Morocco

I wanted to go to Morocco for one reason- it appeared on the easy jet route map. When you are standing in a typically lengthy French queue at Lyon aeroport, there is little else to do than stare at the other (non-Gatwick) destinations and fantasise about being there.

Marrakech is just one of the few non-Europe destinations and one I had vague ideas of due to its prominence as a student favourite (though looking back I wonder if that is true or my own misconception as students are famously attracted by alcohol which would rule Arab countries out).

When skit and I came to choose our holiday destination (and for some reason I don't recall it ever being in doubt that we would travel somewhere together), and after she so cruelly discarded Hawaii as an option, it was the first country I thought of.

 Being British, I have been firmly schooled to believe that a holiday destination ought to be warmer than your usual climate so Morocco suited that criteria, not terrifically easy when you live in California. On skit's side though almost anywhere would have been warmer and it seemed more than a little extreme to turn in a tepid British climate for cruel and suffering heat in a country mainly comprising desert. But in pushing out our trip to September, and maybe by me just being really stubborn about not considering somewhere else (Iceland? Couldn't they think of a more appealing name?), she conceded. And in the end, the weather was not so extreme (20s consistently, maybe pushing 30) and it even rained. In the Sahara.

And that was another reason to go to Morocco: to see the Sahara. I have been to deserts in America and Israel but there was always some disappointment to contend with (well, except for Death Valley which was sheer insanity and surprised but never disappointed) in that there weren't sand dunes.

Our introduction to Morocco was Marrakech which was a true baptism by fire. Skit reasoned, in her expert trip planning no doubt perfected through two years of lengthy multi-continent/country tours, that we would need to be acclimatised to the culture prior to embarking on a road trip in the country. We certainly got acclimatised. In spades.

 The medina (old town) is a warren of narrow streets with the occasional square or main road thoroughfare. Crossing any road or indeed alley was a risky enterprise as the space would be shared between cars (grand taxis and petit taxis included), scooters, bicycles, donkeys, handcarts and foolhardy pedestrians without signs of organisation or law abidingness. When we did come across a pedestrian light controlled crossing, we were not sure how to use it or rather worried that the drivers did not. I typically forced skit in front of me as a human shield but then realised that the worst dangers came from behind so I just broke down in panic until skit managed to get me home to our serene riad (B&B).

 The souks of Marrakech (and of course Morocco as a whole) are famous and though I was somewhat experienced with the souks of Jerusalem, I didn't anticipate their expanse in Marrakech. Stretching into all corners of the Medina, the souks were twisty, turntable, disorientating alley after alley of similar looking stalls selling leather, metal lanterns, teapots, pottery, scarves, spices, nougat, pastries, carved wood and more. Now and again you'd come upon a souk that seemed to specialise in one good more than another (though that was more obvious in Fes which on the whole was a better organised, easier to navigate and less life-threatening medina). The animal hide souk was so foul smelling I gagged as we breezed through and gagged again when we realised we had gone the wrong way and breezed back. The spice and food areas however smelt divine and in general, there were several interesting and pleasant if not actually attractive smells associated with the Medina. The wood sellers were especially keen in thrusting cedar boxes into our faces for the smell.

 Marrakech also had palaces and medersas to its name. Moroccans, as a generalisation, seem to really go in for interior decorating (they also go in for using things until they falling apart and then discarding them anywhere leading to an incredible amount of littering, possibly due to lack of municipal facilities for waste disposal). The palaces and Koranic schools were exquisitely decorated in such a way to make any British royal residence or Oxbrigde college feel ashamed. Beautiful geometric patterns from coloured tiles and intricately carved wood and stone adorned every part of Palais Bahia and Ben Youssef Medersa in Marrakech and indeed the medersas in Fes plus the glimpses of mosques we were permitted. Elegant and well proportioned courtyards often had a water feature (a reflecting pool or a fountain) at the centre and we would hang around for ages until they were cleared or tourists just to get the perfect shot.

 In general, tourism was not high as this was on the edge of the hot season (it just cooled from extreme heat the week before we arrived) but Marrakech's tourist attractions seemed adequately packed for our purposes. It was when we left this city however that we felt like rarer beasts and typically stayed in near-empty accommodations.

 After three says of the sights, scents and scares of Marrakech, we hired a car and braved the country proper. Getting out of Marrakech was as much "throwing ourselves in at the deep end" as being in the city. Driving through Moroccan cities and towns is more horrific than the 101 at rush hour (just). Traffic is strictly monitored and penalised for infringements by the ever-present police force (we were paranoid about speeding so watched our speed constantly but we still got warned once and our "papiers" checked a few times) but they are helpless to stop the descent into chaos near a bab (gate to the medina) where traffic becomes a true free for all between the cars, trucks and vans and the vast amounts of foot traffic not to mention the donkeys, scooters etcetera (told you not to mention it). Add to that poor maps, inadequate signage and risk-taking drivers and you have quite the adventure.

We adventured south through the magnificent High Atlas range (don't let them into contact with the Anti Atlas or they will both explode). The road was lined with stalls selling quartz. When we stopped to take in the view, it was a race to get back into the car before we attracted the attention of one of the many toothless men proffering suspiciously sparkly bits of "quartz" like wasps at a picnic.

After the mountain pass was, well, passed, we were on the trail of a thousand kasbahs. The construction material of choice in much of Morocco was mud. It makes sense- make a house, patch it up often and then when you get bored (or, say, the water source moves) leave and build a home somewhere else. I understand the slight surprise of European people (such as the delightful Edith who wrote an exceptionally good travelogue for Morocco in 1900 which skit often read aloud to me for the sheer entertainment value) at the neglect of old structures but really, when a purpose has served, let nature reclaim what is hers. Especially if it is made of mud and looks delightfully daliesque after a few decades of abandonment to the occasional rains.

