The Ash Route - An Introduction
July 2025. Paris has swapped suits and leather briefcases for shorts and Birkenstocks. The city is quieting down, and something in me is speeding up.
Not the urge to escape. The urge to get closer to what is real.
In this in-between — between a sleeping Paris and Bangkok waiting for me — the cigar finds its natural place. It slows down what moves too fast. It adds depth where everything feels light. My body is here. My mind is already elsewhere.
It all started on August 16, 2024.
I am in Bangkok, at the InterContinental. A refined setting, warm light, ceiling mirrors that multiply the space. I look at the menu, prices climb quickly. I stay measured: a Partagas Serie D No.5. A small Cuban robusto — exactly what was needed.
The guillotine cutter is there, my cut is clumsy, slightly angled. No matter. The pleasure is there.
To my right, a man takes the same moment for himself. In front of me, businessmen smoke, drink, negotiate without hurry. From the very first instants, I have the feeling of stepping into a world apart. Not elitist. Parallel. A world that operates on different rules of time.
That moment was foundational. I measure it now.
A year later, I prepare my return to Bangkok with a box of cigars carefully chosen from a tobacconist in the 15th arrondissement — five references in duplicate, to compare, exchange, and share with a friend who has settled there with his family.
The box clears security. We can think about what comes next.
In Bangkok, the question arises quickly: where to smoke all this? We pull out the iPhone, open Maps. The goal isn't really to find a lounge — more a rooftop, a terrace, somewhere high enough to look out over this irresistibly alive city. We fumble, we call, we write. We eventually find somewhere.
I can still feel the sensation of sitting at the top of a skyscraper, cigar in hand, the wind making it hard to keep the burn going, an ordinary lighter standing in for a torch. You learn by doing. And looking back, those beginner's mistakes bring a smile today.
Back in Paris, something had taken root.
My recent passion for cigars was meeting an older pull toward Southeast Asia. And a precise frustration, one I had already felt twice.
First from Paris: looking for a cigar lounge in Bangkok is looking into a void. Then on the ground: cigar in hand, you fumble again. You call hotels, write to bars, you hope. Quality information does not exist. Or barely.
This is not a Parisian problem. It is a problem for the entire region.
The cigar runs against everything that defines our era. Everything moves fast, everything is immediate, everything is forgotten. The cigar, on the other hand, is rarely improvised. Smoking a cigar means committing to at least 45 to 60 minutes. It means committing to yourself, and to the person who made it by hand. Taking your time is a form of recognition.
And that time invites conversation when you are lucky enough to have company — or introspection when you are lucky enough to have a moment alone.
The Ash Route was born from that frustration and that conviction.
A journal about a culture that resists immediacy, in a region that deserves better than a Google Maps list. Articles on lounges, houses, terroirs, the people who keep this culture alive across Asia. And perhaps, one day, the pleasure of sharing a cigar together 10,000 kilometres from Paris.
The route starts here.