Image: Psicodelia Andina, by Kristie Arias.

Aracari has been connecting travellers with Peru’s cultural custodians for 30 years… Founder Marisol Mosquera is a FORCE, and I could not wish for a better wingwoman than my dear friend, a true creative visionary, Marcella Echavarria whom I met many moons ago in Morocco… She’s one of the best question-askerers I’ve ever met: always a winner in a travel companion.

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Ohhh the tastes

Wow — the flavours of Peruvian cuisine live up to all expectations — but what’s also spectacular is that the impeccable taste of the Peruvians themselves is so palpable in this city. Memories that will forever stay with me? The mustachioed plinky-plonky piano player at La Perlita (gracias, Lorenzo Masias — loved our lunch! And I will never ever forget that rendition of Close to You by Carpenters)… The candy-floss-like pacay on our street food tour with Angie Pelosi through Surquillo market (a beautiful soul, inside and out, pictured above — authentic passion from showing us just some of the potatoes of this country’s thousands of species to tucking into a crunchy-topped paella at Testeo!) Get a fuller taste here. And the encyclopaedic eating experience that is Kjølle, Pía León’s solo project in Barranco: a gastronomic gallery — see why.

As for our chef’s table lunch at CCORI — Quechua for ‘gold’: I’m always happy when my money goes to support a mission such as theirs, the non-profit co-founded by chef Palmiro Ocampo, which is raising awareness around food sustainability and food security through their Cocina Óptima concept: ‘optimised cooking’, maximum flavour, zero waste. (thank you Bettina Campolucci Bord for the tip). Who knew frozen ants would taste sweet and like lemongrass?

The textiles

I’ve fully fallen for fibre art (header shot, above) — be still my beating heart — and our day with Kristie Arias was one of my most special ever. (”Don’t exaggerate, Juliet” says Marcella. I promise I’m not). At Kristie’s studio we also met Martha Castañeda of Païs Textil, and I learned far more than indigenous Peruvian weaving techniques. I saw hand-loomed work built on years spent learning alongside the artisans, previewing her next series — textile art inspired by minerals and geology. A living example of someone practising their ikigai, and a reminder of mine: to celebrate travel through texture. See my Instagram post for a fuller flavour. I am not a big shopper and I try not to do buy new things but I bought some baby alpaca sweaters… and loved our whirl around Casa Lerner and meeting Lucy Barandiaran, the designer who founded the knitwear brand Fringe Mod.

The private tours

Amano, Pre-Columbian Textile Museum, home to one of Lima’s most significant private textile collections, spanning Chavín to Inca, treated us to a tour from Paul who had keys to secret drawers of thousands-of-year-old fabrics which had motifs that felt more present-day emoji than archaeological relic. The private archive was founded in 1964 by Yoshitaro Amano, a Japanese businessman who spent decades recovering and preserving textiles that would otherwise have been lost to looting and neglect. Amano has a ‘by hand’ nominative determinism ring to it. I only wish my aunt, Lindie — curator at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for many years — could have been here; she’s the one who took me to Sumba many years ago just to see the triple ikat genius…

The Indigenous art

The Shipibo-Konibo’s design language is not only painted freehand with pigments of bark and earth, while its shamanic labyrinthine patterns are brought to life by the women artists, they sing… and I had the honour of trying my hand with Wilma Maynas; check out our experience, here. (Lucky for her, no singing from me.)

Kené art has been made world famous by Sara Flores — represented by White Cube — she became the first Shipibo-Konibo artist with a solo museum show in Peru last year at MALI, and this May 2026, the first Indigenous artist to represent Peru at the Venice Biennale. But as the artists will tell you: they never represent themselves alone — they represent their community. They think we not me — just one of the many things we can learn from spending time with Indigenous communities.

And what a privilege to visit Olinda Silvano’s house the very day (above) the community went public with a cultural appropriation concern — over what President Keiko Fujimori wore for her official engagements, its geometry echoing Koshi Kené motifs, designed by Yirko Sivirich. He called it inspiration; they called it appropriation, saying the designs were used without consultation or credit. He’s since called it “inspirarse, no copiar” — inspiration, not copying. Read the story in full here.

Cantagallo is Peru’s first urban Indigenous community: as Wilma paints her gentle singing voice brought tears to my eyes — many images reference ayahuasca, and the visions that guide Shipibo shamans. The is not a cringey touristy staged visit; it’s an authentic intimate exchange hosted by the artists on their own terms, with the artists paid directly… The Wilma Maynas collection has only just launched on the Aracari Shop this year and is everything I exist to signpost luxury travellers to.

The erotic artefacts

The kama-sutra-like ceramics from 500 AD Moche culture could make you blush but our private tour with Fernanda of the iconic Larco Museum explained these with such cool, calm sophistication it makes you wonder if all schoolchildren had this tour it might be the healthiest sex-ed lesson they could get.

All of this is all but an amuse-bouche for my full Aracari adventure here in Peru, as I jot down a little flavour of what we got up to as we’re en route to the jungle for an Amazon River expedition with Delfin… Lima was just the first chapter of this epic escape…

And when I hear more and more about travellers using ChatGPT for tips and itineraries, I think what a shame they’re cheating themselves of human hosts with the real passion Aracari’s expert humans bring… No LLM can lay on the magic that happens from long-term personal recommendations and living-breathing storytelling as I’ve been treated to.

