Morocco: Souks, Hammams, and a Journey Beyond Fear (ft. Preethi Chandrasekhar)

We all carry stories about who we are. They sit
on our shoulders like devils and angels, whispering in our
ears with what we can or cannot do. But what
happens when we defy these stories and take a small
step beyond those limiting beliefs to uncover a story of
ourselves that is altogether new. This is Wayfinder, Life Changing Travel.
This podcast goes beyond the guidebooks into the heart and
soul of real life travelers as they journey around the world.
I'm your host, Daniel Scheffler, and I have seen firsthand
how our stories connect us and inspire us. In this episode,
we join travel creator Pretty Chandra Sekhar on a women's
group trip through Morocco from Marrakesh Tefez from the vastness
of the desert to the comfort of a traditional Moroccan home.
Pretty leads these women on a do it all travel
itinerary through this beautiful country, only to bring them closer
to who they really are. So tell me what are
your travel origins and what was travel like for you
when you were a young person.
You know, it's interesting growing up in the States. You know,
my parents immigrated here like about thirty years ago. I
want to say, And there was never this emphasis on
travel because I think they were just so busy rebuilding
their lives and there was no emphasis on the outdoors
or camping or hiking or nature. So when I grew
up as an adult is when I really discovered traveling
in what it was like. So there was a lot
of limitations in my head around that I just didn't
think I was a hiker or a camper, a rock climber,
and then today I ended up doing some of those
things in my group trips that I lead, And it's
so weird to kind of look back at my journey
to see all the limits that I've broken myself as
the person that I am today.
Do you feel like you put those limitations on yourself
or do you feel like society put some of those
limitations on you? Tell me, I think it's.
A combination, right. It's also cultural.
I come from India and travel is not something that's
talked about, at least back in the day. It wasn't
and it wasn't encouraged as a way of finding out
more about yourself or as a way of transformation. None
of that existed. And then when you were the child
of immigrants. There's just a completely different focus. Everything is
about proving yourself. You need to succeed, and success is
about making money and having a good job. And I
did work at Google. I did everything I was supposed
to do. I was the good girl. And when I
told my dad I'm quitting, he was just like, why
would you leave Google to travel the world?
What's wrong with you?
You're like, I have things to explore within myself, darling
off I go.
I was like, I'm done living for you, Dad. I
think I did a really good job. It's now my turn,
you know.
Buy. So how did you find yourself in the current
chapter as travel blogger, photographer, group organizer.
I think I just fell into it because COVID happened
and we couldn't really be traveling around. And so what
happened was I started camping and hiking more because that's
all we really could do in our backyard, backyard meaning
California where I live. I started sharing photos and stories
on social media on Instagram about these destinations that I
was visiting and the hikes that I was doing, and
the way it made me feel that it became international.
It was amazing, and then eventually people started dming me saying, hey,
we want to travel with you, and that's how the
trip leader and the group trips was born.
So basically, I like what I see. I need to
get a piece of that kind of that's so lovely.
As Pretty's work began to grow, so did her vision,
moving from her own exploration to creating space for others
to experience the same transformation. She started organizing group trips
for women to travel around the world, and one of
the most powerful of these journeys was their trip to Morocco.
Morocco is one of those places where you can do
a lot of different things and it lends itself really
well to this concept of transformation.
That's what all my group trips are about.
It's more than sight seeing, and I want the women
to take that step into figuring out the next best
version of themselves. So I'm not going to say you're
gonna come on my trip and become the best version
of yourself, but you're going to get one step closer.
And Morocco for me, because I'd already been before, I
felt like there was so much variety and I felt
like there were experiences that could really nicely lend itself
to that transformative concept, if you will. It was probably
one of the most epic group trips I've led so far,
and the women will tell you the same.
Wow. I'll ask all of them, Micha, tell me about
these women that you went with. Was this a radical
experience for some of them?
It was because a lot of the women that are
coming on these trips are women who have never left
the US. Some of them are very family oriented. They've
been sort of living for their kids, their family, doing
everything that they're meant to do or supposed to do.
They've never really taken the time for the selves to
go out and do something like this. And there are
women who got tired of waiting for someone to travel
with them. We've got different types of women coming on
the trip, so getting away and booking a trip like
this was a big deal for them. And they also,
like me, were not really encouraged to travel growing up.
But we had women in their twenties to thirties, forties,
and we even had two women in their mid fifties.
So it's always interesting who I attract on these trips.
When you think of Morocco, what comes to mind for you?
The very first time that I went.
