Morocco beyond the Atlas Mountains

Wild Morocco beyond the Atlas Mountains

Contents

 While the north of Morocco is home to traders and aristocrats in posh hotels with golf clubs and spas, the south is home to Berbers and their camels.

 Other than horseback riding, descending canyons and visiting rose farms a few hours away, there is absolutely nothing to do here.

 The clothes and turbans of the indigo-colored Bedouin warriors, next to the orange and muddy towers of the Kasbah.

 There is no one obvious reason to like camels.

 It’s impossible to climb a camel elegantly.

 Suddenly there is a sandstorm. Here it’s like a blizzard: suddenly it’s like the wrath of the whole planet comes crashing down on you.

In Morocco, there are two really ancient modes of transport that carry great cultural resonance. And they are very different indeed: the first is the pack animals, the camels, and the second is the groomed royal horses. Camels, the mythical ships of the desert, have crossed the desert sea of the Sahara across the sand dunes for centuries. Arabian horses are this exquisite beauty in motion, magnificent animals with dark eyes and shining hooves. Both of these animals represent Moroccan legends.

“Horses, are closely linked to our history and to our culture,” says Abdeslam Bennani Smires, a charming businessman originally from Casablanca. His life’s work is to revive the best thoroughbred Arabian horses in Morocco. Last year, he and his sister Saida opened a luxury hotel in Marrakech, the Selman Marrakech. Abdeslam Bennani Smires knows each of his 16 horses by name, and he is clearly crazy about them: “I’ve been riding horses since I was six years old. Most of us have horses. We are Arabs, and horses are part of our legends, our being.”

The horses at Selman Marrakech are more of a soothing natural addition to the existing interior designed by Jacques Garcia: bombastic connections of black marble corridors and gold lanterns, rooms with domed ceilings, bulky Turkish chandeliers and furniture as colorful and shiny as a rustling Quality Street candy wrapper. It’s not a resting place for weary travelers returning from the desert, but rather a place where ladies in cocktail dresses and gold Jimmy Choo come down for an evening cocktail at the bar, or for a sophisticated party on white couches under the moon.

For real horseback riding, as opposed to just contemplating horses, there’s a place 45 minutes from Marrakech.

La Pause was founded 11 years ago by the Frenchman Frederic Alaim, who noticed small olive groves and ruins southwest of the city while walking. Rocks, sand, arid soil-it looked like a lunar landscape at the time. He tracked down the owners, rented the place, built the first cottage, and over the next 10 years five more houses were built in the traditional Moroccan style with clay walls, with eight bathrooms and a small pool around which guests could take a nap during the midday heat.

It has become a lifesaver for people who don’t like the club life, dreamers, weary travelers, and desert golfers (there are nine holes on purpose, and the clubs are carried by a donkey, which acts as a caddy). It’s a place where you can live in Bedouin tents, eat gourmet Moroccan food and dance the night away until morning (there’s no one to disturb except the local donkey, the wandering shepherd and his sheep).

But if you really want to avoid the madness of Marrakech – the snake charmer in Jemaa El Fna Square with baskets of wriggling creatures; the carpet merchants with theirYou To go to the markets, stalls lined with sheep heads, and enticing shops with babushas carrying shiny shoes, one must climb the Atlas Mountains. “I’ll teach you how to fly a carpet, madam,” shouts!” may also be heard there.

While the north of Morocco is home to traders and aristocrats in posh hotels with golf clubs and spas, the south is home to Berbers and their camels

Leave tedious Marrakech behind and escape into wild Morocco beyond the Atlas Mountains, where only the sand dunes of the Sahara Desert…

That’s why, two days later, I set off on the long journey south, with the experienced driver Abdullah at the wheel, and Fettah, the very best guide, who made my journey very easy. Driving up into the Atlas Mountains is probably one of the most exciting trips in Morocco, so I kept exclaiming, “Wait, Abdullah! Oh my God, what a view!”

Despite the splendor of the scenery, I longed to get out of the car after eight hours on the road. And, when I did, it was indescribably pleasant.

Skoura is one of the small towns in the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs. There are several villages and at least 1,000 ruined castles along the same riverbed.

The locals here make their living raising sheep, camels, and growing dates and nuts. The houses have flat plastered roofs of orange clay with small slits for windows. Donkeys trot past overloaded baskets of alfalfa. Horses plow fields. Women draw water from wells, their heads covered with black burqas or colored shawls. And men with faces as brown and dried out as raisins sit in the shade sipping mint tea.