PS A word on my pre-trip ‘Admin-Venture’

And I haven’t even mentioned the hotels I’ve stayed in… truth is, I spent my first few days in Peru catching up on admin — so happy I booked Atemporal (below) on Aracari and Mr & Mrs Smith’s recommendation (loved writing a Smith review for them, first one in a while) — and I coined the term admin-venture as I spent a couple of days closing my London chapter as I start a new one (please just don’t call me a digital nomad…)

Gracias, Lima

Muchos mucho gracias Lima, for an incredible time walking, talking, eating, meeting before our full Peruvian adventure: Machu Picchu, Sacred Valley, Cusco in the richest most incredible of itineraries planned by the mightiest of DMCs, Marisol, Juanjo and team.

Addressbook

• Aracari — aracari.com

• Aracari Shop (Wilma Maynas collection) — shop.aracari.com

• Amano Pre-Columbian Textile Museum — eng.museoamano.org · Calle Retiro 160, Miraflores, Lima

• Atemporal — atemporal.pe · Calle Santa María 190, Miraflores, Lima

• Casa Lerner — Calle General Borgoño 770A, Miraflores, Lima · instagram.com/casalerner

• CCORI Cocina Óptima — San Isidro, Lima (facebook.com/ccoricocinaoptima)

• Kjølle — kjolle.com · Av. Pedro de Osma 301, Barranco, Lima

• Kristie Arias — instagram.com/kristie_arias_m

• La Perlita — Jirón Domeyer 140, Barranco 15063, Lima

• Larco Museum — museolarco.org · Av. Simón Bolívar 1515, Pueblo Libre, Lima

• Olinda Silvano — instagram.com/olinda.silvano

• Villa Barranco by Ananay Hotels — ananayhotels.com · C. Carlos Zegarra 274, Barranco, Lima

• Wilma Maynas — instagram.com/wilma_maynas
  
  NEXT CHAPTER: Delfin Amazon Cruises — delfinamazoncruises.com

  
  

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Michelle and I first met two decades ago, when I was editor-in-chief of Mr & Mrs Smith, and we had an office in Melbourne. A mutual travel-writer friend suggested we meet for a drink.

It’s what drives true travellers: not just an interest in the world, but a genuine, restless appetite for understanding and devouring. Michelle Matthews, a former publisher of travel guides, has accompanied me many times in Bali, where over the years I’ve reviewed many a hotel; then she was with me in Singapore for a particularly meaningful moment* and I’m thrilled we’ll be reunited for Regenerative Travel’s Symposium on Sunday 28 June.

What does it mean to be a good travel companion? As the world is increasingly driven by self-interest, we seem collectively to have forgotten how to be gracious. At 42 Acres, on a recent retreat with the hero horticulturalist Marian Boswell (a fellow judge in the recent Country & Town House Sustainable Hotel Awards), I savoured every word of land-whisperer Brid Walsh’s presentation on the State of Grace. (Brid — who I nicknamed the psychic of soil in my piece for Oprah Daily…)

*Then there is another poignant dimension of grace: the kindness shown when we are especially vulnerable. Michelle came to Singapore when I was alone and awaiting surgery after breaking my ankle because of a dodgy step on a remote island resort in Indonesia. I will never not be indebted to her for that. (It’s worth splashing out on a double negative for emphasis here.)

Temporary or permanent, the shift in perspective is profound — that’s when you really learn to appreciate your right-hand humans in these times. Thank you to changemaking disability advocate Richard Thompson for sharing my tips over at readtilt.com.

What makes the perfect plus-one?

I’m lucky to be able to invite friends along occasionally: solo travel can be lonely, and there’s a particular joy in sharing a beautiful place with someone who gets it. We all have jarring experiences that clarify our thinking on what, exactly, makes someone the right companion. There was the time a plus-one invited a man she’d met on Hinge to join us for the day at the hotel I was reviewing. Then there are those who, while riding the five-star coattails, still find fault: the coffee order taking too long, the tea not strong enough. I’m wincing at memories of anyone I’ve travelled with being rude to wait-staff. For any reason. Ever.

The vibe you want from tribe

1 — Good energy
Seems obvious, but whether you’re in it for the short-haul or the long-haul, aim to lift each other up. Some of my happiest travel memories are a 10-day Bhutan road trip with the person I call my sister — my ex-stepsister — where we were on the road for hours, laughing with our guides Kencho and Pencho, and barely stopping to sigh with contentment. The best travel companions are easygoing, genuinely unflappable — people who meet the unexpected with a smile rather than complaint. In my experience, the weirder it is in the moment, the better the story it becomes. Discomfort zones are fertile ground for a retrospective sense of humour.

2 — Curiosity about everything
Michelle feels like my personal investigative journalist and Wikipedia when we’re in Asia. No wonder she now organises her own tours through Rasa Voya — check them out.) I remember being in Grasse with my dear friend Anna Hart, who looked horrified when I went to order something in English rather than French. Quite right. (My father grew up in Quebec — I should know better.)

