Another post about smell...

“The first thing I noticed in Bombay, on the first day, was the smell of the different air. I could smell it before I saw or heard anything of India, even as I walked along the umbilical corridor that connected the plane to the airport. I was excited and delighted by it, in that first Bombay minute…but I didn’t, and couldn’t, recognize it. I know now that it’s the sweet, sweating smell of hope, which is the opposite of hate; and it’s the sour, stifled smell of gree, which is the opposite of love. It’s the smell of gods, demons, empires and civilizations in resurrection and decay. It’s the blue skin-smell of the sea, no matter where you are in the Island City, and the blood-metal smell of machines. It smells of the stir and sleep and waste of sixty million animals, more than half of them humans and rats. It smells of heartbreak, and the struggle to live, and of the crucial failures and loves that produce our courage. It smells of ten thousand restaurants, five thousand temples, shrines, churches and mosques, and of a hundred bazaars devoted exclusively to perfumes, spices, incense, and freshly cut flowers. Karla once called it the worst good smell in the world, and she was right, of course, in that way she had of being right about things. But whenever I return to Bombay, now, it’s my first sense of the city – that smell, above all things – that welcomes me and tells me I’ve come home.”

This beautiful quote, from the very first page of Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts speaks to one of my favorite things about travel: the smell of a new country. Every city has its own unique feeling but the smell can change everything. Accra, Ghana smelled of sweat, dust, heat, fresh pineapple, banana and cocoa beans, not to mention fufu with peanut soup. Hanoi and Haiphong, at least in the winter, smell of mist, green tea, basil, lime, hundreds of motorbikes and the hard work of street-food sellers. I could go on and on describing different cities. And more than that, the smell of these places changes throughout the day, almost to the point where you can tell what time of day it is even if you close your eyes and just breathe. But even with the changes, each city is distinct and whenever I get a whiff of spicy peanut soup at home, my mind goes back to Ghana. I can only imagine what will spark homesickness for Vietnam when I’m back in North America.