In Tangier, just getting off the ferry from Spain, I walk along the promenade in the cool morning air, then climb the stairs towards the kasbah. My Morocco journey started three days ago at St Pancras station in London and spent one night each in Barcelona and Algeciras. I don’t feel any of the discomfort or awkwardness that a flight would cause. I saw the landscapes change: the lavender fields of Provence, the peach orchards of Catalonia, then the wild highland magic of La Mancha. Yesterday I saw my first Arabic sign in Spain. Now Tangier’s prepared kasbah seems like the next natural step. I enter a narrow alley and pass an old couple; The woman wears a straw hat decorated with fresh flowers, and her husband wears a thick woolen shawl.
The Kasbah is quiet. I stumble upon the only place where things are happening: the meat market. By Western supermarket standards, this market is a challenge: Blood-dripping carcasses hanging on hooks, yards of them, a man picking out steaming entrails with his bare hands.
Morocco was once a place where Westerners gravitated towards a fair dose of culture shock. In 1867, Mark Twain embarked on the grand tour that would culminate in his classic, The Innocents Abroad: “We wanted something completely and uncompromisingly foreign – foreign from top to bottom – foreign from center to periphery – foreign inside, outside and all around – we wanted nothing that would dilute its foreignness.” There is nothing; there is nothing to remind us of other people or of any country under the sun. And lo! in Tangier we found this…”
He wasn’t the only one. William Burroughs wrote Naked Lunch in a hotel room in Tangier. Jack Kerouac, Tennessee Williams and Paul Bowles came for inspiration. Then came the musicians: Graham Nash hopped on the Marrakesh Express in 1966; Hendrix’s Castles Made of Sand were inspired by Essaouira on the Atlantic coast, while the Rolling Stones nearly suffered disaster there in 1967.
But that’s history: what about now?
We return to the Atlas Mountains and a miraculously green ribbon of fertility winds through a slot canyon
Tangier station is clean and cool, the high-speed train leaves on time and soon we are speeding towards the coast. In Casablanca I switch to an older, slower train but to be honest I’m happy with the change of pace. I want to see the surroundings: magnificent bougainvilleas, vast pastures full of flocks and shepherds, houses built for both heat and extreme cold. When I arrived at the station in Marrakech, it was as bustling and bustling as Europe could offer. They are building new sewers in the Kasbah. No one approaches me to offer me a joint or hold my arm.
In fact, I’ll confess to a pang of anxiety. Has Morocco been disinfected? Does everyone go home happy with an Instagram account full of horizon pools and golf courses? However, as soon as you enter the kasbah, this fear begins to disappear.
I have a night in Marrakesh to meet my sister Jo, who has arrived separately (we are here before the September 8 earthquake, but I hear the signs of its impact have cleared up in the capital). We set out immediately to explore. The old city is not a labyrinth but rather a complex series of interconnected labyrinths. If you don’t get lost within a minute, you’re not trying hard enough. Finally we emerge into Djemaa el-Fna square, where there is a snake charmer whose snake looks like it has swallowed all the drugs. Food vendors shout: “Dude, you should eat here. We are the Best. It is guaranteed that there will be no diarrhea.”
The square looks magnificent when the lamps are on. A boy runs next to us in one of the alleys and tries to set fire to the leather belt to prove that this is real. And in front of me is a young man with messy hair, a dusty backpack, tattered boots, and his eyes shine unnaturally. One of the survivors of those great old days. From 1969. On the Marrakech Express. I object to asking the boy in the belt to test the reality of the ghost.
The next day, we join a group on a road trip through the snowy Atlas Mountains (which felt the September earthquake in the areas we visited but escaped largely undamaged) to do rock climbing and yoga. We stop at designated “tourist-friendly” spots where many people sell jewelry, but Morocco’s natural beauty soon wins out over commercialism. I go on an impromptu tour of a traditional house and am introduced to the head of the family. A detour to the “desert experience”, a clunky kitsch campsite full of men dressed as Tuareg warriors, isn’t my cup of tea, but the vast golden dunes are impressive. “They move north every year,” one local told me. I watch tourists on ATVs moving up and down, surfing the wave of the climate crisis.