I landed in Casablanca and I saw the huge Casablanca Mosque.
It was stunning, and walking inside looking at the architecture.
It was beautiful.
And I didn't spend a lot of time in Casablanca
because we immediately took off on the road trip and
we went to Markish and went to Fez and did
Chef Shaw and the Blue City and all of that.
But it was kind of like being in an episode
of The Arabian Nights if you've ever read that. I
read the original, yes, that one, and there's a story
about Ali Baba and the forty Thieves. Of course, I
almost felt like I was going to see them somewhere
in the dunes when I went.
To the Sahara.
So it was like a fairy tale. It was like
one of those novels from my childhood coming alive for me.
That's a great way of explaining it to people who
haven't been, Like, you have this sort of magical world
that opens up from the moment you arrive, right, it
feels like something really ancient. Of course, it's a modern
country and it exists in a twenty first century context,
but it does have such an attachment to the old
to something very very ancient. It makes me filled with like, oh,
this is why I travel, this is why I'm here right.
It fills you with this wonder that you sometimes forget
about in your day to day life. It just feels
like you're on this journey of discovery. And I think
that's how the women felt, because I also designed it
in such a way that every destination that we were
going to with in Morocco, we were experiencing something new.
One of the first moments that set the tone for
the group was a visit to the Souks, Morocco's sprawling
open air marketplaces where direction dissolves and the senses take over.
When you're walking through the souks of Marakish or even
Fez is like stepping into a live maze because it's
these tiny alleys, but these alleys are buzzing with people
rushing around, with vendors trying to sell you things. There's
donkey carts running around everywhere, and you are trying to
dodge all these different things in these incredibly narrow alleys.
And at the same time, there's all these sights and
sounds that make you want to stop and go ooh ah,
what is that, whether it's a shop that's selling pottery
the likes of which you've never seen before, or it's
a shop that's selling these beautiful lamps that are glistening
and twinkling and beckoning at you, Or there's a vendor
standing right there on the alley holding this huge of
local Moroccan snacks and they look so different from anything
that you've ever seen in the States that you can't
help but stop and you want to know more about it.
Or you turn a corner and there's a guy standing
behind the cart and there's a big cauldron that he's stirring,
and there's all these smells emanating from it, and it's
the head of a lamb that he's cooking. And these
are the things that you're going to see as you
walk around that makes it so exotic. And you see
colors of powders that are just like heaped in my owns,
and you can't help but want to go closer and
sift your fingers through it. So everything is a sensory
experience in Morocco, and that's how I felt wandering through
the souks. But when we got to Marakish and we
went to the hammams that in itself was another sensory experience.
Tell us more about bringing the group to the hammam.
The hammam, for those who don't know, it's a very
Moroccan tradition and it dates back to the Roman bathhouses,
along with some Islamic influence as well, and it used
to be a place where people women or men would
gather for social purposes, like a communal space if you will.
You went there to get scrubbed and cleaned and all
of that, but it was also very community driven. And
I thought, hey, we're all here together, these women who
are here as strangers, why not start with a community experience.
Let's go to a local traditional hammam. Now the women
didn't know anything about this hammam. Picture this room that
you're walking into where there's all the steam rising and
they're these stone slabs in the middle, and the hammam.
Ladies are like, all right, stripped down, and she really
meant stripped down, like we literally had to get naked.
And a lot of these women were just standing there
looking at each other, going, wait, we have to take
off our clothes and be naked in front of each other.
And I had to gently coax them because they weren't
used to that. They were shy, they were feeling insecure,
and I had to encourage them and let them know that, hey,
we're in a safe space. That's what this is all about.
No one's judging you, nobody's looking at you.
Accept it.
I want you to accept yourself and look at how
beautiful all of you are. We're here to experience something
very traditional, very local, and these home mom ladies don't care.
They've seen plenty of naked women.
So we're asked to climb on top of these heated
stone slabs. So we get on top of them naked,
and we're laying there and the ladies start scrubbing us
and you can smell the eucalyptus in the air and
black all of paste that they're using, you know, kind
of has this earthy scent to it. And then they
start posing you down with warm water that's sloshing all over,
and then they make the women slide over and we're
slipping and sliding and bumping into each other, and soon
the awkward silence turns into giggles and laughter. As you know,
the scrubbing becomes symbolic. Right you're scrubbing the dead skin,
but I think you're also scrubbing away the insecurities of
these women. It becomes less about exposure and more about acceptance.
So that's the transformative peace there.
