Wellness on the Rails

Luxury train travel is on track to add wellness and other healthy perks to the already peak experience.

There’s a Chanel perfume ad from 2009 where French actress Audrey Tautou wanders the corridors of the Venice Simplon-Orient Express, carrying a bottle of the classic perfume and wearing silk pajamas while she flirts with a handsome fellow passenger who then follows her through the train’s end station—Istanbul’s ornate turn-of-the-century terminal.

Romance and luxury on vintage trains have been an aspiration for travelers ever since the Orient Express was relaunched in 1982. Along with its Agatha Christie associations of dastardly doings amidst champagne-sipping glitterati, Chanel’s ad perfectly encapsulates the feel: mystery, romance, fluttery silk PJs, and expensive perfume.

Belmond (rebranded from the Orient-Express-Hotel moniker in 2014) holds the royal flush of vintage trains in its portfolio: the classic Venice Simplon-Orient-Express, the Eastern & Oriental Express (E&O), the Belmond Andean Explorer, the Belmond Royal Scotsman, and the soon-to-be-launched Belmond Britannic Explorer (debuting in 2025).

What could add to the sense of entitlement and luxury on the world’s vintage and vintage-inspired trains?

“Wellbeing has become an increasing priority for our guests and is a key part of the experience on the Eastern & Oriental Express,” says Win Min, general manager of Belmond’s Eastern & Orient Express. “The Dior Spa Eastern & Oriental Express invites our guests to unwind and rejuvenate after days spent exploring the lush mountains and verdant jungles of Southeast Asia. Drawing inspiration from the exquisite art of Asian beauty rituals, the luxurious treatments at the spa blend traditional Asian techniques with the opulence and knowledge of the Dior experts to create a personalized wellness experience for our guests.”

Belmond began its Dior Spa concept with pop-ups on the Venice Simplon-Orient Express. It then rolled out the dedicated spa service to both the Eastern & Oriental Express (which upgraded its design and went back into service in 2024 after a four-year, post-COVID hiatus) and to the Royal Scotsman, where treatments are tuned to the Scottish Highlands outside the train’s picture-perfect windows.

Treatments on the E & O, which features two main itineraries focused on Malaysia: “Essence of Malaysia” and “Wild Malaysia” (beginning and ending in Singapore and avoiding its previous trek through Thailand), are centered on Asian wellness traditions.

 “Wellbeing has become an increasing priority for our guests and is a key part  of the experience on the Eastern & Oriental Express.” 

—Win Min, general manager of Belmond’sEastern & Orient Express

Guests are taken into a dedicated reception area which expands into two treatment rooms, each designed with furniture which merges Dior’s trademark style with inspiration from Malaysia including furniture adorned in the iconic Toile de Jouy print showcasing the tiger, a nod to Malaysian sacred tigers.

The train’s new wellbeing menu features tailor-made treatments, devised by Dior’s Wellness Experts.

Signature treatment D-Jungle, an exclusive face and body treatment of Asian inspiration, is a rhythmic, deep muscle massage from head to toe, performed using stretching techniques and targeting specific energy points. Other treatments include a relaxing Constellation massage, designed to use a mix of massage techniques to relieve tension from the body. The D-Tissue massage uses deep, slow, and soothing movements for those with a focus on releasing muscular pain.

Non-Dior spas on the Belmond line include the Picaflor Spa Carriage on the Belmond Andean Explorer in Peru where treatments include local ingredients designed to combat high elevation issues, and the upcoming spa carriages on the newly launched Britannic Explorer where a partnership with Wildsmith, a major British skincare and wellness brand, will find a home in a dedicated wellness suite and spa carriage. The newly inaugurated line will also ave a botanically themed bar where travelers can sip infused tonics while watching Lake District and Welsh mountain scenery slip by.

While Belmond helms the vintage travel wellness edge, other train experiences are offering peak life experiences that enhance wellness.

In Santa Fe, George Martin (author of Game of Thrones), Bill Banowsky, Douglas Preston, and artist Gary Oakley banded together to save the vintage train carriages of the Santa Fe Southern, a railway that once carried luminaries like FDR and J. Robert Oppenheimer.

 “To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns, and churches, and rivers, in fact, to see life.”

—Agatha Christie, author, Murder on the Orient Express

The 141-year-old train line, now dubbed Sky Railway (seen recently in scenes with Cillian Murphy and Matt Damon in Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer), has added new life-enhancing experiences to the vintage train vibe. Their brand-new Stargazer experience allows travelers to hop aboard the meticulously restored carriages and venture out onto an open platform for a guided tour of New Mexico’s night sky with local astronomers. The train line also recently debuted a New Mexican wine train, which leaves the vintage rail station close to sunset and ventures out into sagebrush wildness as the sun goes down and local New Mexican wines pour. There is local talent bringing musical accompaniment, too. Sky Railway also has a Margarita Rail, and an Outlaw and Burlesque Express.

Spa-centric Santa Fe is a great place to base yourself for wellness during the day (Four Seasons, Bishop’s Lodge, 10,000 Waves) and then venture forth on the rails for peak experiences that enhance wellness with nature, good food, entertainment, stars, and flowing wine and tequila.

While Europe and the U.S. are home to some of the best-known luxury rail experiences, India can lay claim to a Raj-era railway through Rajasthan that was a major inspiration for Wes Anderson’s The Darjeeling Limited.

The Palace on Wheels departs from New Delhi and spends 8 days touring Rajasthan from Jaipur to Agra. The train has its own spa car (inaugurated without fanfare prior to Belmond’s Dior cars), which offers Ayurvedic treatments to clients in the land that invented Ayurveda and yoga.

Other trains that don’t have spa treatments but that offer the joy of vintage travel, along with stops that can encompass wellness experiences at local hotels, include Canada’s Rocky Mountaineer (Lake Louise and Banff are on the rails) and Australia’s Ghan Train, which bisects the continent from Adelaide to Darwin. The train is called the “Ghan” because it travels through outback desert once only negotiated by Afghan workers who brought their two-humped camels with them from home.

Journeying on this train includes stops in the outback where the adventurous can hop on one of these ships of the desert and experience the ride themselves. Carriages are vintage-inspired and designed for comfort. As Belmond’s push for wellness onboard continues, it may be only a matter of time before these classic journeys offer their own dedicated wellness cars.

And for those who prefer their wellness-inspired train travel virtual, you can’t go wrong hopping aboard the wellness app Calm’s ASMR train through Ireland with your conductor, Cillian Murphy.

“Crossing Ireland by Train,” one of Calm’s most popular sleep and relaxation meditations, will lower your heart rate with Murphy’s gentle musings as well as the sound of vintage railcars on the tracks through the fairy-haunted landscapes of Ireland’s Wild Atlantic Way.

Agatha Christie, author of Murder on the Orient Express, has proclaimed, “to travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches, and rivers, in fact, to see life.” As trains like Belmond’s vintage lines and George Martin’s Sky Railway add more and more life-enhancing wellness and life-enhancing adventures to the tracks, Christie would be delighted to see how true her quote remains.