Going Full-Circle

A new year can bring with it, the desire to make some personal adjustments, ‘resolutions’ if you will. In a break from his norm, Simon Clays visits a swanky new hilton welness resort only to fall in love with his Alterego.

- Simon Clays

‘CIRCLES!’ PROCLAIMS A BALDING GUY IN A MUSTARD JUMPER SEATED NEXT TO ME.

“Circles,” he repeats, like it’s some mystical, Vedic insight into air transportation in 21st century India.

“Small airports, big circles. See?”

He points out of the window and, as if to reassert his witchcraft, the plane banks hard, carving deep scars into the pink of a cotton-bud morning. Actually, it’s more of a semi-circle, but I take his point. Beneath us, Pune yawns as we straighten up for the final run in to the airport.

On the ground, as I walk across bleached concrete towards the Fisher Price terminal building, half my flight’s passengers plod offalong the runway fringe to board the only other plane in sight, things are just as sleepy. I wonder how such a chocolate box airport can handle a city on such a surge. After all, this is where Mumbai heads for its break from concrete congestion, where whisky bravado hatches pie in the sky condominium plans for that weekend holiday home. It’s where Mumbai comes to flirt with Mother Nature.

Pune herself is brief. Like a Bollywood debutante, wide-eyed and yet to go through finishing school. Hints of her kohl eyes wink at you from the side roads; promises of craft beer, late nights, and tantalising morsels from all corners of the globe. Yet her neon seduction is naïve, sweet over sexy, a concubine eager to please, but with none of the guile of wily Madame Mumbai.

Soon her fragrance has all but left and I’m arrowing out of her grasp and starting the stunning, Instagram friendly climb into the heady oranges and greens of the Western Ghats, and to my final destination, The Hilton Shillim Estate Retreat and Spa.