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Published: November 1st 2010
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Tizi-n-Tichka
The High Atlas mountains The road twists and turns as the bus takes us up into the High Atlas mountains on the impressive Tizi-n-Tichka route to Ouarzazate (how do you like those z's?) The landscapes are varied and dramatic with high mountain passes, big rocky outcrops and switchback roads. Sprinkled along the roadside are small shops and stalls selling local fossils and geodes, ceramic pots and plates. It looks very dry but surprisingly we get heavy rain showers as we go through the pass, turning the rivers red with the local mud.
On the other side we are into the pre-Sahara, an apparent wasteland of rock and scrub but we spot cultivation lines in numerous places. This area is full of kasbahs and ksours, many used as sets in well-known movies. The Moroccan King is visiting Ouarzazate this week, so there is a strong police presence around the town and national flags flying proudly.
To get around the sights of the area over the next few days we choose to be driven in a four wheel drive with a local guide to explain things rather than hiring our own car. Of course there is Moroccan style haggling involved and intitially we think we
have a reasonable deal. Alas the English speaking guide doesn't show the next morning and instead we have an excellent driver who speaks numerous languages apart from English and whose French was obviously learnt at a different school from ours. Not a great start but we will make it work.
Our itinerary takes us in a big loop through the Valley of the Roses, Dades and Todra Gorges, the Draa Valley and the sand dunes of M'hamid. In the four wheel drive we go off road through less visited villages and oases, across red swollen rivers and past ornate kasbahs, some of which are still in use. In even more remote areas we see houses dug into the landscape and natural caves used for accommodation. Here and there we pass by goat and sheep herders grazing their stock on the sparse, tough desert vegetation.
The landscape is a geologist's dream with huge obviously folded and uplifted rock formations. These lines of hills and mountains stretch back to far distant snow-covered peaks. The rock formations of the dramatic Dades and Todra Gorges are different again, their steep sides cut by thousand of years of river action.
When our
driver disappears to get a part changed on the four wheel drive we are left with a local Berber who thankfully speaks very good English and French from the same school as us. He guides us through a palmery, a vast productive growing area adjoining a river bed, and through a kasbah where we meet a local Berber family. Its good to have a mint tea with some locals but we discover the alterior motive when the carpets start to appear. The floor and walls are soon packed with them as we go through the carpet seller routine. We escape with the shirts still on our backs, some photos in the camera and with not even a postage-sized carpet in our bag, so not a bad result.
From there we are into the big sky country, spending a night in a Berber tent in the desert. We are surrounded by sand and stars and silence as we watch a huge moon rise from the dunes. After a tagine dinner there is an impromptu musical jam session with the Berber Boys and I dance and croak my way through a couple of numbers.
We are up before dawn for
a camel ride in the dunes. The first one for Tessa and me. Keith is an old hand but had forgotten the noise and smelliness of their digestive systems. The camels are sitting when we climb on and we have to hang on tight as they lurch to their feet. Then we are off, their soft splayed feet puffing up sand without a sound as we settle into the gentle rhythm of their motion. They provide a great viewing position for watching the sun rise and the golden light appearing across the dunes.
We have time to walk to the highest sand dunes and inspect the various animal tracks along the way and then we are back in our four wheel drive through the Draa valley, completing the loop to Ouarzazate. It's all over too soon.
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