If, like me, you’re a spa junkie, then the pleasure of driving up to a destination spa — a half-hour from home — cannot be adequately explained. My spa-trotting trips have included taking a train (to Ananda in the Himalayas, India’s first bonafide and only benchmark spa), a flight to Park Hyatt in Goa (at a time when the Tajs and Leelas didn’t have any), and a car to Kaya Kalpa at ITC Mughal in Agra (to which I keep returning because its excellent service finds a way to fit you in even if you do not have a booking). True, spas have been proliferating all over the city, but the idea of going to one in the middle of a mall is mildly discomfiting. I prefer distance and a semblance of a holiday associated with one, which is why my vote goes to a destination spa any day.
Sybaritic spas
The intent at Six Senses is to pamper hedonists
If there’s a spa turnoff, it is those who keep pushing spartan Ayurvedic getaways as the real McCoy. If you’re not indisposed — in which case the rigours of fasting and being slathered in smelly oils may be spot on — then a spa visit ought be a pleasurably sensory experience over a weekend of decadent relaxation. Of course, I have a thing about massages being referred to as “treatments”, the choices being listed on a “menu”, and the whole bogey of a “consultation” before they’ll let a “therapist” near you — clinical terms that don’t do justice to a feel-good hedonistic encounter.
At the Six Senses debut spa in India, you get them all — “treatments” and “menus” and “consultations” — but for me, at least, it is the proximity (you can reach it in Greater Noida from most places in New Delhi in under an hour) that wins hands down. Already well known among the international jet-set, Six Senses is at the Jaypee Resort in Greater Noida, part of its Greg Norman golf course, and within a stone’s throw from the F-1 race track.
The resort too carries the Six Senses stamp with its use of natural light and its contemporary Southeast Asian feel, while the sprawling space is, of course, a Jaypee input. Public rooms, restaurants, rooms and suites all bear the twin hallmark of opulent, extensive space (and, therefore, privacy) along with chic styling, but the attraction is, of course, the spa, spread over three levels, with 18 treatment rooms, four hamams (the only ones in India other than a large one in Agra), and a Watsu pool, about which more in a bit.
Because Six Senses is a chain, it has been able to pull in some of its staff at Greater Noida from its other centres, and the training and services are on par with what is offered in Thailand, Maldives, Vietnam, Oman, Jordan or even Switzerland. Because it has only had a soft opening, it offered limited massages and facial therapies on the weekend we were there, though the spa hopes to have 90-odd therapies some time soon.
These include the usual Thai, Swedish and Ayurvedic massages (I had a 90-minute deep tissue massage from an Indian masseur who has joined in Noida from Dubai), but it is some of the signature Six Senses massages that I would like to return to experience.
One of these is its Bamboo Massage, a variation of the deep tissue massage that pays homage to the therapeutic qualities of rolling bamboos down your spine. Another is the Gentleman’s Facial. But the one that has become a Six Senses patent is its Watsu Massage — a rubdown that is offered in a private pool maintained at a constant 35 degrees, with all the kneading and pinching, the pulling and pounding gently executed underwater and guaranteed to get you nodding off to slumberland on a waterbed in a couple of minutes — unless you’re seasick!
There isn’t much to see or do in Greater Noida apart from the golf course, so the resort may be stretched to offer entertainment that will keep guests occupied over extended weekends, and will have to strive to come up with options and surprises for longer stays. But I, at least, am unlikely to be perturbed about such matters — not when I can hope to fetch up from home to spa in a half hour.