Smell is the most evocative of senses, transporting us in time and space. Scents can rekindle memories and emotions. They are often associated with the first time we came across a particular scent in childhood. To this day, the smell of coffee whisks me back to my childhood, when an exciting day out day out was a visit to Harrods Food Hall. My parents would drop me next to the coffee roaster, where I was content to stand inhaling the smell of roasting coffee.
Travel also produces strong olfactory connections. The eight scents I have chosen all connect to places and memories.
Sandalwood - Chennai, South India
India is a sensory and mystical experience. As I walked into the Kapaleeshwarar Temple complex in Chennai, ornate carved pyramids rose above me, each one festooned with brightly coloured statues of gods. A murmuring repetitive sound and the smell of sandalwood drew me to a corner, where workers swayed in rhythm to create a sandalwood paste. The smell, sound and movement had a hypnotic effect.
Cumin - Bukhara, Uzbekistan
Bukhara is the most intact and evocative of the Silk Road cities. Ornate doorways lead off bright mudbrick lanes into trading domes and shaded courtyards. Past the domes of the hatters and moneylenders is the dome of spices. I have never before or since smelt such wonderful cumin, freshly ground in a great brass pestle and mortar. I bought a very large bag.
Goat's cheese - Bulgaria
It is my firm belief that the finest goat and sheep cheese comes from Bulgaria. Their supermarkets are well stocked with many varieties of 'white cheese.' In the local villages you can smell the cheese, then hear it, and then finally see the provenance of the cheese. That distinctive pungent smell is followed by the clanking of bells and the trot of feet as the goatherds lead their flocks through the villages.
Spice houses - Cochin, Kerala
It is said that on a warm day in the old warehouses near Tower Bridge in London you can smell the spices once stored there; nutmeg, tea, pepper, cumin. This is certainly the case all year round in the old spice houses of Cochin. Here you will smell black pepper, turmeric, star anise, and many other spices in a port where they have been traded since the time of the Romans.
Lamb chilli kebabs - Xinjiang, China
The first tour I led was from Islamabad up the Karakoram Highway to Kashkar in Xinjiang and then across the Taklamakan Desert. The Uighur people of Xinjiang are Turkic and their delicious food reflects this. Like an ancient Silk Road caravan, we stopped at oasis towns across the desert and, led by our noses followed the smell of roasting lamb, marinated with chill and cumin.
Neroli - Alleppo, Syria
To this day, one of my finest crafted itineraries was a tour to Syria and Jordan. One day of the tour was particularly memorable. In the morning, we would visit the great citadel of Aleppo and following lunch explore the labyrinthine bazaar opposite. In the late afternoon we would be refreshed in the hammam with apple tea. The day ended with an ice-cold beer next door looking up at the illuminated citadel. The scent of neroli pervaded the bazaar and would waft out on the evening breeze.
The Fragonard car park - Grasse
Ask most people to connect a smell with a car park and the response would not be euphoric. I have found just one exception in the south of France, when Otto and I were researching the Legacies of Plague tour. We parked in a local carpark and opened the door to the most wonderful fragrance! The carpark was adjacent to the Fragonard Perfume Factory in Grasse; the capital of perfume.
Frangipani - Phnom Penh, Cambodia
I had never smelt frangipani before I arrived in Cambodia in the 1990’s. The gardens of Phnom Penh’s Royal Palace were lush with fan palms and frangipani trees, which seemed the height of sophistication and elegance. I could not believe that such a beautiful looking and fragrant flower was so abundant, and I spent a lot of time picking up flowers and smelling them.
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