3 — Please and thank you, at every turn, always
Manners feel priceless in a plus-one: it still astonishes me how often people forget them. There’ve been times when service is underwhelming, and it’s a joy when your side-kick still stays gracious or curious: love that Tina Brown quote: “Manners are the ability to put someone else at their ease... by turning any answer into another question.” And nothing beats hand-written heartfelt notes along the way: I travel with a box of postcards in my suitcase — a quick note to a generous GM or with left with some local currency for housekeeping.

4 — Pay your way
Don't assume everything’s on expenses or can be comped on a press trip. I once had a friend join me for a week’s full-board at a top spa — as rare as last week’s blue micromoon — who made a great performance of treating us to a glass of wine one evening, then quietly charged all her extra smoothies and coffees to the room, leaving me with the bill at checkout. As luxurious as life may look, freelance fees these days barely cover the minibar, so gratitude for covered extras runs deep: always be sensitive to splitting things evenly.

5 — Remember it’s work for me
I know — it looks suspiciously like I go on holiday for a living. While you’re ordering the second cocktail, I’m likely interrogating the back-of-house sustainability credentials. Space to observe, absorb and actually write — without anyone assuming I’m simply living my best life on someone else’s dime — is always appreciated.

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12 reasons why being a good guest goes a long way — some of my reflections on post-pandemic protocols in Condé Nast Traveller still hit home…

And, coming soon: a guide for the other side of the table: Gail Simmons, Top Chef judge and culinary authority, has written the book on it, I see — Guesting will be published by Macmillan in November — is the first guide dedicated entirely to the art of being a great guest, covering everything from dinner parties to weddings with practical strategies, social etiquette, recipes and food gifts to bring along.

I was asked recently by Le Voyageur what I love about my hometown:

“I love London for its multiculturalism. It’s a bouillabaisse of flavours. Born in Canada, raised in New York — nothing beats my hometown of the last three decades for its combination of glamour and grit. I take advantage of the museums, love a proper pub quiz at The Cock & Bottle on Artesian Road, and explore new corners constantly — from the food stalls of Borough Market to taking an Ethiopian Coffee Tour in Shepherd’s Bush with Women in Travel.”

My street is often photographed for its colourful houses — but in this era of style over substance, the stories that make this neighbourhood interesting go much deeper — everyone in the UK should watch Steve McQueen’s Small Axe for the BBC — the Mangrove episode is particularly poignant, telling the story of the landmark restaurant on All Saints Road and the West Indian immigrants who made this neighbourhood.

This week, I head to East London for ISHKAR’s new collection launch on Columbia Road — flatweave rugs inspired by Soviet Modernist architecture in Central Asia. I loved talking about how the threads of Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and patterns from their cities’ architectural landscapes come through, with their designer, Kitty, and how every stage of making happens in Afghanistan: natural dying, a month of the wool being worked on the loom, and fair wages: buying one of these pieces is sustaining a craft and an act of positive impact.

Plot twist: I walked into the sitting room and spotted my old chaise longue, above — I’d know that upholstery anywhere, having gifted it to a friend who has since died. Maybe someone picked it up second-hand: now that’s the kind of texture you don’t get from an Ikea cheap-and-cheerful flatpack.

If you know me, you’ll know I’m proud to work closely with the charity Asylum Speakers, amplifying stories from people whose journeys most of us can’t begin to imagine: it’s a tough time in the UK as it is in many places amid the smog of anti-immigration sentiments. (If you’re travel industry, we’re hosting a roundtable at the trade show PURE in September — Human Stories That Inspire Us to Make Magic from the Movement of People.) At our storytelling events in London last year, the statistic that always landed hardest: refugees and asylum seekers make up less than 1% of the UK’s population. Hold that against the fact that 25% of the Earth’s land mass once fell under British rule. Barely over 100 years ago.

When I edited the sustainable travel channel for The London Standard, my favourite commission was how to travel the world without leaving London from a great writer. Ethiopian coffee in Shepherd’s Bush. A new-age Persian poet. An Afghan artisan who could furnish a palace. All within zones 1 and 2.

And I’d love to pretend it was one of my old anthropology textbooks from university that introduced me to Walter Benjamin’s concept of aura — that charge of encountering something genuine, in the flesh, in its original context. But it was this Instagram reel from Delfin Cruises in my DMs this morning with one word: TEXTURE. The German-Jewish philosopher, cultural critic and essayist argued that aura is what gets destroyed by mechanical reproduction; which is precisely why no TikTok post about Ethiopian coffee culture hits the same as actually sitting with Sefanit, a former refugee who leads walkers through the traditions of her homeland before closing with an authentic coffee ceremony, right there on Shepherd's Bush Road. (Benjamin, himself, died in 1940, fleeing the Nazis.) Main photo with Sefanit and the mighty Alessandra LoTufo Alonso, by the wonderful long-time Notting Hill resident, my dear friend Tim Evan-Cook.

As the mighty Satish Kumar said this week at his launch for Peace Is Possible: better to light a candle than curse the darkness. (Buy his book!) So: where are your favourite places to travel the world without straying far from home? I want every single recommendation: let’s celebrate the texture. Instead of simply lamenting all the xenophobia out there, if you want to take action, seek out and support all the refugee-run businesses within our grasp — excited to check out the Yemeni and Eritrean cuisine at Red Sea tonight in W12. I’ll report back on Instagram.

