Learned about the Shanti spa at San Miguel, Mexico by way of Mexicowoods. India is recreated many different ways all around America - temples, restaurants, grocery stories,ethnic clothes and jewelry stores and more. They always look out of place no matter what their location - walking into desi restaurant in a strip mall where nothing else has the remotest connection to India is always unsettling. So is finding oneself inside what is made to resemble a temple after walking through the doors of an office building.
It takes a while to get oriented though sometimes the setting is little too incongruous for this to happen. Food (possibly the closest connection to home) is re-purposed in strange ways to cater to local tastes. By when you get directions to the place on your GPS unit or Mapquest, there is little left to salvage the "authentic" desi vibe about the whole deal.The directions to Shanti, the Indian spa in Mexico, makes a desi feel at home right away. Everything about it is approximate and imprecise - you have to follow a set of landmarks to get there. That seems much closer home than I anything I have seen north of the border.
