A Tagine a Day keeps the Doctor at Bay

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‘And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you achieve it.’ (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.)*

It all started with a feeling. It was just a feeling, nothing solid, nothing substantial, that everything was going to go well and truly wrong. It was a horribly mixed emotion, a decision between heart and head, but evidently my heart always wins. So what do you do when you have bad vibes, a sense of foreboding and nothing better to do on a Monday morning during the February half term?

Book a trip to Morocco of course.

It was an expensive boredom (well, for me, anything around the £500 - £600 mark is, although some might see it as reasonable), however trusting my instincts paid off; it helped to confirm that avid travellers should always trust their wanderlust and follow their itching feet.

I followed mine to my mind, to sand-boarding across magnificent sand dunes, to Morocco, then to the internet, then to my debit card, and there was no going back. One wonderful thing about Topdeck Travel is this: when everything else is a battlefield, using them to help you find your feet brings you order. The only thing I have to plan is the extra ‘me’ time that I have treated myself to in Marrakech. Some girls’ ideas of ‘me’ time is shopping, some like good films and a box of chocolates and a glass (or bottle) of wine … I like to travel, immersing myself into a hot, soaking, steamy bath of something completely different. The last serious ‘me’ time that I took lead to me jumping off a 5000ft mountain in Austria (albeit with a parachute attached, but I didn't tell my mum that) and blasting it out white-water rafting. One thing that I’ve realised when travelling solo is that it makes you more self-aware, and increasingly self-assertive. There is a social stigma to being seen out on your own, a certain sympathy that others have towards you, but I couldn't care less. If we spent all of our time caring about others’ perceptions, we wouldn't learn anything about ourselves. So I am looking forward to getting lost in the thriving souqs on my own, to meandering through market stalls and discovering the magic of the snake-charmers and spice sellers, exploring the tombs and palaces with mosaics galore. As a street haggler steps into my romantic reverie, pestering me and trying to direct my gaze towards their wares which they are forcing in front of my face, I simply waft them away and they dissipate into a mirage of rainbow watercolours. Berber camps swiftly steal their place, with camels lolling around nearby and gazing into the distant galaxy as the moon rises over the dunes. The Sahara. The unforgivingly beautiful Sahara.

The beauty of the internet is this: you can easily turn your dreams into a reality with a few simple, carefree clicks. Topdeck’s Moroccan Explorer itinerary certainly catered for my dreams.

So now I am writing in retrospect. Did it live up to my expectations? Put it this way: if I could use only one word to describe Morocco it would be ‘mesmeric’. I have come back home with my cup overflowing instead of being half empty (or half full, whichever way you choose to look at it).

What I didn't expect was for Morocco to have such contrasting landscapes. Originally, when I thought of Morocco I associated it with unbearable heat, dry land and deserts. That quickly changed. When I first arrived, I was surprised to see snow-capped mountains (and, even later, I was surprised to hear from our tour guide en route to Ifrane that people do snow sports in Morocco and that it was a cheaper option than the likes of France, Italy or Switzerland. Who'd have thought?) right next to what seemed like an expanse of dry and dusty lands. How could something so cold co-exist with something so hot that easily? The Middle Atlas Mountains certainly had me lost for words. Making a mental note to myself, I vowed to return here to learn how to ski at some point in my future.

If I could recommend one city to visit in Morocco, it would be Fes. I would give anything to go back there and to be able to explore the city even further, but to explore it fully would be no easy task. Our tour leader hired a great local guide who told us that inside the medina (for those of you who are unaware, a medina is an old walled part of a North African town) there are at least 9,400 streets and that roughly 80% of them are unnamed. Google and Royal Mail would have an absolute field day. Roughly 450,000 people live inside the Fes medina. Even some of the locals get lost; it would actually be impossible to navigate without a guide and it is so easy to lose your bearings. We soon learned that Fes had nothing to do with a fez; a fez was the hat introduced by the Turks, but Fes was named after the discovery of an ax that the citizens gave to their king as a sign of hope and peace. The medina has 176 mosques and towers. One of these towers is especially significant: it is white and distinguishes the oldest university which was built in 1859. Students studied astronomy there and, rather amazingly (or ironically), it was founded by a girl called Fatima. The fact that a woman in an Islamic country did this is something to be proud of and aspire to. Also, no cars are allowed inside the medina. Initially I wondered why, but when we entered the medina I quickly understood: some of the streets are incredibly narrow, so narrow that you have to walk single-file with some of the walls barely scraping your shoulders; some of the archways and entrances are so low that you have to duck under the eaves to get through, and finally any cars would get in the way of the donkeys. Don't get me wrong, I love donkeys, but when one comes hurtling round a tight corner at full speed with a cart and bossy merchant attached, you soon learn how getting in a donkey's way could be incredibly dangerous. Being ploughed over by a donkey is not something I'd want to have happened in my life!

