#9471 Guarding the Entrance to the Old Port in Mombasa, Kenya

The immense coral walls of Fort Jesus tower above you in the equatorial sun. You run your fingers along the sill of a gun loop worn smooth by the touches of 400 years, and suddenly you're a young Portuguese soldier gazing out past your musket over the crystal waters of the Indian Ocean. You can see a square-rigged man-of-war out beyond the reef and, below you in the channel, a local dhow with its lateen sail full in the northeasterly kaskazi tradewind. And then the heat and the sounds from the alleyways of Old Town drag you forward through the years — the siege of 1698, the ensuing years of Omani Arab control, Brittania’s fastidious empire — to modern Kenya. Reawakened, you look down upon an explosion of frangipani blossoms, smell cloves on the air, and note with relief that the dhow is still making its way through the palm-fringed channel.