FROM the Bombayman�s point of view, one of the most convenient getaways in international luxury holidays is The Retreat at Madh Island. This is not my view alone, it is also the opinion of foreign travel writers who jet around the world to write about such places. At the ITB Berlin 2000, which is to tourism what the Oscars is to cinema, the Pacific Area Travel Writers� Association (PATWA) gave The Retreat its Best Resort Hotel award for 1999. According to The Retreat�s affable general manager, Jack Alves, this is a momentous achievement. I agree. Congratulations.

I am not a stranger to The Retreat. I go there often over the weekends (two nights and three days), and come away feeling a new man. There is something about The Retreat that puts the spring back into me. I think it is a combination of the gourmet food, clean-green air, lush, verdant surroundings, Bombay�s largest swimming pool, Ayurvedic and Swedish massage, lively entertainment, and, above all, the overwhelming sense of peace that is disturbed only by ONGC helicopters flying low to oil rigs out at sea.

I understand some of the busiest people in Bombay have perfected the art of unwinding at The Retreat. These are jaded and burnt-out business and corporate types who are perpetually short of time. They find The Retreat a convenient place to rejuvenate, because from the city you can get there in an hour-and-half. From the suburbs, and the airports, it is 45 minutes. The best way to reach The Retreat is to drive there. But there are also buses, and autorickshaws, from Malad (W) Railway Station. The bus routes are No. 270 and 271.

And there is the third way. From the Versova fishing village. A ferry service takes passengers across a narrow ribbon of Arabian Sea to the Madh Island jetty for a ridiculous fee. The boat ride is 10 minutes. From here, The Retreat will have you picked up and delivered to its spanking glass, granite and chrome lobby in five minutes flat. In another two minutes, you will be sipping chilled narial pani as they check you in.

I take the Bandra-Andheri-Borivli Link Road upto Malad west, where I turn onto Madh-Marve Road at the popular junction called Uncle�s Kitchen. The Retreat is almost at the end of Madh-Marve Road, right on Erangal Beach, say 12-km away. After suburban Bombay�s concrete cooperative societies and row houses, I find Madh-Marve Road is God�s own country. I feel as if I�m driving down the Panjim-Calangute road in Goa.

For I zip past sleepy fishing villages, swaying palms in green paddy fields, and white-washed Portuguese churches where padres are just concluding masses. Then past Marve and Aksa beaches, past INS Hamla, where the Indian Navy�s divers are forever saving people from drowning, past rambling beach houses belonging to Philips, Bharat Petroleum, J. M. Bakshi, Johnson & Johnson, Ceat, Hindustan Petroleum and Mahindra & Mahindra. And, after scattering little old East Indian ladies on their way to the market and fisherfolk coming from the beaches with the day�s catch, I roll into The Retreat in time for breakfast.

Breakfast, lunch and dinner are always the highpoints of my stay at The Retreat. I have my meals at the 24-hour coffee shop, Making Waves, or at the Chinese restaurant and bar, Journey�s End. When I am outdoors, meaning when I am swimming and in an indolent mood, I paddle into the Water�s Edge, which is an open-air pool restaurant, and get them to serve me barbecued food. But most of the time, I take pot luck at the groaning buffet table in the coffee shop. Sometimes, I drag my friend Kaushik Roy, the executive chef of The Retreat, out of his kitchen to make me something special in Chinese seafood.

The Retreat has 137 rooms and seven suites. The rooms either look onto the large, lagoon-shaped swimming pool with its waterfall, sunken bar and open-air jacuzzi. Or they look out at a forest of palm tops for miles on end, giving you the impression this time that you are in Kerala. The rooms are well-appointed, I cannot describe them better, and they are very comfortable. The suites are regular and deluxe. And there are three regally-furnished Presidential Suites, two of them duplex. The room service is 24 hours, but I use it only for my bed tea in the morning. Rest of the time, I�m downstairs.

Downstairs is where the action is, of course, and it spills over from the pool (where guests are forever playing water polo or pool volley ball) and into the Retreat Club. This is a state-of-the-art gymnasium equipped with treadmills, steppers and exercycles from USA.

To recharge the body and mind, there is Ayurvedic and Swedish massages and steam baths. On Sunday mornings, they have yoga and aerobic instructors explaining exercise and fitness routines. There is also an air-hockey table, a billiards room and a toddler�s pen with sliding board, playhouse, trampoline and a rather formidable-looking nanny. Weekend nights, they turn out the lights and switch on the psychedelics to convert the Retreat Club into a disco. And Sundays, they have a pop band at the Water�s Edge and ghazal singers at Make Waves.

The great outdoors has cobbled pathways taking you on walks into a Garden of Eden with landscaped terraces, where 400 parrots screech and swoop like kamikaze pilots. One pathway leads to Erangal Beach where swimming is not advised. But you may walk on the beach, or hold small cocktail and barbecue parties close by when the weather is fine. Then there is cycling to be done, golf to be played on a tiny green, table tennis, carrom and chess. The children�s play area has tic-tac-toe slabs, a snakes-and-ladder game in the grass, swings, slides, see-saws and a treehouse right out of the fairy tales.

Jack Alves tells me that the hardest decision for people coming to The Retreat on monsoon packages to make is to put their feet up and do nothing. They want to explore Madh Island with its old East Indian village and fairly interesting marketplace.

They want to go to the out-of-bounds INS Hamla and a hush-hush Air Force station in an old fort with highly-secretive radar and tracking devices meant for the western coast. They want to visit the jetty where fishing trawlers with colourful flags bob in the water. And the churches of

Our Lady of the Sea, 400 years old and full of history, and Bonaventure, Saint of Mystics, that was constructed in 1575. Because Madh Island is very much like Goa, down to the cashew fruit trees that grow here freely. No wonder Jack Alves likes to believe that he lives in Bombay and works in Goa!

The Retreat,
Erangal Beach,
Madh-Marve Road,
Malad west, Bombay 400 061.
Tel.: 882 5335. Fax: 882 5171.
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.hotelretreat.com