What is it like wandering a Moroccan souk for the first time?

The first ten minutes are a controlled panic, and that's normal — everyone goes through it. You pass under an arch into the souk and the daylight dims to shafts cutting through woven-reed roofing, the lanes narrow, and the input arrives all at once: cones of saffron and paprika and ochre in colours that don't look real, walls of brass lanterns throwing pierced patterns, slippers stacked to the ceiling in every shade, the clang-clang-clang of a man hammering a copper pot, a moped revving through a gap that shouldn't fit it. Your senses don't know where to land. You just turn slowly and try to take it in.

Then the smells layer on top of the sights. There's the warm leather-and-pigeon-dung tang near the tannery quarter, the sweet hit of fresh mint and dried rose, cumin and ginger from the spice stalls, woodsmoke and grilling lamb, sometimes a wave of incense or orange blossom from a perfumer. And the sound is constant — the call of vendors, 'just looking is free, my friend, come, come,' the murmured Arabic and French, a snatch of music, the bargaining two stalls over, the donkey cart driver shouting 'balak! balak!' to clear a path. It's a lot. You feel about three steps behind the whole time.

The hassle is real, and it's the part first-timers find hardest. Shopkeepers will call you in, follow a sentence or two, quote you a wild opening price, and the occasional faux-guide will insist a street is 'closed' or offer to show you the tannery and then demand money. None of it is dangerous — it's commerce, and it's their job — but coming at you cold it can feel relentless. The trick is to soften: a smile, 'la, shukran' (no, thank you), keep walking, don't break stride for the hard sells, and treat the whole thing as a game rather than a threat.

And then something shifts, usually by the second day. You stop flinching, you start enjoying the theatre, you learn to wander without a destination and let the lanes pull you. You'll find the quiet workshop where an old man is inlaying a box with mother-of-pearl, share a glass of tea you didn't intend to buy a rug over, watch the light come down golden through the slatted roof. The souk goes from assault to enchantment. My advice for the first time: go in the morning when it's calmer, don't try to buy anything, get gloriously lost on purpose, and just feel it. The shopping can wait for when you've found your feet.