It's amazing that you created a space forness like that's
the part that travel does so beautifully. Well. It's hard
for people in their everyday life to find a moment
where you can do something that perhaps is a challenge,
perhaps it's something you've never done before, something that frightens you,
something that challenges you, and then overcoming that. But travel
offers you this place where often there's a situation where
this comes up and you have to make a decision. Right,
am I willing to just put this shit aside and
go for it and experience this thing and be perhaps transformed,
perhaps evolved, perhaps changed. And it's amazing that you've created
a kind of environment where people can feel this, And.
I think the Hammam in particular, it was a space
today in the modern world where women can actually exist
for a brief moment in their bodies without performance or comparison.
Powerful. Man, it's powerful, I thought.
So I didn't realize that myself until I got there.
How powerful it was, and.
From the grounding of the Hammam, the journey moved somewhere
entirely different, up into the sky, where a hot air
balloon ride over the Moroccan landscape became the next step
in their quest.
A lot of the women were scared. They've never done
a hot air balloon before, and they were afraid of heights,
which is why I included it in there. And I said,
let's go there and see what it looks like and
we'll figure it out. So we get there and they
usher us into this building in the middle of nowhere,
and they give us the famous Moroccan mint tea that
calms everybody down a little bit. The guide talked a
little bit about the ballooning, and I asked the women,
are your galups ready? And some of the women put
their hands up and said, we're ready, but we're also
really nervous and we don't know if we want to
do it. And I said, this is a fantastic opportunity
to overcome that fear that you're feeling. Being all the
way up there in the sky and looking down at
the terrain in front of you. It could be a
very liberating thing. So give it a chance, and every
single woman elected to do it. There's about twenty five
of us, so fifteen of the women and then some
of the other guests. We're all ready to go. The
sky is lighting up. They are shouting out instructions to
people on the ground to cut the ropes and everything.
It's all in Arabic and we're watching.
We're waiting.
The women are nervous, and we're looking around at the sky,
looking around at the sun starting to rise. We've got
goosebumps and we know something magical is about to happen.
And then the balloon lifts. As it starts lifting from
the ground, you know, sometimes it shakes a little bit
and sometimes it feels wobbly. Some of the women let
out a little scream like, ah, what's happening, And I
was like, it's okay, You're gonna be okay.
This is normal.
And then it stabilizes a little bit and it rises
up into the air and you see the Atlas mountains
around you, and it's a completely different terrain from what they've.
Been seeing and the Moraucish souks.
It's nothing but mountains, the desert and beautiful different colors
as the sun rises and the light is reflecting off
these mountains, and there's a quiet that descends on the
whole hot air balloon, and some of the women started
hugging each other, and some of them had tears in
their eyes, and it was amazing to watch that transformation.
These were women who were so terrified that I asked
them later on, what did it feel like for you?
And they said they felt liberated being all the way
up there in that silence, something that they didn't feel
in their day to day lives because they hadn't given
themselves the time to feel that way.
Well, do you think that there's something about the unknown,
the sort of irrational fear of something because you've never
done it, followed by the magic and the beauty and
the stillness that creates an experience like no other. It
doesn't happen often in our lives.
I think we don't take the time to sit still.
We can't because we've got so many responsibilities in our
day to day and I don't think we take the
time to step into the unknown as often as we should.
There's that whole saying that the unknown is where growth lies,
and I think that's true if you're not pushing yourself
to go into the unknown, whether at work or in
your personal life, You're not going to get to that
next level. You've got to be scared. Being scared is
a good thing.
I think their journey into the unknown continued this time
with a hike.
We did a hike there called the Monkey Fingers Hike,
and it's unusual for a lot of tourists to go
hiking in Morocco, but I think the destination lends itself perfectly.
Picture this terrain.
You're hiking along what I would call a slock canyon,
very very reminiscent of Utah slock canyons, and you've got
these majestic reds rocks rising on either side of you,
and you're walking on this narrow path mixed with gravel
and sand, and all of a sudden, there's a big
boulder right in front of you. And the only way
to cross the boulder and continue on the trail is
if you shimy down under the boulder. So there's a
little bit of space left there. And the women were like,
are you crazy? Like what are you making as do?
We're not gonna fit, And I'm like, all of you
are gonna fit, and we're gonna work through this. The
hole was enough so that if you felt claustrophobic, you
would be out even before you were thinking about that,
So it wasn't too bad. It's just that they all
had to get down to the ground and shimme through that,
and everybody did it. We crossed over, we had to
scramble over these large rocks, cross a river, and then
we get to the monkey fingers, which are these giant
knobby formations rising from the ground sandstone formations formed thousands
of years ago from wind and rain erosion. But there's
so much stick in the middle of nowhere. And I
have to say, many of these women have not hiked before.
