Arya Vaidya Sala Kottakal

One of the most well known and highly regarded Ayurvedic institutions in all of Kerala and throughout India, Arya Vaidya Sala Ayurvedic Hospital & Research Centre was my first choice in seeking treatment. In addition to the many online reviews and articles praising their treatments, I was referred by Ayurvedic practitioners for the quality of their medicines. The main drawback was that the center is in the middle of a busy city unlike most of the peaceful, secluded resorts, but still the positives seemed to outweigh the shortcomings. In addition to their sterling reputation, the prices I found online were much lower than the thousands of dollars charged by resorts catering to Westerners. Or so I thought.

While the website states there are additional costs for treatment and medicine, I could find no information on these tariffs, which turned out to be almost as much as the room per day. Thus, a three-week stay would cost just over $2000, which puts this place on par with some of the resorts I researched.

Their site also offers a free “online consultation,” but it’s not what I would call a real online consultation. Instead, potential patients fill out a simple form that sends an automated reply directing them to come to the hospital in Kottakal for an in-person consultation. There’s no way to book this place without going in person for evaluation, so you don’t know if you will even be admitted. I thought that made sense as a doctor would need to assess a potential patient in the flesh in order to conduct a thorough examination, and I knew from their website that they treated hypertension in addition to other disorders. 

After filling out the evaluation form online, I called to speak to someone in their office because I wanted some reassurance that making the trip to otherwise undesirable Kottakal would not be in vain. She told me that I would need to be seen by a doctor, and while there were no vacancies at the time, there were frequently cancellations for bookings, so the best I could do was to show up and try to grab a spot. Undaunted, I made the long train overnight train journey from lovely Canacona station, which is about 1.5 km from Palolem Beach center, to less-than-lovely Tirur station in northern Kerala. From there I caught a rickshaw, which was incredibly cheap after Goan prices (only 250 rs for about 15 km)  to make the final part of the journey to my hotel in Kottakal, where the main Arya Vaida Sala hospital is located.

My hotel was just over half a kilometer away from the in-patient panchakarma center, but I had been told when I called the week before to report to the out-patient center, which is closer to 2 km away. There are several hospital buildings, including a cancer ward, the outpatient building, a medicine manufacturing facility, and the PK center. The entire area, which I began to think of as the Ayurveda Industrial Complex, is encircled by four main roads and includes an area of about 8 km. There are also research centers, a huge and beautiful outdoor herb garden, and even a trash disposal site for the hospitals. Surrounding the hospitals are hotels (none that I would call a good value), restaurants, pharmacies, and drug compounding shops that thrive on the business the hospital brings.

The morning after my arrival, I walked to the out-patient treatment center to get in line for my free consultation. I had a photograph of my passport on my phone, which they let slide, but ideally I would have had the actual book in my hand. (Note: always carry your passport when you will need to prove your identity.) After about twenty minutes sitting in a crowded waiting room, I was shown to the doctor’s office. She asked me a few preliminary questions, but nothing as in-depth as I’d been asked by Ayurvedic doctors before. She took my blood pressure, which was 140/100, the highest it had been since Bombay, but I had also been cutting my dose of blood pressure medicine as the side effects, which included dizziness, edema, and nausea,  were becoming too much to bear. I asked her if she could prescribe me a new blood pressure medication that didn’t have side effects, but she said she wanted me to go to the PK treatment center first so the doctor there could determine the course of treatment. She assured me that if the doctor at the PK center was not available, she would help me with getting new medication that afternoon, so, with her referral slip in hand, I made my way to the center close to my hotel.

Upon arriving at the center, I was given a sheet of paper with the room types listed along with prices. I had to get out my calculator when I first saw the prices to make sure that the hot walk hadn’t given me any temporary brain damage when I was doing the conversion from rupees to USD, but I my initial calculations were correct: the price including treatment and medication was much higher than I’d expected, even for the more basic rooms with A/C.

After studying the list of rooms, I told the young man behind the desk that I wanted the most basic room with A/C, and he seemed taken aback. He told me there were other options that were much more “deluxe” and included amenities like attached kitchenettes, cable television, and so on. He got on the phone and spoke to someone in what I assume was Malayalam and then hung up to tell me that my choice was not available and that the only room left was due to a cancellation, and that was the more expensive room that included what I considered a bunch of unnecessary luxuries.

He then said that I needed to choose the length of my course of treatment, which went anywhere from 7-28 days. “How do I know how long the treatment needs to be without seeing a doctor?” I asked. He seemed annoyed by the question, and assured me I would see a doctor, but then also told me that he would need full payment the next morning before I was admitted, and that was when I would see the doctor. “Ma’am, the boy will take you to see the room so you can tell us if it’s acceptable.” Okay, whatever, I wasn’t in the mood for his circular logic, and I planned to go back to the outpatient doctor to see if I could get my blood pressure medicine changed, which was at that point my primary concern, especially after the high reading from that morning.

I’d named the pushy sales guy behind the desk “Rick” because it rhymed with a word that I thought described him well. Rick then called over a man to take me to see the room, but before I had gathered my things, he was outside, and by the time I reached the courtyard outside, he had disappeared. I waited for a couple of minutes while the guards, who spoke no English, tried to fathom what I wanted when I asked them where I was supposed to go to see the room. Finally my guide stuck his head back around the courtyard gate and motioned impatiently for me to follow him.

