The Road to Timbuktu (Really!)

We didn't initially set out to see the desert.

We somehow just managed to arrive - the benefit of not thinking too long or too hard about the potential dangers. We set out from Ouarzazate for the Drâa on a whim and were richly rewarded.

There are lots of über-serious Europeans around dressed like the Leyland Brothers, all sporting gigantic four wheel drives which are stacked with supplies, big plastic containers of water sensibly secured under tarps on their roof racks. We've rented another put-put-put local car, brought along a bottle of mineral water for sustenance.

We arrived at Tamnougalt where the valley begins. There are soaring mud brick towers, pock marked, pisé walls, a fabulous sunken kasbah with the caïd's palace at its centre. The palace is comprised of elegant courtyards supported by graceful arches and includes a harem with intricate wooden grilles for the ladies to hide (be hidden?) behind. There are also former gardens with beautiful Andalusian niches from the 16th century; these gardens once supported orange trees, roses and other flora.

 

We scrabbled over the rubble in the old mellah and recognise the Star of David over an archway, the synagogue has almost totally caved in. The dark, mud brick village hardened and cracked by centuries of baking hot sun is bounded by palmeries on all sides.

Further along a dusty back road we pass the kasbah of Aït Hammou-Sa'd...

We drive for several hours more along the valley...

To tell the truth, the Sahara proper is 80 or so kilometres further down the road. The asphalt is crumbling and the road is quickly turning into what looks like a perilous, sandy track.

We know what awaits us in M'Hamid - a carnival of camel rides, environmentally unfriendly safari tours, photo opportunities with desert tribesmen and the like.

We decide to leave the desert fun to our well-stocked, European counterparts and make our way back to Tamegroute where we hope to see the 16th century Sufi library of Zouia Nacrii.

The library has thousands of manuscripts and was once one of the richest in North Africa. A collection of manuscripts is still on display among them a 14th century Quran with exquisite Kufic script, writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sina), Ibn Rushd (Averroes) and an Arabic translation of Pythagoras!

There are treatises on theology, astronomy, geography and pharmacology as well.

Tamegroute is also famous for its "subterranean kasbah" - a whole residential quarter whose streets and houses are built in rabbit warren fashion to protect against the scorching sun which beats down mercilessly for most of the year.

We make our way into the dark labyrinthine kasbah. We immediately get lost in the network of disorientating alleyways. A friendly man who tells us he lives there approaches us. He invites us into his split level, adobe home which you enter through a port-hole styled door and are taken up several flights of stairs into a snug living area and kitchen.

We are served mint tea and talk about his family. Ahmed is fifty. His wife, whom he describes as his "gazelle" (or was it "güzel" as in the Turkish for "darling") later appears on the scene when we are making our way out. He married late in life he tells us and has a daughter in grade one.

Most of the residents he says are "Haratin", the descendants of African slaves brought into Morocco mainly from Mauritania, Mali and the Sudan, along the caravan routes.

Entering the Drâa Valley you immediately notice how many of the folk are of black African descent. European style dress, especially amongst the women, diminishes. It suddenly occurs to you that this is Africa even though the French you speak and the physical proximity of Morocco to Europe suggests otherwise.

I always shy away from photographing people and never ask. Ahmed, however, sees I have a camera bulging in my pocket and invites me to take a few pictures. It occurs to me that we are not the first tourists to be invited in for tea or the first to be invited to take a few snaps. It doesn't matter. We just go with it.

Afterwards we are guided by Ahmed to the souk and later to the zouia. We pay him well for the great afternoon he has made for us.

I was concerned coming to Morocco that our engagement with people would be totally dominated by the what I heard was very aggressive hard-sell on the part of the locals. Perhaps it is that we haven't seen the worst of it yet - we have not been near Marrakech. My impression of Moroccans, however, is generally quite the contrary to what I feared. They are kind and humble.

And so we make our way out of the kasbah with Ahmed's assistance. Another fabulous day in Morocco.

 

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The Kasbah at Tizourgane

The 13th century Kasbah at Tizourgane seems to appear from nowhere on the road to Äit Baha. This medieval fortress comes as quite a shock in surroundings which seem too remote, too harsh for human habitation and construction. You wonder how on earth it was built in such a lonely place.