And one of the girls, she was diabetic, not very fit,
and she really struggled. And the hike turned into a
nine mile hike because the river that we were crossing
turned out to be flooded and we had to find
an alternate route, increasing the mileage on that hike, and
she shed some tears. She wasn't sure she could do it.
What was amazing to watch was the rest of the
women rallying around her, slowing down their pace to keep
up with her, to talk to her, to just laugh,
tell jokes, tell stories. I would encourage her in my
way as well, and halfway during the hike, she said,
the way you have been encouraging me, you're so kind
that it's helping me and it's motivating me. She started
crying and she said, I think I might want to
try this thing called hiking some more. And I was like,
you absolutely should. And I didn't think anything of that.
And many months later she sent me an email and
she said, I just want to let you know I've
joined a hiking community.
I've done my sixth hike with them.
I did an elevation gain of two thousand feet and
I also did a night hike which was nine miles long. Wow,
I was like, who are you the hike itself. It
was so transformative for all these women, and it's also
reminded me that all of these are just stories that
we build in our head. They're just limitations, and when
we can break them, the world is your oyster.
A visit to the Hammam, a desert hike, and a
hot air balloon ride were only some of the activities
on preteas do It All Itinerary. To give you a
few more, here are her travel and food tips for
visiting Morocco.
Definitely don't miss staying in a riad, which is a
very traditional Moroccan home. It's important because you get to
see what these palaces were like back in the day.
It gives you a very immersive feeling. The souks and
the marketplaces in Morocco are not to be missed. I
know a lot of people find them intimidating.
Hire a guide.
It's very easy to hire a good guide and the
souks aware you'll find all kinds of beautiful things to
take back home. It's a fantastic place to wander and
get lost and just have your GPS.
You'll be fine.
This trip really feels like the epitome of do it
all travel. I mean to me, it really does. Like
Morocco is a destination where you can do a lot
a lot of things.
I think do it all travel is for the traveler
that wants to experience a variety in the destination. There
are people who want to go to Tahiti because they
just want to lay on the beach and that's great,
and then there are some people who feel really bored
with that. For those people, I would recommend a destination
like Morocco because You can do so many different things,
from ATVs to sandboarding, to hiking, to a hot air balloon,
to a cooking class to a traditional hammam. You can
go to the coast, you can go see the bluest
of the Blue cities chef shown. There's just so much
to see there that I would say do it all.
Travel is for that person who's got that insatiable appetite
for discovery.
And for adventure.
Tucked within the winding streets of Fez came a different
kind of immersion and at home cooking class in a
traditional Moroccan home, yet another ingredient in Pretty's recipe to
capture the many delights of Morocco.
The cooking class was amazing because it was in a
traditional Moroccan home called a riad. How it happened was
our guide was leading us through the Fes Medina, and
like I told you earlier, it's like a maze and
you turn around a corner and all of a sudden,
he knocks on this big wooden door and you're like,
oh my god.
Where are we going.
The door opens, we walk in and you won't believe
that that's what's behind the door. It's an incredible courtyard
with a fountain in the middle, the sound of the
trickling water, and you look up on the ceiling because
these ceilings are incredibly high, and you see these soft
lights twinkling, surrounded by thousands of colorful mosaic tiles. It
is simply stunning. And this is a traditional Moroccan home.
And an old woman comes bustling out of the kitchen.
She reminds me of my grandma, so we just start
calling her Grandma from then on. And what we're going
to be cooking is the very traditional Moroccan tajine. For
people who don't know the Moroccan tagine itself, I think
it's a dish as well as the clay pod. The
base is a shallow, large base, if you will, and
there's a tall, conical lid that you put on top
of the base, and the lid basically traps all the
juices of everything that you're cooking. It cooks in its
own juice, and that's what makes it so juicy and tasty.
So the grandma stands at the very head of the
table and she's instructing step by step what we have
to do. You know, we have to chop the veggetables.
We then put the vegetables and layer them in the pot,
and then we put the meat on top of that,
and then we sprinkle the spices.
So we're using spices.
Like cumin, turmeric, ginger, saffron, and they all smell so good.
And then we light up the stove, we add some herbs,
and we put the lid on top and let it cook.
This is the.
Opportunity where you experience Morocco beyond the museums and the monuments.