So en route there were a multitude of melting mud structures nested in the heart or upon the edges of oases in the desert landscape. Each one demanded attention and some contemplation of the romance of the situation especially the rather ruined ones near our hotel that night (itself a restored kasbah) that were sumptuously lit by the setting sun, making the orangey red earth even richer in colour.

The day if the kasbahs was replaced by a day of the gorges as we drove both the glorious Dades and Todra gorges, the "Grand Canyons" of Morocco (not even close but still very worthy of visiting). That night we stayed in a cave, yes a cave, carved into the natural rock of the Todra gorge. A riad, a kasbah and now a cave- what next?

Well, next was a drive into the Sahara to the sand dunes of Egg Chebbi. The drive was eventful as we were hit by a sand storm and a rain storm (on combination- the rain storm helping to bring an end to the sand) but through skittish skill we made it to our palace for the night (I can think of no other work to describe the large abode comprising a series of courtyards built across multiple generations at an oasis by the dunes. The real highlight though of the accommodation list was the Berber tent cradled by the sand dunes of the Sahara itself.

I think all children (raised remotely from deserts) must conjure in their mind the Sahara when the word desert is uttered. It is a magical place of Arabian adventure, often compared to the sea but infinitely more exotic and mystical. I've seen deserts elsewhere but somewhat thirsted for the desert of my imagination.

It was just skit, myself, Omar, our guide, and two camels. Skit graciously let me take the camel burdened with saddle bags for our trek into the desert leading to more pain, nay agony by the next day, than I felt was strictly necessary but nevertheless, I loved the lurching march of the camels into the land where stories came from. After just over an hour, we arrived at our tents and attempted to mitigate the woes of travel by camel by clamouring up a sand dune and watching the sunset, casting long shadows across the sweeping and orange landscape.

Post Sahara, we initially felt like the terrain could offer us nothing to delight us ever again. But then the Middle Atlas Mountains surprised us. At this high altitude they clearly had snowy winters and the houses had Swiss style steep roofs. There were vast expanses of green pastures and even areas of woodland (complete with roaming Barbery Apes). It reminded me quite bizarrely of parts of France, near the Alps.

Fes rests just north of the Middle Atlas Mountains and is a distinct contrast to the essentially desert/oasis city of Marrakech. Surrounded by rolling hills capable of sustaining agriculture and closer to the north coast for trade, it felt less like an obscure and isolated Arab-Berber trading city and somewhat more modern. Notably, women ran businesses. In Marrakech and South of the Atlas Mountains in general, we rarely saw women. They harangued us in Jmarra market in Marrakech to get henna tattoos and there was a waitress at one more modern restaurant, but increasingly I felt like the gender was missing from the business/tourism world and instead regulated to begging on the streets (often with babies in the arms) which appeared to be predominantly a female activity. In Fes however we ate at a restaurant run by two women and did most souvenir shopping in a fabulous woman-run ceramics shop. It might seem like a little thing but the relative modernity of Fes in this respect was a great plus to me.

Fes contains many of the same draws as Marrakech though slightly fewer attractions overall. The souks seemed better organised (the types of souk were wonderfully distinct with, to my eye, better workmanship and slightly lower prices and less expectation that you would haggle) and the tanneries were definitely a highlight. I was worried about the smell (the animal hides are bleached with pigeon droppings and urine is used for dye fixing) but the co-op that drew us onto their terrace offered bunches of mint to mitigate the stench (successfully). Seeing the pots of dye and bleach and the traditional practices in dyeing the leather gave context to the multitude of stalls selling leather goods both in Fes and Marrakech (and one assumes country-wide).

Fes perhaps is better situated than Marrakech in terms of day trips. The jaw-dropping ruins of Volubilis dating back to 6BCE were must-sees by skit and I relished the surprisingly well-preserved Roman town also. The mosaics and detailed stonework, exposed to the elements for two thousand years, lay amongst columns and arches and it took only a modicum of imagination to see how this used to look during the Roman Empire.

Much of the site, as other sites such as the palaces of Marrakech, had however been ransacked by a diabolical 16th century sultan who Edith described in colourful terms as killing thousands of slaves just to build an extension to his palace. We called in on Meknes to see a small part of his grand palace: the granaries.

Apparently, he had 10 000 horses and wanted to store enough grain to feed them in case of siege for twenty years. Hence he built some quite glorious grain stores which were surprisingly worth visiting. We shunned the rest of Meknes though it probably deserved more exploring but this was, alas, our final day and we needed to get to Marrakech for our flight out the next day necessitating a quick overnight stay at Rabat.

This, the capital city and most European of all our destinations, was the place that disturbed our stomachs, or rather the place that gave us diarrhoea. We had been warned about avoiding local water and not eating anything that may have been washed in it (salads) but quite quickly on leaving Marrakech, ignored the advice. Moroccan salads of tomato and cucumber were common accompaniments to meals in the desert (that or soup) and we tended to be hungry and besides, they tasted good. There weren't problems however. In fact, one person in Merzouga (Sahara sand dunes town) explained to us that everything had been washed in boiled water- it appears that they are more than eager to get away from the reputation of making tourists ill. In general, our food was pretty good: Tagines for the most part, omelettes, brochettes/kebabs and couscous. The best dish was in the Todra gorge where it was essentially a tagine fused with a tartifette and the most needed dish was simply meat from a roadside stall eaten with bread when we were exhausted from our sejourn in the Sahara tent. We were also quite big fans of the breakfast staple the msemmen pancake oh and the obligatory mound of melon that succeeded every meal.

Leaving Morocco was made easier by being ill but we had pretty much fallen for the country and wanted to explore more. Another time though, another time.