Davina has played out all her fantasies here. A cultured, attractive English lady in her fifties, she was evidently seduced by the raucous colours and textiles of India. This is not so much a resort as a sophisticated traveller’s den. Yogic-looking European ladies sit cross-legged in conversation on palm-shaded, low, cushioned platforms overlooking the lagoon, wearing flowing cotton dresses and mirror- embroidered bags bought from the lean-to boutique, while their personal flunkies make sure that their every need is tended to. The rooms are fantastical, like a clairvoyant’s tent, all billowing ceiling drapes, gold stencilled borders, rich, ochre walls, old inlaid wooden trinket boxes and four-poster beds all under thatch. The whole place feels handmade. Some rooms open onto the sandy waterfront garden where books are read in hammocks and food is served at cloth-covered tables. Others are tucked around the hack, with small sandy alleys running between them to create a village feel; some are very small. People come to practise yoga, experiment with Ayurveda, or just lounge in this feminine retreat.

Hip Hotels Beach

Imagine this. You arrive at the international airport of Trivandrum (or Thiruvananthapuram to give it its full Malayalam name). You make your way past the throngs who swarm the airport and emerge into the humid heat of Kerala, the southernmost state of India. You are picked up by an ambassador, the quirkily Indian karma Cab, and whisked off to the beaches and backwaters that have made this part of India famous since well before Vasco da Gama landed here in 1498. The further you get from the airport, the greener the landscape. Soon the car stops, the bags stay in the trunk, and you are guided down to the water, where a wooden dugout canoe awaits - a canoe shaded by an ornate silver and gold umbrella. The car disappears down the road, and you slide away down a broad river flanked on either side by row upon row of swaying palms, punctuated by the occasional picturesque village. After half an hour or so of seemingly effortless gliding, you hear the sound of the sea. And then the waterway opens into a broad lagoon. On one side is the ocean, on the other is a beach facing the lagoon. You have arrived it Lagoona Davina.

This experience is not so different from that of (the Roman, Arab, Chinese and Phoenician traders who came to Kerala in search of ivory and spices as many as three thousand years ago. In later times the Dutch and Portuguese used Kerala as a base for ships carrying spices from Malacca and products from China, en route back to Europe. The locals did not live on the coast (where they risked being washed away by the monsoon floods) so the foreign traders had to venture inland in order to barter for coir, copra, cashew nuts, etc. Winding its way like an intricate web of blood vessels into the interior, Kerala’s watery network of lagoons, lakes, canals and rivers was perfectly suited to trade. Centuries of contact exported the culture of southern India to places as far-flung as Indonesia, which is why in Bali, even today, both the architecture (gabled houses built in teak) and the Hindu spirituality are not too dissimilar from Kerala.

Sheltered and protected by mountains and dense forests, this part of India has managed to preserve many of its age-old institutions and customs. Surprisingly, for instance, a visitor from northern India has as much (or little) chance of being understood as a foreigner. Malayalam, the language of Kerala, bears little relation to the national languages of Hindi or Urdu. To communicate, a visiting Rajasthani must resort to English, the only common tongue. Fishing is still practiced from the beach by great teams of men with huge nets. A boat drags the nets beyond the breakwater, and then, in a backbreakingly laborious process, the nets are pulled in by twenty or more men hauling ropes on the beach. It’s inefficient, and not always very successful, but it’s an ancient ritual complete with chanting such as you are unlikely to witness in many other corners of the globe these days. One of the best places to observe it is the beach adjacent to the lagoon: borrow a dugout and paddle across, or simply swim over. Or you could just sit back under the big shady palms at Lagoona Davina and watch the comings and goings of life on the water as the locals ferry fish, fruit and other produce in precariously laden canoes.

Already when the first Portuguese and Dutch brought back accounts of this pristine coast, virtually every spit and speck of sand along its muddy waterways was inhabited by locals living even then in unimaginable densities. Today Kerala’s population is a fat 32 million, so it’s hard to believe there’s much property left uninhabited. Davina Taylor, the proprietor of this idyllically situated retreat, is quite candid about her extraordinary find. Having travelled through many of India’s classic tourist destinations to get here, she knew immediately just how amazing it was. But how did she get here in the first place? What possessed a Londoner to move to India and open a hotel that specializes in healing mind and body through meditation, yoga, reiki and ayurvedic massage? The catalyst came from events in her own life: first divorce and then fifteen years later the collapse of her real estate business. She was drawn to India because it is a very spiritual place. Her children were all grown up, and there was nothing to stop her from staying. And so she did.

That was more than eight years ago. These days the style with which she runs her tiny fiefdom makes it hard to believe it was ever anything but Davina’s lagoon.