ADDRESSBOOK

London

• Imad’s Syrian Kitchen — Chef Imad Alarnab lost everything in Syria’s war, arrived in London in 2015, and built one of the city’s most beloved restaurants from scratch via sell-out supper clubs. Authentic Syrian fare near Carnaby Street. His new venture Aram, showcasing the flavours of Syria’s 14 provinces, opens at Somerset House.

• Mriya Neo Bistro, Chelsea — Founded by displaced Ukrainian chef Yurii Kovryzhenko after Russia’s invasion. “Mriya” means dream in Ukrainian. All 15 staff are Ukrainian refugees. Ukrainian haute cuisine: borsch, chicken Kyiv, pearl barley risotto.

• Mazi Mas — A roaming restaurant and social enterprise run by refugee and migrant women, offering Mediterranean-inspired food and culinary training. “Mazí mas” means “with us” in Greek.

• Trampoline Cafe — Angel and Cavendish Square. The café arm of NEMI Teas, a social enterprise that trains refugees for the hospitality sector and places them in full-time jobs. NEMI Teas — the original social enterprise: award-winning, organic, fairtrade tea company employing refugees. 750,000 teabags sold = one full-time job for a refugee.

Outside London

• Bekas Café, Liverpool — The city’s first Kurdish café, named after celebrated poet Sherko Bekas. Kurdish pastries, cakes and signature coffee from the Kurdistan region of Iraq.

• Vietbowl, Manchester — Founded by Tuan, who first cooked for his siblings in a Hong Kong refugee camp, a thriving Vietnamese restaurant.

• MoonSha, Derby — Founded by Ailee Dang, a Chinese refugee who fled the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979 via boat, a respected Japanese restaurant known for its sushi and teppanyaki.
  
  Apologies if I’ve included any out-of-date information. I’ve written this spontaneously and quickly on a Saturday in response to hearing the rolling news coverage of the Unite the Kingdom march in London, and wanted to get some helpful inspiration OUT! All the love to you all — let’s spread the love xo

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Nowhere layers on texture like Marrakech

The time I took the train home to London from Morocco with Intrepid and Byway, my odyssey started with a night in a riad with Moroccan owners — surprisingly, a rarity in Marrakech. I have so many heart-stoppingly favourite style-forward stays in this ancient city, but what I loved hearing was how Intrepid’s choice of Riad Nesma employs disadvantaged women and enables independence — you feel that in the atmosphere, in the way you’re made welcome. This is what I mean when I say a place’s spirit can have texture: not just its walls, tiles, rooftop terrace or courtyard, but in the very intention behind it. Substance. Mas consistencia.

Listen back to my Sustainable Travel podcast for The London Standard about Morocco with Jon Weeks — or join us on the train trip we did in Vietnam on Spotify.

It’s not just the places, but the people you meet in special spaces…

For a more luxury stay, outside Intrepid’s itinerary, I love IZZA for its art: more than 300 artworks from its Associate Artists Programme line the walls, drawn from a community of 20 local creatives whose emerging talent IZZA actively nurtures; its kitchen is staffed via apprenticeships with Amal, an organisation that teaches hospitality and catering skills to local women; and it partners with Pikala Bikes, a non-profit running guided city tours that give work to young Moroccans while supporting arts and reading outreach in local schools. At breakfast, I found myself sitting next to the wonderfully inspiring Liz Kamarul, who was about to host a retreat there — I’ve been happily lost in her beautiful interiors world ever since via Instagram, and cannot wait to get my hands on a copy of her new book Free Style.

Join me at Open House on Monday 7 September 2026 in Marrakech and take part in our movement-of-people roundtable and Funny Old World podcast with Asylum Speakers.

For textiles with texture: visit the Al-Nour boutique

Maya Angelou famously said we’ll forget what someone said, forget what they did — but never how they made us feel. The quality of the deep-blue linen top, embroidered with small white touches, that I bought at Al-Nour, is true luxury. More than anything, I remember how I felt when they invited me out back into the atelier to meet the female makers — one of whom, a talent with scoliosis, had produced the very piece in my hands. A special purchase that I always love sharing the story of whenever I wear it (pictured, below).

Textural feeling in Fès

I’m smiling to myself now, thinking about how Moroccan-Canadian twins Omar and Othmane picked me up from the train station then navigated me to their family-owned Le Grand Alcazar in this most labyrinthine of cities. It is so authentically Moroccan, zellige tiling covering the walls in geometric mosaics, which give me butterflies. Look up, and it’s carved stucco, and cedar panelling, the results of so many hours of craftsmanship: I remember feeling mesmerised by the artisans working on their new wing and feeling humbled by how long it takes to make something so ornate… And then a tour of Al Attarine Madrasa with a female guide took that awe to the next level.

A reminder, too: the best travel experiences aren’t always the most savoury in the moment. They swerve you through light and shadow, sweetness with sour. I confess I’m wincing thinking back to our visit to Chouara Tannery (check out the header shot on my Condé Nast article). Standing high above those vast stone vats — terracotta, saffron, poppy, ink — is an all-sensory-tickling spectacle. The hides are stretched, soaked and worked through a process largely unchanged since the 11th century. They say cow urine is still used to cure the hide (is this still true? yes… along with pigeon faeces, apparently), which is why sellers press sprigs of fresh mint into your hands on arrival. Breathe through the mint, appreciate the colour. I’m always a sucker for texture outside our comfort zones: travel loses its magic when it’s all sanitised and micromanaged don’t you think?

