Writing from Todra Gorge : The magic continues

I can see that keeping this blog is going to be a much more difficult task than I envisaged.

When did I think I was going to be writing on my new little notebook? During the drive? Impossible! Every moment the scenery changes, every kilometre is a new world opening up, the countryside and villages and towns and donkeys and people and all that is Morocco unfurling in front of us as road continues to the distant horizon.

And writing in the evenings when we make our camp alongside the truck or, on the odd occasion, in a camp-site? No way is that the time to write either! We stop, get out, stretch our legs, open the side lockers on the truck, get out the tents, pitch them, set up the table, set out the wash basins for hand washing and later washing dishes (– two bowls for hands washing and rinsing and three big bowls for dishes – the first with disinfectant, the second with soap and the last for rinsing), pull out the crates with our crockery and cutlery and utensils, dry ingredients and condiments, collect fire wood, get the fire going, fill the kettle with water to boil and whichever two people are the cooks for the evening, start preparing the meal. Then it is having dinner around the fire, clearing up and washing dishes, flapping them dry and packing away everything back into the truck, chewing the fat for a couple of hours, then off to bed. The daily routine therefore does not allow much time for writing.

But here I am tonight – we are in Todra Gorge -- local spelling is Toudgha -- and tonight we are all sleeping on the top of the roof of a building – under a canopy of black sky glittering with a million stars, with the massive rocks of the gorge looming large and strong around us, and while everyone is busy sharing a shisha pipe with a few locals and talking football (there is strong competition amongst the group – especially between Elisa from Finland and David from Sweden), I have slipped away to write a new entry for the blog.

So – where to begin? The last couple of days have been pure magic. First we drove over the Middle Atlas through fields of snow, majestic mountains, cedar forests and the flat moonscape of the desert, then the long climb into and over the High Atlas, through the Legionnaire Tunnel and down the imposing Gorges de Ziz – kilometre upon kilometre of bright lush green fields amongst date palms in this fertile valley which is completely surrounded by rocky mountains and arid, brown desert. The mountains in this area look like they have just recently been dug up – large messy mounds of stone and soil, and I would love to know what the geology of these – so completely different from, for instance, the solid rock mountains that make up the Todra Gorges where we are staying tonight and tomorrow. Way down the valley we stopped to visit a very old casbah – a large building with one entrance which is closed from the end of the last call to prayer at nine pm until the first call to prayer in the morning at five am. (There are adhans or five calls to prayer during the day – 5am, 7am, 12:30pm, 3:30pm, 5:30pm, 7pm and 9pm – when the muezzins chant the dronimng, haunting praises of Allah from their tall minarets in every little village, town and city quarter.

God is great.

I witness that there is no god but God.

I witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.

Rise up for prayer.

Rise up for salvation.

God is great.

There is no god but God,

he calls, and everywhere, all over the Muslim world, as here in Morocco, people leave what they are doing, kneel down towards the east and pray for about five minutes.

These days most of these adhans are recordings, but I cannot help but look up at the minaret every time I hear this soulful singing over the microphone to see if I can catch a glimpse of the muezzin who has such a lovely and moving voice..)

Back to the casbah. Walking through the casbah with a guide is a truly fascinating experience. In this particular on we visited, there are 300 families living and when we arrived, the children had just come out of the medrassa -- the koranic school, and were following us, laughing and shouting, disappearing down this little alley and reappearing over there from another alley. The place is a maze of narrow alleys with openings in the roof every ten metres or so to let in light and air. The 'houses' inside the casbah are windowless, but they do have stairs up onto the roof where they can sit outside to enjoy the sunshine, dry their clothes or chat to the neighbours. At the back of the casbah was an area where each inhabitant has a plot of land to grow vegetables or lusern for animals as well as a number of date palms, all from which they can earn money or use for their own consumption.