It was a typical hot day in India, and my heart was beating a little too fast for my comfort as I walked up the inclined sidewalk behind my guide who was not slowing down or even checking to see if he’d lost me again. I was trying to focus on my breathing instead of my thoughts so that I would stay calm, but I was getting pissed by that time. We made it to the building where a couple other people were waiting, but the elevator was broken so we had to walk up three flights of stairs to the room. The young man who’d taken over as our tour guide in the lobby opened a door to show us the $35/night room, and right away I muttered, “you have got to be kidding,” as he kept asking us “room ok? Room good, yes?”

No, room not good, room kind of shitty, dirty, and dark, I thought to myself. There was a short, narrow bed with dingy sheets, and the floor didn’t seem clean. The place smelled of Ayurvedic medicines, and the attached kitchenette was nothing more than a sink with a counter. The bathroom was tiled but beyond that nothing nicer than your typical Indian bathroom with a Western toilet and a shower head coming out of the wall. There was a partial view of some greenery in the back yard, but it was nothing like the photographs I had seen of the lovely manicured gardens with pools of water reflecting the surrounding plants.

He seemed to need immediate validation that the room was acceptable, so I finally said, a little sharply, “No, the room really isn’t okay, and I need to see a doctor before I can make a decision.” He didn’t seem to understand what I was saying, so I repeated more loudly, “I want to see a DOCTOR NOW!” At last, he got the message, and he showed me out of the room and downstairs to the doctor’s office.

To the credit of the hospital, both the doctors I saw were very nice, but even this doctor didn’t seem interested in asking me any questions, looking at my tongue, feeling my pulse, or performing any of the standard intake procedures you think of when you see a vaidya, or Ayurvedic physician. She did take my blood pressure again, which was back to normal, even after I’d thrown my little hissy fit a few minutes before.

I explained to her that I needed to understand what length of time I would need the treatment before I could secure the room and pay the hefty price tag for that length of treatment time. She nodded, said she understood, and after hearing my basic complaints (hypertension, recurring insomnia, dry skin, rosacea), she told me that 21 days would be ideal but that 14 would suffice, depending on time and financial constraints on my side. I said that time was not the issue, but that the price for the room and the medicines daily was pretty high considering what I’d been shown a couple of minutes before. She conceded that the pricing was expensive, but she told me I could do the first part of the treatment as an out-patient and then complete the next two weeks in the facility. She also kindly recommended that I keep checking back every morning to see if one of the room types had had a cancellation.

I thanked her and made my way back to the administration office to see my friend, Rick.

Once back, I let him know that I’d seen the doctor and she had recommended 21 days of treatment, so that was the length of time I needed. I told him that as I didn’t need A/C (and having it during PK is not recommended by some practitioners as it cools the body too much), I would be happy to take one of the smaller, more affordable rooms without A/C. He immediately told me that there were no other rooms available, even the basic hospital rooms that had “NON-RESERVABLE” printed next to their description on the sheet of paper. I asked when the next availability was for a room, as I could come back in a month if necessary, to which he impatiently responded that “all rooms were booked one year in advance,” which I found hard to believe. I asked if I could check back daily for to see if there had been a cancellation for a cheaper A/C room, and, after thinking about it for a second, he assured me that was an option but only after I had been admitted and paid in full for the expensive room for 21 days. I would be willing to bet that, had I checked in, there would never have been a cancellation.

“Okay,” I finally said, “I will take the room, but I want to check in tomorrow morning because I already have my hotel room for the night.” Suddenly, Rick was my new best friend. Smiling, he told me that I could come at 8 a.m. for immediate check-in. “And how much is the food?” I asked, as their kitchen supplied all the detox meals during treatment. He had no idea. Really? Was it his first day or something? That seemed like a pretty basic piece of information.

Putting on a smile, I told him I’d see him first thing in the morning, and then I made my way back to my hotel, ready to move onto Plan B even thought I didn’t know what that was yet.

Once back, I messaged a doctor of Ayurveda in nearby Thalassery with whom I’d become acquainted through an Ayurveda Facebook group to see if her clinic offered PK treatment. She responded to tell me that only about 5% of patients even needed the somewhat drastic PK treatment, but that the industry was making so much money here in India (and abroad) that no one was telling the truth. When I told her about my experience that morning at the hospital, she said, “No, they will not treat you, they will cheat you.” For the first time that day, I felt like someone was being straight with me.

She said all that I probably needed was dietary modification, herbs, and a simple treatment to get my blood pressure under control, so I asked if her partner, whose specialty included hypertension treatment, could see me. While I’m agnostic on the idea of fate or divine intervention, I do believe that we see opportunities clearly at the right time, so after she confirmed an appointment for a couple of days later, I set out to buy my train ticket. 

I cannot call this post a review of the esteemed hospital, and for all I know, they may have had very good treatments and medicines. However, the feeling I got while I was there was that I was being hustled and misled. Ayurveda is big business here in India and abroad, and it’s difficult if not impossible to find providers who will be honest with you or who know what they are doing. My experience with the sales and intake department at AYS in Kottakal, unfortunately, did not leave me with a good feeling about what they could offer as far as healing. Ayurveda is supposed to be a spiritual practice, but what I encountered felt like I was dealing with an insurance company in the states: they didn’t care so much about my health as they did about getting my money.

But let the journey continue.

Note: during my wanderings I carry a blood pressure cuff so that I can monitor my status a couple of times a day. I also keep my blood pressure pills in my purse, and I always make sure I am near a hospital in case I need emergency treatment.