Welcome to Enchanting Journeys

Exploring Wellness & Cultures

We believe travel is about more than a vacation. It is about getting to know a country in all its glory, through interacting with local people & seeing places through their eyes. The world we live in consists of an extremely diverse human population which, throughout the ages, has developed distinct cultural & political norms specific to their religion and beliefs.

Today, this diversity has left us with a plethora of events, some traditional with a deep seeded history & some not-so-traditional developed purely for a specific need, that shed light into & allow us to experience cultures different from our own.

Health & wellness is becoming a growing reason for people to travel across the globe. Wellness tourism is becoming increasingly popular thanks to the global health, wellbeing and fitness boom, plus consumers having greater disposable income - but also because of a revived interest in preventative health care.

Wellness tourism is travel for the purpose of promoting health & well-being through physical, psychological, or spiritual activities.  These trips put your health & well-being at the very center of your travel experience and are organized around the principle of healthy food, exercise, spa treatments & opportunities to experience or expand your spirituality and creativity.  You learn how to better care for yourself, physically, psychologically & spiritually.

While wellness tourism is often correlated with medical tourism because health interests motivate the traveler, wellness tourists are proactive in seeking to improve or maintain health & quality of life, often focusing on prevention, while medical tourists generally travel reactively to receive treatment for a diagnosed disease or condition.

Wellness travelers pursue diverse services, including physical fitness & sports; beauty treatments; healthy diet & weight management; relaxation & stress relief; meditation; yoga, spa treatments & health-related education. Wellness travelers may seek procedures or treatments using conventional, alternative, complementary, herbal, or homeopathic medicine.

The total atmosphere is geared toward supporting your wellness so that you won't be tempted to overeat or overdrink after a day of fun activities. There is nothing inherently wrong with that, but well, on a wellness trip, you are choosing to go somewhere with food & activities that support your best health. That is the very foundation on which a wellness trip is built.

People are increasingly embracing travel with a higher benefit to either themselves (& their bodies) or others, whether that is wellness tourism or volun-tourism (travel with a philanthropic component), environmentally aware (eco-travel), or educationally or culturally immersive travel.

Wellness resorts & retreats offer short-term, residential programs to address specific health concerns, reduce stress, or support lifestyle improvement. Making up a subset of the retreat & resort offerings, individual teachers, trainers or wellness-related practitioners sometimes offer  private ‘themed’ & designed retreats for the specific participants in resorts, small hotels, sections of larger hotels or for example, Ashrams for Yoga practitioners.

High profile weekends in destination locations that draw industry leaders together to deliver cutting edge, eclectic, instructive, adventurous & otherwise nourishing, healthy weekends or holidays. Spas on cruise ships can help make the voyage more relaxing & pleasurable and numerous options exist to provide spa & wellness treatments on board.

Europeans have long believed in health benefits derived from mineral baths, saunas, thalassotherapy, & other natural and water-based treatments. Thermal resorts & hotels in Turkey & Hungary cater to wellness tourists.

Wellness traditions in Asia, date back thousands of years & some of those wellness practices (e.g., Ayurveda, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), yoga, Thai massage incorporate preventive, curative & therapeutic aspects that lie in the cross-over area between wellness & medical tourism. The Middle East has a long tradition of bathing associated with Turkish baths & some older facilities are being modernized to serve spa-bound tourists. In Africa, wellness tourism is concentrated in a fewer regions. Tunisia & Morocco have a well-developed resort spa sector primarily serving leisure vacationers from Europe.

Most people who enjoy a spa vacation are repeat customers because it satisfies them in a way that no other holiday does. Now, more people are looking overseas to have wellness experiences that expand their cultural horizons.

Yoga originated about 2,500 years ago in India. So it is fitting that an Indian Wellness resort, Ananda in the Himalayas, emphasizes the discipline. Experienced teachers design a specific yoga & meditation program for guests based on their goals. They offer different yoga styles, including techniques to unleash psychic energy & focus on breathing. Guests receive authentic Ayurveda treatment, take yoga classes in the serene surroundings & light candles by the banks of the Ganges at dusk. The setting is spectacular -- a maharaja's former palace on 100 forested acres.

In Thailand, in beach-front destination spas, they combine ancient therapies of the East with Western diagnosis techniques to enliven mind, body & spirit. Personalized programs & treatments are available in detox, weight management, stress reduction & Thai massage is a specialty.

Every trip include stress reduction, cultural involvement, physical activity, spiritual connection & food education. The specific form it takes depends on the destination  -- Spain, Bali, Costa Rica, India, Thailand, Hungary are among a multitude of possibilities - with stays at boutique properties you might not otherwise hear about.

You could be staying at an Ashram for a meditation retreat, or booking a yoga trip in the mountains. You might be travelling to a Wellness Centre for a health check-up or headed on a wellness cruise. You may also be interested in niche venues, such as eco-spas or conscious hotels which offer healthy food & fitness classes in a natural setting.

Simply put, wellness tourism is hot. With seemingly every hotel now offering spa treatments, properties can stand out with signature experiences. Often, these unique treatments spring from the destination’s culture or surroundings.

Italians offer phytotherapy: treating conditions with medicinal plants. The experts design individual treatments for specific needs & utilise more than 40 plants to create custom herbal teas in order to achieve a variety of goals, including relaxation, digestion & purifying the body.  In Switzerland, Bark from plentiful of local sequoia trees plays a central role in a signature treatment. During a massage, the therapist applies herbal poultices containing bark essence & the experience provides stability & grounding. The spa experience at Germany takes inspiration not from Europe but the Middle East. Their Turkish hamams feature dome rooms with hot stones, tubs, steam baths & a tea lounge. The ritual begins with a full-body scrub with traditional soap lather. A massage with soap foam or oil follows. Ditto for the Ayurveda treatments in India or the Mineral baths in Hungary. And the treatments are reputed to cure serious ailments. Endless possibilities.

Please note currently all our Journeys are listed under the “Culture” theme before being transitioned gradually under the respective Headings. 

Check-out our suggestions & if you have a specific destination or theme in mind, even if it is not yet featured on our site, we can always design & customise a Journey, especially for you. Almost all of our Journeys are available on demand, allowing you to specify a departure date & group size. Private departures are ideal for family, friends & social groups.

We are in the process of updating our experiential offerings of Wellness Journeys. Please contact us in the interim if you want to explore more options & we will be happy to customise & offer suggestions based on your personal preferences……

Come……be inspired & discover the World