I had read dozens of travel stories and looked at hundreds of photos, yet nothing had prepared me for that first morning in the medina of Marrakech. The alleys closed in around me like a living maze, the voices of the merchants crossed from every direction, and Yuuki, clinging to my shoulder, kept turning his head every which way, not knowing where to look. I almost missed my first souk by taking a left when I should have gone right. You'll see, the trick is to pick a minaret as your landmark and never lose sight of it.

The real shock came on day three, at the tanneries of Fes. I had braced myself for the smell, I had been warned, but nothing could have prepared me for the view from above, on the terrace of a babouche seller. The round vats filled with bright colors looked like a giant painter's palette set right in the heart of the city. Yuuki knocked over the bunch of fresh mint we had been handed at the entrance to mask the odors. Honestly, the sellers laughed right along with us.

But it was the desert that caught me off guard the most. I had reached Erg Chebbi in the late afternoon, convinced that the summer heat would make the whole thing unbearable. At dawn, when the sand began shifting from gray to pink and then to gold, I realized I had been completely wrong. The silence was so total that I could hear Yuuki breathing next to me. I came back down the dune with sand in my hair and the absolute certainty that I will return!