Treatment room at the retreat | Photo Credit: Alex Teuscher After finishing a small portion of mixed fruit puree in under three minutes, I wait for breakfast. As it turns out, that was breakfast. A cup of piping hot herbal tea marks the end of the first meal of the day.

Tightly wrapping my bath robe around me, and ignoring my growling stomach I head to the wellness bay of Chenot Palace Gabala, Azerbaijan. Launched in 2016, this luxury wellness retreat has made it its mission to detox guests while providing them with relaxation. “We recharge your batteries and send you back into the real world, “ says George Gaitonos, chief operating and scientific officer, Chenot group.

Chenot Palace follows Henri Chenot’s (a pioneer in the preventive healthcare space, and founder of the Chenot group) philosophy and methods that were designed nearly five decades ago. He combined western and traditional Chinese medicine. His method aims to reset the physiology of the body through treatment and diet.

Neurac treatment | Photo Credit: Alex Teuscher ”Mr Chenot believed in prevention rather than cure. He wanted people to live longer and lead healthier lives. He started talking about this in the 1970s.

Here, at Chenot, we are not focussing on disease but on prevention. We treat health, not disease,” says Gaitonos, who joined the group in 2013 as research and innovation manager and then inherited the legacy of the late Chenot, who passed away in 2020. After the first Chenot Palace in Gabala.