Maybe it’s the Eat, Pray, Love effect, or perhaps it’s because Bali has enraptured me for 15 years, but as soon as my long-awaited trip to the Indonesian island was booked, an idea overcame me: Bali will change my life. That’s quite something for any holiday to live up to, let alone a press trip. I’m a realist, and so I was all too aware of the danger of setting such grand expectations as friends told me I was building myself up for disappointment. Was the trip how I’d envisioned it for all those years? Of course not.
But almost six months since I first stepped off the plane into that sweltering heat, hoping for my problems to melt along with it, I can say that Bali—and more specifically, my first-ever wellness retreat (at COMO Shambhala Estate)—truly was transformational.
