Last week, we noted the strangeness of King Charles setting off for his South Pacific tour alone. He flew out of Heathrow with his staff and without his wife. As it turned out, Camilla had quietly flown out of the UK the week before and no one had any idea. She was on vacation for a week before she met up with Charles in Singapore and they flew to Australia together from there. Some people suggested that I was lying or the Sun was lying. But People Magazine confirmed that Camilla enjoyed a “private vacation” ahead of the Australia tour, and the Mail ended up confirming that Camilla was at a spa in India for a week:
Queen Camilla indulged in a relaxing mini-break abroad ahead of her and King Charles’s tour in Australia and Samoa, reports have claimed.
The Queen spent a week at a famous Ayurvedic spa in India with close family and friends, according to the Mail on Sunday.
Soukya, a £3,000-a-week holistic retreat in Bangalore, is said to feature other big names in its clientele, including Dame Emma Thompson and the late Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The health retreat offers treatments for a variety of medical conditions including cardiac hypertension and diabetes. This is Camilla’s ninth visit to the spa, while some of them featured King Charles. In 2019, the monarch stayed at Soukya for his birthday.
As I said last week, it’s not the fact that Camilla travels poorly and she rarely travels with her husband on long-distance journeys. What bugs me is the selective secrecy and the press’s refusal to call it out. When Harry and Meghan traveled privately to Colombia, at the invitation of Colombia’s vice president, the British press barged into Colombia and demanded access, and the same press threw a very loud tantrum about the Sussexes’ travels and private tour. And yet, the whole-ass queen consort is regularly jetting off for spa weeks in India or hunting trips in Spain and no one blinks an eye or bothers to cover it.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.