A boutique hotel with all the character and charm you’d expect, but where all profits go to charity? Here’s a place that really exemplifies my Pampering for Prosperity mission! The Green Hotel in Mysore, southern India, is a former maharaja’s palace, elegantly re-designed into a colonial-era crash pad. Enjoy slow cups of tea in wicker [...]

Following my horrifying ordeal at the hands of the Ayurvedic sado-masseuse, I was really in need of some serious pampering – and this time it wasn’t for my mission, it was just for me. The long-suffering dashing gent by my side suggested that the best therapy at a time like this would be to whisk [...]

Continuing my mission to improve the local economies of developing countries through wanton self-indulgence, I traveled down from Goa to Kerala, the south-western Indian state famed as the home of Ayurvedic medicine. Ayurveda is an ancient Indian system of traditional remedies and treatments which aim to create harmony within the natural rhythms of the body [...]

My backpacking days are over. As I glide slinkily through my mid-20s, I wonder with incredulity at the energy of my youth, my prior propensity for scruffy misadventure, my predilection for ‘roughing it’. These days, I appreciate the joys of an air-con queen size over a bug-ridden bunk; I would rather quaff one finely mixed [...]