albeit an excruciating one, as his
hands discover your weaknesses and
what you need to work on. Based in
the South of France, he leads Malabar
Retreats in Zimbabwe, Mozambique,
Andalusia and beyond.(^7) Karim Hamadouche
BARTENDER
Hotel des Grands Boulevards,
Paris
With a signature slow-fast-slow dance
each time he picks up a shaker, Karim
keeps his cocktails simple with only a
few ingredients. “If you’re going to put
in fennel, then you want to taste fennel,”
he says. Classics get a tweak: lavender
to a gimlet, coconut to a daiquiri. Karim
started behind the bar as a kid in his
Algerian father’s Parisian brasserie,
before shifting to clubs. Hotels are more
civilised, he says, “now I have a baby
boy”. Gotta love him. When Karim is
at the rooftop bar, choose the De Notre
Potager cocktail inuenced by what’s
been picked from the hotel’s terrace
garden; at The Shell bar downstairs, a
Cae Corretto with a hint of absinthe.
Like all pro bartenders, Karim is all
about the chat—and still knows the Paris
scene (rue Frochot is hot, he says).
(^8) Kris Helgen
GUIDE
TCS Worldwide
He has extraordinary credentials,
having identied new species such as
the Skywalker hoolock gibbon, the
Greater monkey-faced bat, and the
olinguito of the Andes Mountains, as
well as 100 or so other new mammal
species. He’s also charming, erudite
and funny. Formerly the Head of
Mammalogy at the National Museum
of Natural History in Washington D.C.,
Kris is now teaching in Adelaide, and
occasionally leaves his books to lead
round-the-world private-jet tours. He’s
also hard-hitting on climate change and
the biodiversity crisis, and aware he’s in
a unique position of inuence given the
(powerful, wealthy) types of travellers
he guides. “I’m just a nice guy, so people
tend to listen,’’ he says. Not only a nice
guy. He’s a total inspiration. M.J.C.
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