Nomadic Spirit is a weekly newsletter for travelers who care as much about the why as the where.
In this issue
In The Dispatch, we look at the boom in wellness travel, from brain-health retreats to $22,000 longevity programs, and at what the research says is worth the trip. A Chosen Place takes us to Baden-Baden, where people have been soaking in the springs since Roman times and Mark Twain found the town inane but the baths good. In The Journey, Marilyn Goulding rides the $20 chicken boat up the Mekong with goats, two lambs and a world-weary dog for company. And Further Afield has six questions to ask before you book a retreat, plus Rick Steves on surviving the Friedrichsbad’s cold plunge.
The Dispatch
Where Travel and Life Intersect
I Owe My Friends a Partial Apology
A friend said working with a horse changed her life. What the research says about wellness travel.
Photo: vitapix/iStock
I’d heard about so-called wellness retreats for years. Usually, it was from women who had gone on a “girls’ trip” and came home raving about the experience.
And then came the horse story. One of them had spent a long weekend at Miraval in Arizona, where a session with a horse changed how she thought about her life. She was someone I liked and respected, so I nodded and asked some follow-up questions. On the inside, I rolled my eyes.
The horse is real. Miraval has offered equine sessions since 1995. Wyatt Webb led them for 25 years, and his best-known workshop was called “It’s Not About the Horse.” I liked the title.
How Big It Has Grown
I’m rethinking my eye roll. Stories about these places are popping up everywhere, and every few days I come across another article about a new retreat or a new kind of program. The Global Wellness Institute puts wellness tourism at about $894 billion in 2024 and expects it to pass $1.38 trillion by 2029. Chiva-Som opened on the beach in Hua Hin, Thailand, in 1995. In Costa Rica, retreats run psychedelic ceremonies in a legal gray zone, and a friend who worked in the hotel business seriously considered opening one.
There’s also a newer, more clinical branch. Miraval and places like it are about rest and how you feel when you get home. Longevity retreats run medical tests and aim to add healthy years. Canyon Ranch launched brain-health courses in 2014, and Rancho La Puerta in Mexico holds a Brain Health Week. Canyon Ranch’s newer four-day longevity retreat tests more than 200 biomarkers and costs $22,000 per person. Its November session sold out.
More people are building wellness into ordinary trips. Minor Hotels found that 44 percent of travelers planned to add more wellness to their trips, and I see people tucking a few nights at a retreat onto the end of a longer one. If this hasn’t come up among your own friends yet, I expect it will.
What Holds Up
Research on longevity and brain health is everywhere, and much of it points to everyday habits. A 2024 Lancet Commission estimated that addressing 14 risk factors people can change, among them inactivity, hearing loss, and social isolation, could prevent or delay nearly half of dementia cases. A two-year U.S. study published last year found that older adults who exercised, ate well, and met regularly in small groups improved their thinking more than those who worked on it with less support.
A long weekend in Arizona can’t do that for you, but it can get you started.
Before You Book
Some of what’s out there falls short, and watchdogs and governments are starting to say so. Last year, a U.S. advertising watchdog, BBB National Programs, found that a longevity company called Next Health couldn’t support its claims of longer, healthier lives. When the company stood by its remaining claims, the watchdog referred the case to the Federal Trade Commission. The U.S. Embassy in Peru told Americans in 2025 to avoid ayahuasca retreats, citing deaths and crimes linked to them. In May, answering questions in Parliament about longevity clinics, Singapore’s health ministry advised consumers to ask their own doctor which tests make sense and to keep up sleep, exercise, and time with other people.
If you do book one of these trips, ask what the program tests that you can act on at home and what happens after you leave. Read the complaints alongside the reviews, and look up the clinicians.
Some of the oldest wellness travel is much less expensive. A public bath in Budapest or a night in a Japanese onsen town gives you hot water and time away for a fraction of the price.
I owe my friends a partial apology. Social isolation is on the Lancet list, and they went as a group. In the U.S. study, the people who did best had a group that kept showing up for two years.