You're experiencing a culture through food. Because as we were cooking,
and as we were listening to Grandma passing down a
recipe that's come from her mom, you realize that everywhere
in the world this is a commonality. People gather around
to cook for loved ones, to have conversation over the table,
and that understanding fosters a certain connection, even though we
can't speak the language.
Right do.
It fosters empathy and I think eventually it fosters tolerance.
You connect very different way, and that's what happened. It
was actually really gorgeous, and just.
When it seemed like the experience had already offered so much,
Morocco had one more lesson in stall out in the
vast openness of the Sahara Desert.
The Sahara Desert is everything that you think Morocco is about.
It's about these rolling sand dunes, best seen at sunset
and sunrise, and all the different ways the light reflects
on the sand dunes. It was absolutely mesmerizing. And these
are real big sand dunes, skyscraper high, kyscraper high. Yes,
they're not playing around here. And a few of the
women were a little nervous for the glamping for the
next couple of nights, and they were like, is there
going to be hot water? Is it going to be cold?
Is it going to be dirty.
The minute we.
Got to the campsite through the dunes and everybody walked
into the tents, they saw the beds, they went into
the shower, they saw the hot water. But more than
all of that, when the burd we music the drums
started outside with the fire in the middle, they forgot
about all of that and everybody gathered around the fire,
and whatever inhibitions they had about the desert went away,
and we started moving to the beat of the drums
and the beat of the music, and somebody suddenly said,
oh my God look on top and we looked up
to the sky and there were a bazillion stars that
had come out, and of course we saw the Milky Way.
Later on, we had a little night photoshoot where I
taught the women how to use their cameras their phones
and how to do a long exposure, how to take
photographs at the Milky Way. And the next day we
did some sandboarding. We did ATVs on the dunes.
Oh God, fabulous.
They rode the dunes beautifully well. They did the sandboarding
really well. And as travel teaches us, the unexpected often happens.
And we got hit with the sandstorm while we were
doing this, and if you've never been in a sandstorm
in the Sahara, oh my god, it's painful.
We have these scarves that.
We've wrapped around our faces, but I cannot describe that feeling.
In that moment, the visibility is pretty much next to nothing.
You can hear the wind howling, the sand is pelting you.
We realize that nature doesn't really care about your comfort.
Nature is just going to do what it's going to
do for us. That was such a lesson. It kind
of reminded us all of how small we are being
out there in the sand dunes, and how alive a
lot of us felt in spite of what was happening
to us. That's why travel is so important, because it
gets you out there in a different way. It gets
you into the unknown. It helps you feel small so
that you understand that the problems that you're facing and
your day to day you'll.
Get through it.
So a lot of the women took these experiences back
with them, and that's what's so powerful about travel.
Okay, one more question. Once you returned home, what did
you take with you from that trip? As well as
the woman you land on this journey?
It made me realize that I'm so much more than
I give myself credit for because I think as women
we have this unique ability to put ourselves down more
than build ourselves up. And as women, we often have
this reputation for taking each other down. But what I
saw on the trip was women lifting each other up.
And I think that's the specific ingredient that I bring
to my trips and I want to continue bringing to
my trips, is how can we women lift each other
up in every way possible? And it helped me reinforce
that we are powerful beings, men and women together. And
I had seen and experienced so many different things in
twelve days that my senses were just so overwhelmed in
a good way. I felt alive in a way that
maybe I had forgotten. And in particular, it was this
destination that helped revive that feeling.
When Pretty first began traveling, it was because she was
willing to question the story of what her life was
supposed to look like and take a bold leap into
the unknown. And in Morocco, she didn't just guide a
group of women through a country. She led them through
their discomfort, fear, and the self limiting stories they held onto,
telling them who they are and what they're capable of doing.
Through it do it all, itinerary, and a series of
leaps into the unknown. Pretty and these women wrote a
new story where they are powerful, connected and capable of
more than what they once believed.
My message to future travelers to Morocco is to keep
an open mind, to get lost, and to boldly step
into the unknown, because that's where you're going to have
the most fantastic time and you won't regret it.
Wherever you're headed next, may be willing to take one
step beyond your comfort zone and find the you that's
waiting on the other side. Wayfinder Life Changing Travel is
a production of Iheart's Ruby Studio. I'm Your host Daniel Scheffler.
Our show's executive producer is Sierra Kaiser, supervising producer Kelly
Kyle and story producer Ryan Amador, with post production by
James Foster and editing by Sierra Spreen. Don't forget to
subscribe to Wayfinder, and please rate and review the show
wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.