Then: Tangier to Tarifa — a ferry crossing that tiny 17-mile stretch of the Mediterranean. One continent to another, in not much more time than it takes to drink a coffee…

Colour- and character-rich Seville

Sitting in Mercado de Triana, with Andrea, and over an Andalusian treat, we articulated what we love about travel — the real life and rhythm and patina of a place — and she gave me the phrase…

Another Spanish-speaking friend hadn’t really thought about how the phrase might work in this way, but if she’d walked with me and Andrea to Alfarería 21 - Casa Montalván in Triana — a converted ceramics fábrica where your meals arrive alongside upcycled tiles still living their second lives, where the history is in the walls, literally, I’m sure she’d have got a taste for mas consistencia.

The poster bar for everything this Substack aims to steer you towards — away from death-by-beige blandness, towards genuine soul — is Bar Garlochí. The wonderful Anthony Reid, the hotelier behind the beautiful family-run Hotel Corral del Rey, first brought me here with friends Gemma Cairney and Kuba Nowak; “Order the Blood of Christ’ a hangover to remember,” says Anthony. Nothing prepares you for the cheek-to-cheek cluster of Catholic icons. It feels less dive bar, more Semana Santa — Holy Week: Virgin Mary, age-old effigies, gothic candelabras, red velvet drapes, incense. Named garlochí — “heart” from a poem by Rafael de León: order the Sangre de Cristo — grenadine, whisky, cava — and raise it to whatever you believe in. I was tempted to toast Sister Kevin, the head nun at my convent school, who expelled me for reading Kane and Abel (the Jefferey Archer novel) in an RE lesson. But that’s a tale for another day.

Larger-than-life Madrid

Madrid is worth travelling to by train just for that arrival at Atocha: Moneo’s redesign of the 19th-century iron-and-glass station sees a central nave spanning 152 metres and 27 metres high — it’s a bit like an enormous greenhouse: which is especially edifying for eco travellers when here where there were once tracks, thousands of plants of almost hundreds of species now grow: breadfruit and coconut trees from Polynesia, royal palms and mahogany from Cuba, rubber trees from Brazil, banana trees from the Philippines, a traveller’s tree from Madagascar. Natural light streaming through the atrium, misting keeps it hydrated, and stepping inside feels less like arriving at a station than walking into a tropical rainforest that happens to service your logistics needs.

Africa to London by train and boat and ferry and bus served me mas consistencia at its mightiest… The point of travel is surely to feel more. Not just to see places, photograph or tick them off: to get under the skin of a place, and for it to get under yours.

Intrepid Travel — I travelled from Morocco through Spain with these B Corp heroes, but usually their chaperoned rail tours run as small-group experiences.

Byway — I have worked with these fellow B Corpers on a few solo, flight-free trips, and for this, their Spain-to-London-via-France plan for me was a dream: they handle every logistical detail — trains, ferries — with the loveliest recommendations of handpicked hotels.

Disclaimer: my original feature is a little out of date now, but my full Condé Nast Traveller article on my journey is here… I am lucky to travel to Morocco every year; see you in September, Marrakech. Please support my Substack endeavours just by subscribing, following me on Instagram or Craving Texture. Trips coming up include: Malaysia, Ireland, Peru, Cambodia… Stay tuned.

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This will get buried if I leave it until actual Earth Day on Wednesday — inboxes on 22 April are a compost heap of #EarthDay content, most of it from brands who’ve done rather more to damage the planet than to save it. Hope you don’t mind me posting early. Because for me, Earth Day isn’t just a date. It’s every day as the cliché goes…

If this is TLDR, skip straight to the places I’ve loved for their soil-enhancing work — scroll down to soilmaxxing…

The protest that started it all

It’s worth pausing to think how the first Earth Day — 22 April 1970 — was the largest single-day demonstration in American history? Twenty million people. One in ten Americans, in the streets, demanding change. It worked, too: the Environmental Protection Agency was created, followed by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts.

(Did you know the second-largest single-day protest in US history happened last month: the “No Kings” march on 28 March 2026 drew an estimated eight million people across all 50 states, marching against a president who you can be damn sure doesn’t give a fig — or any other fruit, vegetable, or living plant — about soil?)

We seem to be losing our muscle memory for climate activism. But before we work on flexing it back, let’s remember: we don’t need to protest to make a difference. Every choice is a chance (to quote my favourite philosopher — Ted Lasso). Where we choose to spend our time and money is the most underrated form of activism there is: every booking, every bite, every conversation.

Why soil? Why now?

“Soil is an almost magical substance, a living system that transforms the materials it encounters.” — if George Monbiot isn’t speaking to texture worth craving there, please read all his books and articles in the Guardian: I’m not just biased because I’ve had him as a guest on my podcast and because we co-hosted the Climate Show on Sky News once upon a time.