I still have questions about the horse.
A Chosen Place
Destinations worth traveling to and understanding once you arrive.
Baden-Baden, Germany
The Spa Town So Good They Named It Twice
Not every wellness destination is new. Some have been in the business for a long, like really long, time. Baden-Baden, which loosely translates as baths-baths, is on the edge of Germany’s Black Forest and has been sending people into hot water since Roman times.
It’s also easy to include in a trip you may already be planning. The town sits a few miles from the Rhine, where many river cruises stop, and it’s about an hour by train from Strasbourg and about 90 minutes from Frankfurt Airport.
Romans built baths over the springs, and you can still visit the ruins beneath the old town. In the 1800s, the elite spent their summers in Baden-Baden, and it became known as Europe’s summer capital. In 2021, UNESCO named it one of Europe’s eleven Great Spa Towns. Mark Twain visited in 1878 and reported that he didn’t care much for the place. “It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery,” he wrote, “but the baths are good.”
Twain meant the Friedrichsbad, which opened the year before he arrived and still runs today. A full session takes about three hours. There are 17 stations, and you move from warm air to hot air to steam. If you want, you can add a brush scrub, then work through a series of pools that get cooler as you go, ending in a cold plunge. After that, you lie down under warm blankets in a quiet room.
One thing to be prepared for: Most days the Friedrichsbad is nude, and men and women bathe together. If that’s not for you, even knowing you’ll never see these people again, there are swimsuit days on Wednesdays and Saturdays, a rule added in 2024. Entry is €38 and includes slippers, towels, lotions, and a cup of tea in the reading room at the end.
Next door is the Caracalla Spa, named for the Roman emperor who is reported to have bathed in these waters. It is newer and brighter, with indoor and outdoor thermal pools and a waterfall. A three-hour visit costs €25. Both bathhouses draw on the same dozen springs, which come out of the ground at more than 55°C, or 131°F.
Between soaks, the town is made for slow walking. “The place is frozen in time,” Daniel Zamani, artistic director of the Museum Frieder Burda, told W magazine last year. The Lichtentaler Allee follows the little Oos river past old villas and gardens, and the casino in the Kurhaus, where Dostoevsky lost much of his money in 1867, is still in business. The tourism office came up with a witty slogan for the town, “The good-good life,” a nod to the name.
Two nights gives you a morning at each bathhouse and an evening in between. With more time, the Black Forest High Road starts at the edge of town and follows the ridge south. From late November, there’s a Christmas market outside the Kurhaus.
Trains stop at Baden-Baden station, about 7 kilometers from the center, and buses run from there into town. Twain, for his part, wrote, “I fully believe I left my rheumatism in Baden-Baden.”
We want to hear from you
Two ways to be in Nomadic Spirit
Marilyn’s piece this week (below) is a reader submission. The Journey is open to readers who want to write about a trip that mattered, in 400 to 600 words and in your own voice. We edit lightly and leave your voice intact.
Fork First: One dish, one place, one reason to go. 200 to 300 words. The test: Would you go back for this dish? Would you tell everyone heading to that city to find it? If yes, write it up.
If you are interested in sharing your story with our 35,000+ readers, please write us at [email protected], and we’ll send along submission guidelines.
We read everything that comes in.
The Journey — Voices of the Nomadic Spirit
Stories from travelers changed by where they went.
A slow boat at a village landing on the Mekong in northern Laos. Photo: Marilyn Goulding
We Took the $20 Chicken Boat Up the Mekong.
The Goats Rode in Back.
By Marilyn Goulding
Taking the ‘slow boat’ refers to the Mekong, that meandering giant river unhurriedly winding its way past cities in Southeast Asia. We connected with the Mekong in Luang Prabang, Laos’s old royal capital. We went upriver against the current, the truest ‘slow boat’ experience with far fewer people.
