Sensorial sojourns – our trips for March

Touch – the pristine waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi, Argentina

Dip your fingertips beneath its surface. Your boat glides cleanly through it, parting the brilliant, icy blue like a knife. Fed by rivers that tumble down from snow-clad mountains and glacial valleys, the waters of Lake Nahuel Huapi are glittering and bright – and arrestingly cold. It’s like drinking a cup of coffee, a rush of blood to the head. A pulse of energy. This is what it means to live.

Take me there

Smell – the caramel malt of Sri Lanka’s Ceylon tea

That scent, that fragrance? Somewhere between golden malt and sweet caramel, Ceylon tea (the tea of Sri Lanka) was first grown on the slopes of the plantations of Kandy and Dimbula, back in 1867.  To walk through the fields is to be bathed in the fragrance of its lime-green leaves. Next they are withered, rolled and fermented. And only then are they brewed.

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Taste – freshly baked loves of Moroccan khobz

Bread is universal. It is the dough that connects the cultures of France with those of the Philippines. But every bread is different, and every process of baking has its own particular taste. Nowhere is this more notable than among the souks of Morocco’s Fez. The pain quotidian in this ancient city is Khobz. Wearing their colorful kalabas, the locals bring trays of cloth-covered, unbaked bread to neighborhood bakeries, where these soft discs are met with heat. The result is a fluffy yet crispy roundel of flavor that’s used to scoop up sauce and prepare unimaginably good sandwiches.

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See – the shape of an elephant through the dust of the Kalahari

Dust. A blossoming cloud of golden haze. And through it, the shingled grey of an elephant’s broad shouldered body – the curl of its trunk. In the Tswalu Kalahari, shapes – silhouettes and shadows – are everything. It’s how you live in this landscape, alert to your senses. Camera raised, binoculars poised. Patience is a virtue. As is surprise.

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Hear – the echoing cenotes of Mexico’s Yucatan peninsula

Echoing, dripping. That sound is the patter-flow of water as it falls into the open mouth of a Mexican cenote. These naturally formed caverns are like portals in the crust of the earth. Once sites of Mayan ritual (and even sacrifice), today they make for astonishing ‘wild’ swimming in the very heart of the jungles of the Yucatan peninsula.

Take me there