A reason why I’m so passionate about proselytising loudly about this? A moment in an editorial meeting a few years ago, when I suggested we find every possible opportunity to talk about soil in our coverage. “No editors need to care about soil,” an editor eye-rolled. I have been quietly furious about that sentiment ever since.

People who care deeply about soil are among the most visionary minds I’ve encountered. Vandana Shiva wrote Soil Not Oil — thank you, always, Jonathan Rowe, for sending me that book once upon a time — still essential, still radical. Arizona Muse, one of the most compelling voices at the intersection of fashion and land stewardship, was talking about soil when almost no one else in her world was — I interviewed her for Condé Nast at what felt like the very beginning of her journey into this work, and it’s a conversation worth watching. Matthew Evans wrote Soil: The Incredible Story of What Keeps the Earth, and Us, Healthy — the book that made me feel the loss of healthy topsoil as something almost physical, like a texture draining from the world.

Then there was the moment I pulled a book off a shelf at the home of the owner of olive farm Querubi (the brilliant Willem), and found myself pawing Charles Darwin’s The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms. Published in 1881. Darwin’s last major work. About earthworms. A page-turner about soil-turners.

Art from the underground

All of which is to say: as the Somerset House SOIL: The World at Our Feet exhibition showed us last year, soil is not a niche interest. Fifty artists, scientists and thinkers making the case that soil is not dirt — it’s the foundation of everything. It was a treasure trove of texture: the layered profiles of living earth, the granular and the silky, the dark-and-damp richness of healthy humus rendered as art. The header image above is a perfect case in point — A Diversity of Forms, bacterial colonies grown by Elze Hesse and photographed by Dr Tim Cockerill, which featured in the exhibition. Look at those forms: the blooms of colour from micro-organisms invisible to the naked eye. This is what living soil looks like up close. One of the other standout contributors was Marshmallow Laser Feast whose film brought to life the fungal networks and teeming complexity of healthy soil. Watch a clip, here.

Soilmaxxing — let’s make #soilmaxxing a thing

Let me be literal on this Earth Day. Let me celebrate the earth. Literally. And hopefully inspire a step beyond the freshest trend of farm-maxxing — I’m calling it soilmaxxing. I love the places doing their thing with genuine regenerative rigour rather than rustic aesthetic. Here are some places and people that have genuinely got under my skin (and sometimes, fingernails):

Domaine Madrona from Querubi, Pyrénées-Orientales, France

It was Willem, the force behind this regenerative olive farm, who had Darwin’s worm book; as Bouteco, I’ve loved working with these Keepers of the Land. Willem was inspired by Masanobu Fukuoka’s ‘do-nothing’ philosophy — no tillage, no fertiliser, no pesticides, no weeding — natural farming as articulated in his 1975 book The One-Straw Revolution. Holly, host of Domaine Madrona, has conjured interiors in this 10-room contemporary-but-centuries-old Catalan farmhouse where I spent an extended spell with kindred spirits earlier this year, that have the same quality as the land — textured, honest, soul-uplifting. It is the kind of place that changes how you look at the land.

The Bull Inn Totnes, Devon, United Kingdom

It’s thanks to my sustainability soul-sister Phillipa Hughes that I even know about Querubi and Madrona — she showed me a bottle of their olive oil in their restaurant when I was down there teaching on their Regenerative Hospitality Course at Baddaford Farm. Travel doesn’t get more textural than here: the furniture is upcycled, layered wit and attitude comes through in the No Bull Rules chalked on the board, and every ingredient hails from the earth with integrity. Geetie Singh-Watson, who’s behind the Bull, is married to Guy who’s behind Riverford — and the best news is Geetie’s speaking at our Nature in the City event on Sunday 21 June at Sea Containers, SE1, during London Climate Action Week. Add to your Google Calendar.

Cannúa Lodge, Colombia Thank you Not in the Guidebooks for navigating me here — this ecolodge in Marinilla, Antioquia (an hour from Medellín)  is exactly the kind of place I exist to tell people about. Ten rooms, eight cabins, and a nature-positive ethos which runs through everything: with texture-galore eating and drinking. My permaculture talk and walk with the visionary founder, Santiago Giraldo, would have been reason enough to stay; then came the food — a nutritious, grounding taste of what they actually grow on-site. And gracias Fabian for taking me on a coffee farm tour that was one of the finest step-by-step, show-tell-and-taste experiences I’ve had anywhere: from plucking to roasting: culture-rich, nature-positive, it

Craveiral Farmhouse, Alentejo, Portugal

I co-hosted a storytelling retreat with Regenerative Travel here at this close-to-the-coast south of Lisbon luxury farm stay, which meant following owner Pedro França Pinto, a former lawyer turned regenerative farmer, through his land as he explained what he was trying to do with it. The soil he’s building back has a structure you can see changing season by season; a texture earned slowly. I’m co-hosting another retreat with Amanda Ho of the mighty RT in Cambodia in November at Song Saa if you want to connect with a tribe to advance more conversations that matter on the Regenerative Travel Leadership Retreat.

Post Ranch Inn, Big Sur, California

100% off-grid, solar-powered, and genuinely committed — not just so they can say so but because that’s always been the vibe of this Beyond Green hero. Their Chef’s Garden, composting programmes and more make this a serious wellness-wonderful luxury escape when it comes to land stewardship. Founder Mike Freed is always someone I love talking to about the nitty-gritty of sustainable hospitality, and I love their connection to Regenerative California — I seriously recommend investing in a copy of the book CEO Kristin Coates gave me about Regenerative Economics.