We return to the southern flank of the Atlas Mountains, and a miraculously vibrant green ribbon of fertility winds through a slot canyon in the rock wall. This is Wadi Todra, half a mile wide in places but much narrower overall. Berbers have built shelters on these steep rocky slopes since they came here from the east. No one knows the exact origins of these people: they call themselves Amazigh, but Egypt, Ethiopia and Yemen are discussed as possible starting points. Mud architecture reminds me of the Hadhramaut region in east-central Yemen: large towers and castles made of mud and straw, now surrounded by concrete and block buildings that at least attempt to imitate this original style. One tradition is meticulously maintained: Houses are never built on that precious strip of fertility, but only on the rock above.
Peach and quince trees are in bloom. The road is curvy. We reach a wonderful ancient mosque
On a whim, Jo and I decided to leave the vehicle about nine miles from our final destination. We will walk through the narrow part of the canyon and along the bottom of this green valley. Here are neat little fields of mint, carrots and wheat, each serviced by a gurgling water canal. A donkey is loaded with clover wrapped in sackcloth. A hoopoe struts at his feet. White egret heads pop out of a field of fresh green barley. Two women with crosses tattooed on their chins and cheeks smile and go back to tending their crops. Peach and quince trees are in bloom. The road is curvy. We reach Ikelane, the magnificent ancient mosque near Tinghir, and find the doorman, Addi, who shows us around. “The town of Afalour had been abandoned since the 1970s,” he tells me. “People wanted to live in new houses closer to the road. They had more children and needed more rooms.”
The mosque itself is an architectural gem, but behind it lies the abandoned kasbah, its mud towers collapsing like an artistic miracle of chocolate ice cream. They may all be gone within ten years. Now the separated families want the land. Addi shrugs. “The old way needed maintenance. The rains have intensified here, which means buildings deteriorate faster when water gets in. “We can only keep this mosque intact.”
We explore the cool, spacious interiors and panoramic roof terrace overlooking palm trees and peach trees, then return to the green ribbon, choosing our way along field edges and streams.
Two little children are playing. Apparently it’s called ‘Throw the dust into the air, scream with joy when it lands on you.’
Finally, we rejoin the road and arrive at our hotel near the rock climbing walls of the canyon. The next day, our small group with Much Better Adventures guides Dan and Max spends the day climbing on a spectacular rock. We drink water from a spring on the canyon wall and picnics are provided in the village. In the evening, we do strenuous yoga with Dan’s partner Natalie on the roof of their house. They arrived here shortly before the pandemic and suddenly decided to leave their careers in the UK and start a new life. “The pandemic actually helped us,” says Dan. “It gave us time to get to know people, and they realized we were really committed to living here.”
Relating to: My epic three-day journey from London to Morocco by train and ferry
There are difficulties. “Trying to get people to understand plastic litter is difficult,” says Natalie. But the pass makes everything possible: there are hundreds of climbing routes, and many of them are especially well suited for beginners or moderately skilled climbers like me. The route attracts beginners as well as more experienced climbers exploring the possibilities of Morocco.
One day, Dan takes us to the high plateau to meet a friend: his 82-year-old Bedouin grandfather Ahmed, who lives in a cave and cares for his goats. Her daughter is combing goat hair to make a new summer tent. Two barefoot little children are playing. It seems to be called “Throw dust and dirt into the air, scream with joy when it lands on you.” They continue this throughout the time Ahmed and I have tea, and only stop when three baby goats arrive and start a new game called “Chase the baby goats and cuddle them.”
Before we leave, Ahmed wants to show me something: his flour mill. Behind a cave dug into the bedrock, he rummages through his belongings: empty flour sacks, worn goat skins, and a few clothes. Finally he finds a hand-turned granite stone; It’s an extremely simple thing, but it’s so perfectly balanced that it requires very little effort. There is no electricity or water here, but Ahmed does not want to go anywhere else. All around are vast panoramas of skeletal unpolluted mountains. His two sons went to town to get an education; one is now a lawyer, but Ahmed will remain on the high rocky plateau where he was born. Morocco gave me my Mark Twain moment with all the development and high-speed rail links.
Travel by road was provided by EUrail and FRS ferries. The Atlas Mountains trip was provided by Much Better Adventures, who organized a six-night Intro to Rock Climbing and Yoga trip. Costs start from £713 per person. The earthquake on September 8, 2023 had devastating consequences in villages and towns There have been more than 2,900 deaths in the Western Atlas Mountains. But the climbing area was not hit on this trip. There was also damage in Marrakesh, but things are now back to normal.