After our visit to the casbah, we then stopped at the palace of the very first Moroccan king, now an excellent museum. Just as fascinating – most notably the courtyard around which are the four living quarters for the king's four wives and the hammam with its beautiful domed ceilings. In the entrance to the palace there were the portraits of all the kings – up to the present King Mohammed VI-- him and his father, Hassan II the only two who do not resemble Omar Sharif in is heyday!

And there was more to come: Next we stopped at a building where pre-historic fossils are cleaned and polished and sold. A dashing Berber gave us an excellent talk on the origin and history of the fossils, this part of Morocco having been under the ocean until about 43 million years ago and absolutely abundant with the most wonderful fossils of Trilobytes and fish fossils of every kind. My best were the large jelly fish, their tentacles looking like beautiful flowers floating in the stone.

And no educational tour would be complete without a last visit to the home of 'the last remaining' Touareg family in Morocco – in Ressini, the gateway to the Sahara – where we had a fabulous few hours learning about carpets and fabric and jewellery – and a few of the group even made a purchase or two, after some serious and impressive bargaining sessions! We were then treated to delicious Touareg pizza – flat bread filled with spicy beef mince and grilled and the best mint tea – all served in the shade of camel wool tents, whilst lounging on couches – feeling for all the world like the last of the Sultans of Araby!

And then, for many of us, the highlight of our visit to Morocco so far: We drove deep into the desert, over gut-wrenching – and shock absorber-wrecking corrugated iron dirt roads, until we finally reached our destination – a beautiful adobe building deep in the desert where we parked our truck, each got on to a camel and we set off into the desert – the only sounds the afternoon desert breeze blowing past your head and the soft plod-shluff-plod-shluff-plod of the camels' footsteps, their huge soft feet splaying open as they step gently onto the fine red sand, then dragging over the sand into the next footprint, the rhythm as old as time as your body sways with the camel's movement, up the side of the dune, over the top, down the other side...It brought back such memories of scenes from Lawrence of Arabia but this was one of those moments when you keep quiet because these kids just give quizzical looks when you mention something that dates from so way before their time.

We reached the Bedouin camp well before sunset and with plenty of time for everyone to climb to the top of the highest dune above the camp, called Erg Chebbi – in the Merzouga region. Then, after sunset over the dunes, back to the camp again where we all gathered in a camel wool tent for a feast of chicken tagine, followed by the sweetest of sugary sweet oranges and again the ubiquitous mint tea. The evening was rounded off with a drum session by four of the camel drivers – and whether it was them being so stoned on the hash that they smoke like Stuyvesant Lights, or us being so stoned on the smoke from their smoking, I am not sure, but it was a magical evening and we all slept like logs rolled in our camel blankets and on the plush layers of carpets and rugs thrown over the sand floor in the tents. Waking up early with the sun peeping over the dunes, the air so fresh and clean (most noticeable after the sweet and intoxicating smoky air of the previous night!), a delicious breakfast waiting for us – freshly squeezed orange juice, fresh bread and desert honey, and we were all ready for the two hour camel ride back to base.

I could write about the pain the poor lads suffered on the camels' backs and the contortions they had to perform to try to get comfortable, some of them sitting in weird positions not quite Lawrence of Arabia-esque at all, trying hard not to complain too much about damage done to the prospects of future progeny, but I shall leave one of the boys to write that story.

Personally I loved the experience so much – from the moment we arrived on the edge of the sand dunes, the camel ride, the stay over in the Bedouin camp, the starry night skies, the drums and the kif-by-proxy, the tagine and the oranges, the blue men serving us hand and foot – that I dropped a red button in the sand. With the many different little tracks we saw in the smooth sand the following morning (how I wished I had listened more closely to Sir Richard Attenborough telling me in a whisper what all those wonderful little desert creatures were called...) I somehow think that this button will find a home in a little desert lizard or scarab or perhaps even a sand snake's home, rather than a person finding it and picking it up and taking it home. Somehow I know this special button will be claimed by the beautiful Sahara desert – my first meeting with which has already given me so very much pleasure and joy and wonder.