Ranchlands, American West

I have long dreamed of spending time here. Duke Phillips III — founder, rancher, hero — talks about bison as keystone engineers: animals whose movement and grazing literally rebuild the texture and health of grassland soil. I wrote about Ranchlands and the wider regenerative farming movement for Condé Nast Traveller — read my article, Can these farmers save the planet? The bison are not a romantic detail: this is a return to land management as nature intended.

Cempedak, Indonesia

Close to Singapore, my favourite moment here at Andrew Dixon’s incredible Long Run retreat — and one of my favourite travel moments, ever — was plunging my hand into their vermicomposting: a teeming, dark, extraordinary mass of worms turning food waste into fertility. It sounds unlikely as a private-island highlight. It was precious; feeling those little wriggly geniuses work their magic was a masterclass in what alive actually means. We should all love earthworms more.

Six Senses Vana, Uttarakhand, India

Ancient Ayurvedic wisdom at the most extraordinary contemporary wellness retreat I’ve ever reviewed. The founder, Veer, had studied organic farming long before most of hospitality had caught up with the concept, and it comes through in everything: the cuisine, the soft confident insistence that healing people and healing land are the same project. Dying to get back here one of these days…

How can you not love this quote from Olivier Magny, from Into Wine: “Studying wine taught me that there was a very big difference between soil and dirt: dirt is to soil what zombies are to humans. Soil is full of life, while dirt is devoid of it.”

I could keep going… So many soil-positive heroes, not enough hours in a day to write about them all — who are your soil heroes? Please comment — and chip in on Instagram.

Keep looking down — to look up

I don’t need to tell you that that soil-eschewing editor was naive — and that we all need to care about soil?

From this Earth Day onwards, keep looking down: and things will start to look up for all of us.

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Juliet Kinsman is the founder of sustainability consultancy Bouteco (sharing stories to inspire impact since 2016), the first Sustainability Editor at Condé Nast Traveller, was Sustainable Travel Editor at The London Standard, and she is Ambassador for The Datai Pledge at The Datai Langkawi, which is a proper permaculture hero in Malaysia. She is the author of The Green Edit: Travel (Ebury) and The Bucket List: Eco Experiences (Rizzoli), and has edited and written many guidebooks. Follow me on Instagram — follow Craving Texture.

Are Honest Hotel Reviews Dead? (And Why Texture and Neurohaptics Are What Matter Now More Than Ever)

Are there any honest hotel critics left? As someone who’s been writing about hotels for 25 years, I mostly only see polished, AI-perfected, people-pleasing posts and gushing copy that give you nothing useful — or meaningful — these days. Nowhere tells you that the room you’re paying £350 a night for has all the charisma of an airport hotel (I mean, TripAdvisor might, but that’s not my vibe or tribe). And considerably less of the frisson of an airport lounge, because at least there you know something exciting lies ahead on the other side of those flight boards.

I’ve been nudged by many to start a newsletter for boutique-hotel and sustainable-luxury lovers. Then something forced my hand: I paid a significant sum to spend a long weekend somewhere that made me feel as though I’d wandered into a Dunelm installation (international readers, think Ikea without the Skandi sass). Truthfully, I’ve not been inside one of those mid-market meh homewares shops, but I’ve walked past enough to know it isn’t my vibe. What it also reminded me is: we need to talk more about texture.

Why neurohaptics?

If you’re a design-hotel devotee, you’ve probably come across the concept of neuroaesthetics by now — the science of how visual beauty genuinely tickles our neurochemistry. When we see something pleasing to the eye, it doesn’t merely spark a pleasurable thought: it registers physically, lifting mood, reducing cortisol, activating the brain’s reward pathways and happy hormones.

I’ve been increasingly convinced there’s a companion phenomenon for interiors — places that make us feel more, which we don’t yet have a name for, so I’m giving it one: neurohaptics.

Where neuroaesthetics is about what we see, neurohaptics is about what we feel — not just with our hands, but with the deeper, older, more animal parts of our brains that respond to texture, patina, weight, warmth, and the tangible truth of something genuinely human-made. The satisfying sensation of holding a handmade ceramic cup. The heft of a hand-woven native-cotton napkin. The if-walls-could-talk smell of an old homestead with peeling window frames that speak to decades of sunlight and woodsmoke, where generations-old oil paintings smile down on this random gathering of strangers. In seeking perfection, we’ve lost an appreciation for texture. If it’s too smooth and polished, a place doesn’t feel lived in or authentically linked to place and real people — texture brings that which Pinterest grids rarely represent, and a job-lot of online-ordered ‘curios’ will most likely kill.

Texture is my explanation for why certain scenes hit us somewhere deeper before we’ve consciously registered why we feel more present, more connected: it’s the sense that we’ve actually arrived. But it’s also about its intangible integrity and power to cultivate curiosity: maybe you wonder about the 16th-century coral bricks (Casa Carolina in Colombia), the wall of The Lab sustainability activity centre in the rainforest made from thousands of wine and drinks bottles at The Datai Langkawi, in Malaysia, above), or how many conversations happened over the stitching of that quirky patchwork quilt (Fogo Island Inn, header).

