Taking a luxe approach to healthy holidays, this Bali retreat caters to jet-setting travellers who enjoy the finer things in life. COMO Shambhala Estate is a picturesque wellness resort with all the luxury trimmings: private pool villas, 24-hour personal assistants and fine dining with a wellness twist. If you’re down to indulge, you might as well detox in style…
Location
Set among the steep jungle ravines and lush rice paddies of Ubud’s central foothills, an hour or so from Bali’s airport, COMO’s exotic backdrop instantly shifts your mood to a chilled new mindset.
Accommodation
Comprised of four stand-alone private villas; five retreat pool villas; and five ‘residences’, the accommodation at COMO is absolutely stunning. Designed to feel like a home-away-from-home, each spacious villa has been artfully decorated and is suited to couples, solo travellers, groups, and families seeking a peaceful holiday.
The private villas were designed by renowned Singapore architect, Cheong Yew Kuan, and are the most contemporary of the accommodation options. Offering two and three bedroom styles, along with a private outdoor pool, they are small but stylish.
See also: Sally Halstead of COMO Shambhala on Alternative Medicine
The retreat pool villas have one and two bedroom choices and also flaunt private pools and roomy lounge areas along with outdoor terraces that overlook the forest. The residences have four or five bedrooms and expansive living and dining areas, as well as a huge shared pool, around which all of the villas revolve. Adopting an indigenous tropical style, all of the villas are tastefully decorated to feel luxurious without compromising on comfort.
Food Programme
Taking its inspiration from the ‘living foods’ tradition—which maintains the ‘life force’ of food by preserving the nutritional integrity of essential enzymes, vitamins and minerals—COMO’s dining menu is sure to get your mouth watering. Many of the ingredients are organic, locally-sourced, raw and are taken from the field to table with minimum delay. Catering to wellness-seekers and food-lovers alike, the menu is varied and includes meat, fish and vegetable dishes with flavours ranging from Indonesian to Italian to Indian.
For those on a wellness programme, there is a special nutritionally-balanced menu that is overseen by the resort’s in-house nutritionist which has been specifically created to maximise personal performance, increase concentration and energy, and calibrate blood-sugar levels. Ayurvedic diets are also catered to, and those with allergies are well taken care of.
Treatment Programme
Revolving around a ‘Retreat for Change’ theme, COMO’s three, five and seven-day wellbeing programmes encompass everything from soothing spa therapies, deluxe beauty treatments and oriental medicine remedies, all designed to rebalance mind, body and spirit.
Ideal for the stressed-out urbanite, packages include ‘cleanse’, ‘stress management’ and ‘rejuvenation’ options, complemented by state-of-the-art fitness facilities and a holistic outdoor activity schedule including QiGong, rice field biking, aqua therapy and jungle gym circuit training. The property’s in-house Ayurvedic doctor and resident dietician are always on hand, as is a 24-hour personal assistant to cater to your every whim.
Results
Expect to feel…impressed. The experience is as good as the brochure promises, and you’ll find plenty of regulars (as well as celebrities like John Legend and Chrissy Teigen) who just can’t get enough of this luxe home-away-from-home.
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