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ENNLIT

The Salt
and the Light.

Salt is the sea, the food, the tears. Light is what happens when you stop pretending. Seven days in Salento, deep and light, all at once.

A group journey · 25 October – 1 November 2026

The invitation

A journey for three people.

I asked myself a simple question. What would bring me the most joy to do?

Then I looked at the nonna next door. She dances the pizzica. She eats pasta every day. She swims in the sea. She has never once asked whether any of it was good for her.

Maybe that is already most of it. Add one conversation that goes all the way down, and you have this week.

I am Nikita. Half Dutch, half Italian, and this land is where I found my roots. I guide people back to themselves, and I laugh a lot while I do it. Our patterns are ridiculous. Why not laugh at them?

People open when they are fed, welcomed, and asked to be nothing at all. This land does half of it. I am here for the other half.

Nikita standing on the rocks at the edge of the sea in Salento

What you cannot book

Sometimes in heels,
most of the time barefoot.

Some days you eat a simple lunch on a rock with salt still on your skin. Other days you sit down at a table with a good bottle of wine and a menu worth staying three hours for. This week is both.

I have lived here a year now, in the nature, by myself. The whole community knows me by now — the strange wild Dutch woman who came to live here alone. That means when we walk into a restaurant, we are not tourists eating dinner. We are at Donna Maria's table. We are at the port where everyone knows my name. We are on the boat because Giuseppe is my friend, not because I made a booking.

That is what you cannot buy anywhere else. Not the coast, not the food, not even the pizzica. Those exist for everyone. What you cannot get is being brought inside it by someone who lives here.

The week

Seven days of letting
yourself be fully here.

Long slow lunches that turn into afternoons. Hikes along the cliffs with the whole coast underneath you. A day on the boat with my friend Giuseppe of Nerea Escursioni. Making pasta with your hands. Dancing the pizzica. I don't know if you know what that is, but I will show you, and if you want we can even take a lesson together. Ceramics. Live music. Painting. Eating too much and not apologising for it.

One afternoon we go for lunch at the most authentic masseria I know. It is full of antiques, collected over a lifetime by the man who lives there. We sit down and only get up hours later, and somewhere in between we talk about the meaning of life.

And I want you to laugh. Really laugh, the kind where you cannot breathe and your eyes are streaming and you have no idea any more whether you are laughing or crying. That happens here. It happens a lot.

Giuseppe of Nerea Escursioni opening the wine on the boat below the Salento cliffs
The day on the boat
A narrow inlet on the Salento coast with steps cut into the rock and people swimming
The water, still warm in October
Stone steps rising from the rocks on the Salento coast
The paths along the coast
The cliff top above the sea at Tricase Porto, Salento

This is a week of saying yes. To the food, to the wine, to the music, to the people of this land — a culture that still knows how to live slowly and loudly at the same time.

Nikita standing with her arms open, laughing, among the trees

Deep and light

The laughter and the tears
live in the same week.

My deepest work happens in personalized retreats, one person at a time. People come to me when they are stuck. When they are ready to look into a real mirror. When something big in their life has to change and they are finally ready for it.

That is a different journey and a different week. This is not that week. This one begins with pleasure. Culture, food, laughter, the sea, the land.

But I am still who I am. I have been guiding people for years, and there is nothing I love more than bringing someone closer to themselves. So when something opens up at the table, or on a walk, or at two in the morning, I know what to do with it.

There is room for all of it.

The Salento coast at dusk seen from Tricase Porto

Il Sentiero means the path. The path back to yourself.

Who this is for

You are welcome, with
everything you bring.

Someone who wants to experience something completely different for once. Maybe you need inspiration. Maybe there is something to process. Maybe you are grieving, or you have lost your way for a while. Maybe everything is going well and you simply want to live fully for a week.

All of it is welcome. It is deep and it is light, both at once.

Day by day

How the week moves.

Sun 25 Oct

Arrival

You land in Brindisi at 19:40. I pick you up at the airport. An hour and twenty minutes down through the olive groves to Tricase. Something to eat waiting at the house, the fireplace on. A cup of tea before sleeping.

Mon 26 Oct

Landing

Slow breakfast. A walk at the port, the sea, a swim for whoever wants one. A long lunch at Donna Maria. The afternoon is yours. In the evening we sit together for the first time properly, and then something simple to eat at home.

One day

On the boat

A full day at sea with Giuseppe. Coves you cannot reach from the land, swimming if the water is willing, a puccia on board and a glass of something cold. Nothing else planned. In the evening, if the mood is right, there is sometimes an open jam at a masseria nearby.

One day

The masseria

A morning walk and a swim at Marina Serra. Coffee and a pasticciotto at the port. Then the long lunch at the masseria, hours of it, surrounded by a lifetime of collected antiques. The evening stays open — the fireplace, or a glass of wine at Caffè Pisanelli.

One day

Hike and pasta

The Sentiero delle Cipolliane and the Ciolo gorge in the morning, cliffs and sea the whole way. A simple lunch afterwards. An empty afternoon. Then we make pasta together and eat what we made.

