing. I took to doing my rather creaky yoga routines on the flat rooftop, with a 360-degree panorama of the reservoir, in the company of a pair of whiterumped vultures who were rude enough to stare.
If yoga’s not your bag, then swimming or fishing can be equally calming and cleansing. Our little gang (three pale grey English women and a bronzed Dave in a leather waistcoat) took to rowing out to the centre of the lake and diving into its cool waters, the entire place deserted but for a scatter of cormorants and a lone fisherman on the far shore. ‘And they say India is heaving with people,’ smiled Dave, as we rowed gently home for hot porridge served with gur, a local raw cane sugar syrup, and mangos from the orchard (the ones that the monkeys hadn’t yet purloined).
At Basunti, unlike those fashionable army boot camps or astringent health spas, there is the liberty and the luxury of space and time. A few days in this lakeland kingdom are enough to revive the senses — the views alone are a salve to the soul. If you want to get rid of the hassles, the stresses, the monkeys on your back, I can think of no better place to start.
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