The medina is hectic, an assault on the senses, but also an absolute delight. It is a maze of narrow and winding streets, of decorated alleyways where you could sometimes see the sky and sometimes the sky would be completely blocked from your view by rafters, wooden beams or hanging cloths. It is a hive of activity where merchants, craftsmen and street performers make their living and fill your ears with the loudest symphony of clashing sounds. But most of all, it is a work of art. Never in one place have I seen such a palette of colours accompanied by such a varied soundscape. Watching workmen dying wool and leather, hammering metals and weaving fabrics on looms, hanging their wares up on show and going about their daily routines, was an absolute pleasure to see alongside the myriad of colourful spices piled high, fruits and trinkets lining the streets. It was an orchestra, a powerful oil painting and what I was really hoping to experience: a vibrant, authentic, old Moroccan city.

For me, the medina in Fes beats the medina in Marrakech hands down, but Marrakech certainly puts up a strong fight. The souqs are easy to navigate and the Djeema el Fna square comes to life at night with belly-dancers, musicians, clowns and story-tellers, dazzling lights and erupting sounds. It was like a carnival. I generally found that street vendors did not ruin this experience for me – they were not as annoying as I'd expected – and, if you knew what to do, it was easy to ignore them and continue to appreciate your surroundings. It was even relatively stress-free to haggle there in comparison to other countries. My eyes ached from looking. There is so much to see in Marrakech and I wish I could have spent more time there, but I was glad that I made time to see the Bahia Palace. Never before has a decadent building made me smile so much as I walked around it (and this is coming from a girl who has seen many a temple in South East Asia). As a young girl I always loved yellows and blues because I remember my mother loving them and how she used them when she used to paint pictures of flowers, so I couldn't help but involuntarily smile at the way in which these colours had been used in this building. And it wasn't just yellows and blues; it was reds and greens, purples and oranges … you name the colour and it would be there in the mosaics and stained glass reflections.

Our Top Deck itinerary included so many visually stunning places that my skin would wrinkle and my hair would turn grey if I wrote about every single place in detail (a quick special mention to Rabat for its kasbah, picturesque winding blue and white streets and a local who welcomed us into his lovely home). Using the word ‘finish’ grates on me, because I really don't want to finish anything to do with Morocco and I don't want a single sensory experience to be forgotten, but I would like to ‘finish’ with the Sahara.

By the time I saw the desert I really should have become used to the idea of the landscapes of Morocco surprising me, but I don't think anything could have prepared us for the appearance of the dunes. To be honest, I really wasn't sure on how a desert ‘started’. I guess I expected it to be gradual, like a slow build up. But in reality it was incredibly sudden, like mountains of sand instantly jumping into the horizon. One minute we'd be walking on tarmac or concrete which had dustings of sand, the next we’d be climbing a dune. ‘Wow’ didn’t even cut it. I even feel like ‘it took my breath away’ would be far too much of a cliché. No words could have done the Sahara justice. The majority of us chose to take a camel trek for an hour across the dunes to reach our Berber camp and I am so glad I did; I found that just climbing the dunes around our campsite was strenuous, so a friend who chose to walk with our guide instead, who disappeared and reappeared on our horizon, was really tested to the limits. Like the Fes medina, it would have been easy for the desert to swallow you up without guidance; it is easy to lose your bearings in the dunes and disappear among the folds. But as my new-found family and I laid on the dunes talking and looking at the stars, listening to Berbers playing drums (and, in my case, joining in with them alongside two others), roasting marshmallows and entertaining ourselves when the Sahara winds hit us full force, none of that mattered. In fact, nothing mattered to us any more. It was just us and the desert.

The Sahara is an experience that I have taken away with me both literally (thanks to me sand-boarding and choosing to challenge a friend to roll down the dunes with me – I’ll be finding sand in my clothes for days) and emotionally. The land of Morocco has its own unique way of staying with you.



Well done, Topdeck. Well done.



*Many thanks to Ally who introduced me to this amazing book. Her borrowed paperback had a profound message written inside which involved a friend persuading the receiver of the book to show the world its gift. I wonder if the writer of that message knows exactly how far the gift of that story has spread.

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