One day

Tricase

An afternoon wandering Tricase, the shops, one of the best gelati in Italy at G. & Co. Ceramics at six, in a real studio, with your hands in the clay. Then dinner at Locanda del Levante, or pizza at Mamma Li Turchi.

Sat 31 Oct

The last day

A free morning. Lunch at Vardaceli. A pizzica lesson in the late afternoon. Then the closing dinner, and the last night together.

Sun 1 Nov

Departure

A slow brunch. We leave for the airport at eleven.

The four middle days move around each other. The boat takes whichever day the sea is calmest, and everything else arranges itself around it. That is how weeks work here.

And sometimes, if the week offers it: a sunset aperitivo at San Gregorio. A second hike along the Via del Sale. The coast road to Otranto with apericena at Porto Badisco. An afternoon in a hill town, Specchia or Castro. A village festa, if there is one on.

Before and after

The week is longer
than the week.

Before

One week before

The four of us have a video call together. We look at what everyone is bringing and what you want from this week. So you already know each other's faces before you arrive. And if two of you want to travel here together, you will have found each other by then.

After

In the weeks that follow

We do it again — one group call, to hear how everyone is doing. And you get a call with me alone. A week like this often wakes something up in you. Sometimes you only feel what it really was two weeks later, standing in your own kitchen. I want to hold space for that too.

The practical part

Three places.
Including me, four of us.

25 October – 1 November 2026

Everything the week holds

Seven nights near Tricase and along the Salento coast. Three places — with me, we are four. That is exactly the point.

Included

  • Seven nights in your own private room
  • Every meal — every breakfast, every lunch and dinner out, at the trattorias and masserie where I eat myself
  • All drinks, including the wine
  • A full day on the sea with Giuseppe, with food and aperitivo on board
  • Pasta making, ceramics, a pizzica lesson
  • The long lunch at the masseria
  • All transport once you are here
  • Airport pick-up and return, Brindisi
  • My presence and my guidance, all week
  • The group call before, the group call after, and your own private call with me afterwards

Investment

€3,960 per person, all inclusive

Not included: your flight and your travel insurance. The week runs in Dutch or English, whichever suits the group.

Booking

How it works

Write to me. We have a short call, twenty minutes or so, just to feel whether this is right. It goes both ways. You want to know who you are travelling with, and I want to know who I am bringing into a group of four.

If it is a yes on both sides, you receive a payment link. Your place is held once the deposit of €1,369 has come in. The rest is due ten days before departure.

The deposit is not refundable, because the moment you book I reserve your room, the boat and the workshops. From ten days before departure that applies to the full amount. This is why I ask you to take travel insurance with cancellation cover — if something happens in your life I want you properly covered, not negotiating with me. If fewer than two people book, the journey does not run and you get everything back.

If you would like to extend your stay, I can support you in that as well. If you feel you need a few days of integration or deepening, everything is possible, because I personalize all my experiences. Simply tell me your wish and we discuss the possibilities together.

Write to me

Questions people ask

Before you write.

Do I need to know anyone?

No. None of you will know each other. That is part of what makes it work. You meet on the video call a week before.

Is this therapy?

No. I bring everything I know with me, but this is a journey, not a treatment. Some conversations will go as deep as anything you have done in a therapy room. Others will happen over lunch with wine.

Do I have to join everything?

No. If you want to sleep, sleep. If you want to sit by the sea alone all afternoon, do that. Nothing here is compulsory.

Do I need to be fit?

We walk along the cliffs, an hour or two, on uneven ground. If you can walk comfortably for two hours you are fine. There are gentler alternatives if you need them.

Do I need to be spiritual?

Not at all. Bring whatever you believe or don't believe.

What if I fall apart?

Then you fall apart, and you are held while it happens. That is what I am there for. It is also why there are only three of you.

What about food I can't eat?

Tell me on the call and it is handled. Everything is cooked or ordered around you.

What is the weather like?

Late October in Salento is the best kept secret of the year. Soft light, warm days, the olive harvest, and not a tourist in sight. The clocks go back on the morning you arrive, so the evenings are long and dark and made for fireplaces and tables. Bring walking shoes, something for swimming, and something warm for the evenings.

The people of this week

None of this is a package.

These are the places I eat, the boat I go out on, the counter where I have my coffee. They are here because I know them, not because anyone is paying anyone. If you come, you meet them.

Giuseppe · Nerea Escursioni

The boat, the coves, the wine at anchor

Donna Maria

The long lunch that turns into an afternoon

Locanda del Levante

Dinner in the old centre of Tricase

Mamma Li Turchi

Pizza, when pizza is what the day asks for

Trattoria Vardaceli

Lunch on the last day

Caffè Pisanelli

A glass of wine on the piazza in the evening

G. & Co

One of the best gelati in Italy. I am not exaggerating

The first step

Is this a yes in your body,
before your head
has caught up?

Then write to me. That is usually the right kind of yes. Come find me in Salento, and let me show you how you can liberate yourself. The way I liberated myself.

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Nikita · Il Sentiero

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Hi — there is one place left this autumn for a private retreat. And from 2 to 6 December I am hosting an Energy Clearing Retreat with Barbara van der Wulp. If this awakens something in you, write to me.

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