My haven for traveling south that night was the Hotel Dar Ahlam, a 12-room hotel owned by French designer Thierry Teyssier. There is no market to tempt you here, no museums to visit.

Other than horseback riding, descending canyons, and visiting rose farms a few hours away, there is absolutely nothing to do here.

There’s nothing to do but feast on national dishes you can’t refuse, from eggs with bright yolks on toasted toast in the morning for breakfast under the trees of the olive groves to hearty meat dishes with vegetables (tagine) under the starry sky for dinner at night.

Or bathe in an open-air bath in the shade of the olive trees in the evening. Or relaxing in a hammam scented with fragrant oils. Or just lie in the exquisite garden by the rose-scented pool. Considering that my next stop was only a four-hour drive through miles of hot orange sand and small stones the color of burnt coffee beans, I have quite good memories of the place.

There’s nothing to do but feast on national dishes you can’t refuse, from eggs with bright yolks on toasted toast in the morning for breakfast under the trees of the olive groves to hearty meat dishes with vegetables (tagine) under the starry sky for dinner at night.

Or bathe in an open-air bath in the shade of the olive trees in the evening. Or relaxing in a hammam scented with fragrant oils. Or just lie in the exquisite garden by the rose-scented pool. Considering that my next stop was only a four-hour drive through miles of hot orange sand and small stones the color of burnt coffee beans, I have quite good memories of the place.

The village of M’Hamid, about 20 km from the Algerian border, is the place to go if you want to enjoy the amazing flowers. This is where I suddenly realized the true soul of the Berbers and their famous hospitality. After spending a horrible night in a hotel called Dar Azawad, whose manager turned out to be recently released from prison and whose behavior was the result of training in a hospitality school, I decided that I would rather sleep in the car than spend one more minute there.

My guide Fettah, as always, had a better idea: “Madam, I have a friend,” he said. “His name is Houssine Dakhamat. He is very cordial. He is on his way here to pick us up. Wait!”

And there is no escape for you, you are bound to fall in love with this man who, dressed in indigo, a traditional Berber color, and he is coming to rescue you in an old Land Rover with a dashboard lined with red carpet, on which lies a cream plastic phone with a giant satellite dish sticking out through the broken window. Especially if he also has a herd of pets – camels.

There is no one obvious reason to like camels.

They are long-toothed, smelly creatures with a nasty temper and a bad smell from their mouths that also bite (our guide can attest to this). But, in the desert, they turn into cheerful, date-operated versions of the four-wheeled, high-mounted vehicle. Swaying relaxedly in the saddle, you’ll traverse places in the desert where other transportation is simply powerless.

Houssine Dakhamat’s favorite camel, Jamelia, is an orphan; he raised and fed her himself. He loves her so much that he built an enclosure next to the hotel bar so that she can mingle with guests. Sharing a cocktail with a camel is an absurd idea in theory, but in practice it’s a lot of fun, especially if the camel can drink through a straw!

The next day, Jamelia and her humpbacked buddies were saddled up for my first camel ride.

It is impossible to climb on a camel elegantly.

They make unintelligible, loud noises: part gurgling, like mouthwash, part roaring (now my new ringtone on my phone, which is perplexing even on public transportation). They rise from a supine position, rather abruptly (I hear, “Hold on, madam!”).But as soon as the camel stood up and began to move down the dusty roads, I noticed that I felt oddly at ease in the saddle’s metal T-handle.. All I had to do was sit, swaying gently, imagining myself as Lawrence of Arabia, or Wilfred Thesiger, or the first Western woman to cross Africa on a camel. It was my little weakness to think

Suddenly there is a sandstorm. Here it’s like a blizzard: suddenly, it’s as if the wrath of the entire planet is bearing down on you.

The whirlwind sweeps palm leaves high up, hundreds of meters into the sky, the sun disappears, sand fills your nose, eyes, ears, and frightened camels emitting deathly moans into the hot, sand-brown air.

We went on our way in these conditions because I insisted on it. Great desert explorers, after all, may have spent months of their trek in night frosts and week-long storms. But after an hour of trekking, clenching my teeth (literally) and almost completely blinded, I realized the folly of my venture and was very eager to return home.

I thought Chez Le Pacha was at the end of the world, but how wrong I was! My last stop at Erg Chigaga Luxury Camp was another two hours drive south. This journey through Morocco’s largest dunes made full use of our four-wheel-drive means of transportation – camels.

After the relative coolness of the pool at Pacha – sparrows soaring in date palms and patches of green – from Erg Chigaga, nestled between the high red dunes, it felt like being so far from Earth, on Mars somewhere.