I can’t wait to signpost you to the hotels, restaurants, cafés, galleries, workshops where the hand-woven textiles, the calligraphied menus, the patina-rich wabi-sabi surfaces activate something neurological — something that the sea-of-sameness copied-from-an-Insta-post, designed-on-a-CAD, decked out in mass-produced mid-ness simply can’t ever touch.

The hotel that broke me with its blah

It was to be the first trip away with my daughter and my dad. Special-occasion, three-generation energy. But I walked into the purpose-built rectangular lounge, where everything was a shade of beige and box-fresh — what I call ‘shipping-container chic’ — and felt immediately sad that we were somewhere anything but special. My coffee came in a cup that simulated crackled ceramic. The table surface was a magnolia-painted wood. You could tell this hailed from a business plan pretending to be hospitality — serving a mainstream clientele content with unimaginative offerings, operated with all the confidence of something that has never once asked itself what special actually looks, feels, and tastes like.

I have been reviewing hotels for almost three decades. I stood in our could-be-anywhere hotel room, looked at the sticks in a pot (this is someone who once had a dedicated @sticksinapot account to commemorate the laziest versions of this blah-interiors staple) and felt, with some clarity, that I had made a mistake in not asking someone I trusted whether they knew this to be somewhere with soul. And that the mistake had cost me not just money, but the one thing you genuinely cannot get back: time with people I love, in a place that was not a welcome escape from our everyday. It could have been anywhere. It was anywhere.

My previous trip had been to Porto, staying at The Largo: I feel tingles on my spine just thinking about the granite-rock-face-and-waterfall touch-responsive art installation in the living-room lobby called the Foundation of The Largo (aka Rock Piece, pictured above). This is Porto’s genuine geology revealed in the kind of arts-meets-place way with a section of Victoria Hill actually used in a way that no amount of reclaimed wood and Edison bulbs can manufacture: this hotel had me viscerally feeling texture at every turn — Nuno Mendes’ menu in Cozinha das Flores, the architecture and design, the context. Soul. Character. Charm. The physical sensation of truly being somewhere else. And I was reminded, sharply, of how much I value the recommendations of people whose taste — and integrity — I actually trust, when I had been told this was a great place to stay. (I hope you can trust my list of favourite boutique-eco hotels: Bouteco Loves.)

Why this, why now

Folks have been asking me to share more about my favourite sustainability-sensitive places for years. I always hesitated — not from false modesty, but because I’m not gunning to earn commission on bigging up some hotels over others, and I didn’t want to add to the noise — I’ve watched too many ‘recommendations’ platforms quietly become promotions masquerading as reviews.

The noise has become so loud, so predictable — algorithms tuned to the risk-averse, vanilla preferences of Silicon Valley — that the opposite now has genuine value. Dorsia Travel has made me laugh with their refreshingly cutting reviews (check out his take on 50 Best), which boldly name and shame. There is something almost radical about recommending places you really want other people to visit to have their neurochemicals sparked for all the reasons, and not because your content is just part of a Faustian pact you’ve made in return for a press stay.

So here is Craving Texture. I’ll be celebrating spaces and places that invite you to rub up against it — occasionally, writing about the ones that lack it.

Welcome to texture worth travelling for.

xo Juliet

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PS — You can join me vicariously on my travels through my Instagram.

PPS — Who the hell am I?

Born in Canada, first two years in Algeria, grew up in New York when it was still gritty, edgy and quirky. Separated parents had me yo-yoing all over, but I ended up in the UK, where I went on to study Social Anthropology, which in those days required a lot of explaining. (Why humans do what they do: my Dad said at the time it’d be useless; I feel like that’s mostly what I write about now.) I’d wanted to be a journalist since I was old enough to know what one was.

In the 1990s, I was a music journalist who spent every penny not on anything sensible but on VIP rooms and the original boutique hotels. Field research: I just didn’t know it yet. The pivot that changed everything happened in Ibiza — I was there with my friend James, who met the woman, Tamara, who’d become his wife, and in the meantime, they had an idea: a hotel guide for people like us. Would I write it? I created the voice for Mr & Mrs Smith and was passionate about taking it digital and into social media back when the internet was still the Wild West. Along the way, I also did things like write Louis Vuitton City Guides and present a travel show for the Discovery Channel: tough job, but someone had to actually do it. Back before AI could knock out content in the blink of an LLM-generated round-up.

In 2015, I felt a pull toward the hotels doing something harder than being beautiful. I founded Bouteco in 2016, became Condé Nast Traveller’s first Sustainability Editor in 2020, wrote The Green Edit: Travel (Penguin) and The Bucket List: Eco Experiences (Rizzoli), and co-presented The Climate Show on Sky News with George Monbiot — which, as it turns out, two people agreeing with each other does not make compelling television. Twenty-five years of hotel beds and an anthropologist’s compulsion to ask why does this place feel like this? have taught me that the most engaging conversation in travel has almost nothing to do with carbon offsets. It’s about soul and patina. And I’ve learned to lean in and talk about sustainability without talking about sustainability — which I hope I've done here…

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