It’s an appealing idea – and an intimidating one. You’re in Morocco for the very first time with a few days to kill, and just once in this life you want to experience the famous Moorish bath or hammam (also called a Turkish bath, except that’s really a misnomer if you’re not in Turkey). Can you master your nervousness at taking a communal steam bath with a bunch of strangers when you don’t even speak the language?
In my case – no, you can’t. And now I regret it. If you’re ever in the same situation (as I hope some of you will be in November of this year and the next), pluck up the courage and give it a try.
Luckily, I have a much braver other-half. Enter M, a doctor from Costa Rica with a much more intrepid taste for adventure. While I hid in the shade of a nearby cafe drinking mint tea and orange juice, she gave our local hammam a try, and came out absolutely glowing.
She now considers it one of her favourite travel experiences – which is why I asked her to put it into her own words for the rest of this piece. Thanks, M!
She writes:
“In Morocco for the first time and without much planning, we made our way to the Blue Pearl, a beloved city in the north of Morocco officially known as Chefchaouen (Chaouen to the locals).
After a bit of confusion around the erratically-scheduled bus that got us from Tangier and the disreputable taxi that got us to our accommodation (and then tried to overcharge us), we felt deeply travel-worn when we arrived. In other words: the perfect state for seeking out a hammam.
Hammam is the Arabic word for bath. More specifically, for the type of steam bath in public use where locals attend on a weekly or fortnightly basis to enjoy deep cleansing and relaxing social activities. Most commonly associated with Islamic culture, hammams are a distant inheritance from the Roman steam baths thermae – and they can usually be found in old buildings where a pipe system was built to channel the heat and pump steam through to its occupants.
In hammams, genders never mix. Men and women are allotted different times of the day to use the baths so they can’t even bump into each other.
I initially had little clue about what the hammams were or what they actually entail. Curiosity drove me to try the experience. After being guided by some of the locals, I was pointed to the best (ie. most authentically popular) public hammam in town.
One thing I needed to wrap my head around before going in: in hammams, you enlist help to scrub yourself, either a friend or a stranger. In my case, our riad owner guided me to ask the front desk lady to have someone scrub me, a service usually offered for a small price (around 40 DH, roughly 10 US dollars).The entire experience cost a few dollars more than that – because I had to bring in my own soap paste, scrubbing glove and sponge, which I got in the little shop right in front of the hammam.
With my cleaning set in hand, there was no going back! I was both slightly anxious and determined as Mike said goodbye at the door and I stepped in.
It’s easy to feel a bit disconcerted at first.There are no windows and the air is dense and humid.
An older lady dressed in a long skirt with an apron and wraps of cloth around her chest and head approached and greeted me. I’m clueless as I don’t speak Arabic so I try to say hello in English and French. Unsurprisingly she quickly spots I’m not a local and gives me an understanding grin.
In her limited English, she asked me if I wanted to go on my own or if I wanted someone to assist me. Option two please! She called another lady who quickly addressed me and told me in her best heavily accented English “get naked, put all your clothes in this bag, leave just your panties on and then follow me.” (Life comes at you fast in a hammam.)
After giving myself a quick inner pep talk, I did as she asked and walked back to hand my clothes to the front desk lady. Everyone seemed amused by my shyness, as I had never been naked like this in ‘public’ before.
Clutching my tiny cleaning set, I followed the lady in who would be performing the whole hammam scrubbing experience on me.
Steam became more dense and hotter as we moved forward. With limited visibility we moved from room to room, to finally reach the steamiest of them where incredibly high ceilings and beautiful moorish arches welcomed my eyes in every corner I looked. After a couple of minutes, the eyes became used to the fog and I could see more of my surroundings. The room was almost empty except for two ladies and a third lady with a little girl, all self-scrubbing.
We reached a spot somewhere in the middle and my guide laid some towels on the floor. She then told me I could lay down on the floor now, first on my back. With no idea what to expect, following orders and trusted the goodness of the world, while she went away to fill some containers of hot water.
Then it began: she covered me with the oily soap paste I had brought in, grabbed the glove (which has a rough, almost sandpaper texture) and started scouring the dirt off me. There’s no easy way to say it: this stung … although it also left my skin glowing, in that way you only get from a really vigorous abrasion.
She would occasionally instruct me to move my legs or raise my arms. Other than that it was just energetic bouts of scrubbing – until a colossal bucket of water splashed on me. All around me, the water looked grey – all the dead skin she’d removed. I had never scrubbed myself in this way or considered so much dirt could come out of my skin (and really, this is one of the joys of a hammam visit – this moment of realising that for the first time in years, you’re absolutely clean.)
From here, it was over an hour of deep scrubs, water splashes and moving rooms from the hottest and steamiest to the coolest. (My scrubbing guide explained that the hottest room opens up all your pores, and the cooler rooms gradually get it – and you! – adjusted to normal temperatures again.)
I can’t tell you how much lighter, cleaner and happier I felt when I emerged to meet my partner and gulp down glasses of Moroccan mint tea, just a short walk away.
On the face of it, going to a hammam is challenging. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I’m also aware that if you’re not comfortable with undressing and being around other naked humans who are complete strangers, the learning curve is a little steep. But what struck me most was probably the beauty in it all – how vulnerable yet safe it felt.
It was both a humbling and mesmerising experience that I would brave anyone to try at least once in a lifetime.”
Join Wheel & Anchor in November next year for an exploration of the great cities of Casablanca, Marrakech and Fes before heading across the Atlas Mountains, the barrier between the coastal regions and the vast Sahara Desert. Here we’ll experience the harsh beauty of the landscape in a luxurious tented camp. Get all the details here.