The drive to Goa usually has a predictable rhythm. A rite of escape that has been repeated enough times that the mind already knows what it is supposed to anticipate: frenetic WhatsApp notifications, badly curated playlists, a deadline sliding somewhere between resentment and resignation. But, perhaps, there's a point in everyone’s lives when Goa stops being chaos capital and starts becoming the centre for calibration. It becomes the place you go to put the world back into sequence, not the place you go to break it. I realised that shift this month, somewhere between Mumbai and the sea, behind the wheel of a Lexus RX350h at 7am — not chasing speed, not chasing the night, not chasing the Goa I used to think was the only Goa that mattered. This trip wasn’t fuelled by sleep scarcity, club guestlists or last-minute table politics. This was a Goa reserved for someone finally old enough and secure enough to not need their leisure to scream.
Powered by a 2.5-litre petrol motor along with a twin-motor hybrid system, the RX 350h set that tone the moment we pulled out of the city. Its hybrid hum made silence feel expensive. 190PS of power and 242 Nm of torque delivered through the all-wheel-drive layout and a whisper-quiet cabin made speed irrelevant and made pace feel like a choice.
The PR manager in the co-driver seat kept a respectful distance — enough conversation to keep social presence intact — but with the understanding that silence is a perfectly valid form of company. The road opened upafter Lonavala. Satara arrived like a textural shift. The hum of the hybrid system, the comfort of the cabin and a companion willing to let silence sit between conversation set the right emotional preface for what was about to come.
South Goa doesn’t rush to reveal character. Its quiet comes with an earned stillness, symbolic of the Susegad lifestyle. And Amaraanth sits in that energy with the confidence of a place that doesn’t need to self-justify. It looks like it quietly happened — a series of considered decisions rather than architectural bravado. Clean, tropical Romanesque structure. Concrete used like a neutral. Stone behaving like restraint. There isn’t a single dramatic gesture. The architecture reflects modern tropical minimalism in the most thoughtful sense. The palette: sand shadows, aged wood, soft neutral interior rhythm.
My villa felt like it was designed by someone who understood that the soul calms faster when there’s nothing visually trying to impress you. The tiles underfoot felt warm. Everything tactile felt truthful. It reminded me that real luxury is what you don’t have to mentally filter. Nothing here needed translation. It simply made senseand I slept deeply, without negotiation.
The slow strategy of wellness
Morning offered a clearer view of the hotel’s cultural proposition. An unhurried breakfast that looked as if it was arranged to reflect the value of non-intrusive ritual, was followed by HVN hydro therapy at 10 am.
One of the most interesting articulations of contemporary wellness fused with a slow science philosophy I’ve experienced, it doesn’t try to impress you with the theatrics of scented monologues or themed mythology. Instead, it relies on a precise science-led practice designed to regulate you back into equilibrium. The 38°C warm water mattress shifts bodyweight perception. It gives a sense of weightlessness that recontextualises touch. The masseuse is present, yet the massage becomes pressure from nowhere. Nothing was being “done” to me. Something was being undone inside me. A drift-like sensation devoid of performative spiritual narratives. No Instagrammable moments. Just a methodical slowing down of biological tension. No “journey to self” marketing clutter. No forced spirituality. Just a deeply intelligent intervention that recalibrated pace from the inside out.
Later the in-room Bathing Ritual continued this philosophy. Oil, water, petals, light. Nothing dramatic. Nothing curated for Instagram, almost like anti-performance luxury.
Architectured for slowness
Ritu Dalmia’s menu doesn’t try to shock for behaviour. It plays with proportion. The Goan thali was homespun precision — prawn balchao with the optimum amount of acidity that didn’t grab the throat, sol kadi that rested instead of attacking, rice that felt like it was cooked from an intuition that's lost somewhere between convenience and speed. The table layout too felt like that rare, old-world editorial confidence where you trust the intelligent guest to see the detail on their own terms.
Even cocktails at The Lab bar maintained the philosophy of control. A pandan leaf drink that leaned aromatically subtle. A Goan curry note cocktail that registered a humble aftertaste rather than being overpowering. The Lab itself is a space where bartenders work like material researchers, approaching mixology with editorial restraint rather than shock-value cleverness, unlike gimmicky “molecular” performance rooms. According to the design vision by Stapati (who worked on the property), the bars and social spaces here were intentionally treated not as spectacle zones but as quiet extensions of architecture where the tropical climate, ventilation, and material palette could dictate the sensorial behaviour of the room, not décor excess.
The guided walk-through with Lakshmi Poovaiah — the Director of Operations — revealed how the 12-suite property has been calibrated like an ecosystem. Built by Stapati with a principle of reducing intervention rather than imposing form, Amaraanth allows red laterite, local timber, monsoon-light and vegetation to soften the brutality modern hotels often fall into. Suites range between 512 sq ft to 830 sq ft — some even with private yards and outdoor tubs — each furnished with curated art, Marshall speakers, beach essentials and butler service as baseline standard.
The rest of the day existed in fragments — a reading corner by the pool, an unhurried plate of fruit, a moment of staring at trees without agenda, the absence of which felt like the ultimate luxury in the moment.
Back to Reality
On departure day, for a moment, reality insisted on re-entry. The RX350h absorbed us back into the highway. Trucks were still trucks. The country still performed its unfiltered chaos. But the internal pace was different. In fact, if there was ever a way to measure luxury, it would be by calculating how long the slowness and the calm endures for once you return to the ordinary. Even when we paused at a simple thali joint around Satara — loud ceiling fans, stainless steel plates, the economy of Indian service at its most unembellished — the contrast wasn’t jarring.
The RX 350h dropped me back into Mumbai that night with the same unbothered poise it carried me out with. And at that precise moment where I realised what this Goa trip actually meant. I’ve outgrown the Goa that requires night approval, noise, and audience. I no longer need Goa to prove anything to me. The versions of myself that demanded noise and spectacle can retire gracefully. This wasn’t about being transformed or reborn. That language belongs to self-help influencers. What this trip did was more valuable — it rebalanced tempo.
And somewhere between Mumbai and Goa, in that hybrid hum, the recalibration began long before I reached the hotel. It began the moment I gave myself permission to slow down and remembered I finally had the bandwidth to unwind.