There is a choice of ‘tourist’ boats with polished mahogany benches, bright tapestries, prepared food, and lovely hostesses ($$$), or the Shompoo Cruise, the local attempt at emulating the pricey tourist option ($$). We chose the Lao Chicken Boat, first choice of the locals, owned and lived in by a resident Captain and his family and furnished with comfortable old bus benches ($20 Canadian). We arrived early at the pier to claim a good seat near the front, away from the loud engines. We found a seat with intact stuffing and bolstered our comfort with life jackets.
Then there came an assortment of ‘passengers’, all appeared local but not all human! There were chickens of course, several birds in cages, some goats, two lambs, and one rather world-weary but friendly old dog. They were accorded passage outside in back beside the engine.
We made our way upstream to the Thai border (Huay Xai/Chiang Khong), a two-day journey with one overnight. We glided past limestone karsts and remote hillside villages, where the boat was literally beached to allow the locals to jump into the water and disappear amongst the trees. Children waved from the shore. We stopped at the sacred Pak Ou Caves, filled with thousands of Buddha statues, and along the way saw farmers working their fields with their beloved elephants.
The boat is open-air with a protective roof, and the ride is lovely on a sunny day with the murky water flowing alongside (although the bathroom requires a little bravery; there are communal flip-flops at the door). You can dangle your hand over the side in relative safety, as crocodiles are now very rare in the main river, but you never know!
As the sun set, we arrived at Pakbeng, a remote jungle village with a handful of buildings on one well-packed dirt road, several guesthouses and a lodge. We stayed with a young Laotian couple with rooms above their coffee shop. It was cinder block with cold water only, but spotlessly clean and the bed was comfy. Oddly enough, the best restaurant in town was Indian, and the food was divine. We fell asleep to the sounds of the jungle and were up before dawn.
For the early morning departure, we trundled down the steep clay road past the delectable French pastry carts (Laos was a French colony) to the river. At the water’s edge, farmers were bathing their giant pachyderms in the pre-dawn light. It was magical to watch the elephants stretch and spray themselves, basking in their brisk morning scrubdown with long-poled bristle brushes. We teetered our way across the other boats’ decks to find our own, taking off our shoes as we stepped aboard, because this was the Captain’s family home. One more day along the river, and we were at the Thai border.
Marilyn Goulding, of Canmore, Alberta, is a retired clinical researcher who loves to find the hidden gems of travel that make for good storytelling, so she’s always invited to dinner parties.
Further Afield
Reading worth your time.
These Trips Can Help You Live Longer and Better
AARP
In this January piece, Jamie Davis Smith, who is in her 50s, looks at trips built around longevity, from blue zones like Okinawa and Sardinia to retreats like Canyon Ranch. The experts she talks to keep making the same point: the benefit comes from the habits a trip helps you build. One tells readers to skip “quick fixes or biohacking extremes.”
Before You Book a Retreat, Six Questions Worth Asking
Health Club Management
In July, the Wellness Tourism Association published six principles for responsible retreats, covering trained facilitators, insurance and emergency plans, honest pricing and a realistic daily pace. The framework is voluntary, so it works best as a checklist. Ask a retreat whether it follows these before you pay.
Naked and Relaxed in Baden-Baden
Rick Steves’ Europe
Rick Steves walks through Friedrichsbad’s 17 stations, including a cold plunge. He also explains why most first-timers stop worrying about the nudity after a short while.
The Spa Town That Time Forgot, in the Best Way
W Magazine
Zachary Schwartz covers Baden-Baden’s baths and its art scene in this April 2025 guide. It’s also where we found the museum director who calls the town “frozen in time.”
Laos Finds Its Rhythm: Rail, Rivers and a New Era of Slow Travel
Seasia
Laos drew nearly 2.6 million international visitors in the first half of this year, and the railway has put Luang Prabang a couple of hours from Vientiane. This September piece makes the case for seeing the country slowly, through its river towns and village homestays, and spending where it helps local families.
“Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.”
Ovid, Roman poet (43 BC–AD 17), Ars Amatoria