From Tafraoute we climbed steep roads and descended into still valleys, the rocky landscape dramatically changing shape, colour and texture as we made our way.

At times the landscape of towering purple pinnacles reminded me of the Andes bordering Argentina and Bolivia, at others those typically long, silent stretches of road full of agave cactus and flat topped mesas in Northern Mexico, donkeys ambling out of nowhere asking to be photographed.

And then suddenly there it is. What appeared to be a mirage from a distance increasingly came into focus, an impressive configuration of high walls, turrets, fortified gates and dwellings.

The term "Kasbah" had an exotic connotation for me. I always thought of a kasbah as being something like a "pleasure dome", a Kubla Khan-esque palace or exotic seraglio - not that I really understood what a seraglio was either.

A "kasba" is a fortified home or village made for a ruling family.

Kasbah's are (according to my guide book) usually built in highly strategic positions, either atop hills or along escarpments where enemies can be easily spotted and repelled. Kasbahs within towns are highly secure residential areas with a separate set of walls, gates and look out towers - a city within a city.

Staying a night at Tizourgane got the romantic notions about Kasbahs into perspective.

In the heat of the day, it was exciting exploring the kasbah's warren of lane ways with its half tumbled down palaces, granaries, houses and workshops - even an ancient mill and bakery with oven for making bread still in use.

On the other hand, sleeping between those thick, stone walls on a Winter's night is challenging. Even with multiple covers and an electric heater I found it hard to tolerate the freezing conditions. The evening we were there we were joined by several British rock climbers. They shivered and groaned for most of the night. We competed in the "wee hours" for the one toilet available to the auberge guests.

Plumbing, wiring and heating - indeed, any sort of renovation - is tough work and by all accounts expensive considering the logistics and location of the kasbah.

And as usual there was a cat to two to observe our every movement!

 

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Oumesnat

Just out of Tafraoute, along the Ameln valley, you catch sight of Oumesnat from the road. You could easily miss the village it being so well camouflaged against the rock wall of the valley it hugs:

Oumesnat's palaces and agadirs change colour according to the time of day. The play of light and shadow on the buildings and rock face produce extraordinary hues of red, orange and even purple.

Not all of the buildings are as old as they look. Contemporary houses sit alongside ruins dating from the 18th and 19th centuries. Those ruins in turn resemble older versions providing an insight into the ancient Berber past.

Oumesnat has basically always looked like this (minus a few satellite dishes and almost imperceptable power lines) which creep into (and get edited out of) most photographs.

The morning approach ...

...and landscape around Oumesnat at midday - the warm, orange rock face dappled in places with argan trees, and dried desert weeds. Palms rise up from the valley floor.

 

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The Oasis of Ait Mansour

From Tafraoute the road winds perilously up high slopes, around hairpin bends and down into silent valleys you are thankfully not travelling through in any other season except Winter.

The heat beats down on my head through the windscreen. It's hot. And before I can blink another vehicle appears from around the bend and narrowly misses colliding with me head on. The whole thing happens in a split second. The moment, however, unfolds in slow motion ...I'm waiting to experience the impact but manage to swerve just enough to avoid the other car - thanks be to Allah.

We continue on through a landscape full of massive, red boulders ...

...into gorges with towering crags and continue to climb even higher mountain passes.

In such a desolate place you hardly expect to come across any greenery except for the occasional desert succulent amongst the millions of rocks carpeting the mountains. There are the blackened stumps of almost dead argan trees along the side of the road, some scrub, a tumble weed or two rolling through a lonely village.

A squat palm appears in a dried out river bed, then a few more and then suddenly the road drops down from upon high into the oasis of Ait Mansour...

 

 

We stop for thé à la menthe at a Berber roadside cafe and continue through the palmerie to Souk el Hadd Issi. The palms start to give way to dramatic rock formations again. There are villages huddled against the sides of barren mountains, new buildings built upon the crumbling foundations of former ones.

I remember as a child being given a bottle of coloured sands and wondering how the different coloured layers managed to sit one upon the other. The multi hued striations of the mountains remind me of them.

The landscape has been formed by unimaginable forces over eons.

Looking at these pictures only a few hours later I pinch myself and wonder if I really was there or was I just dreaming?

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Big Landscapes of the Anti-Atlas

No fine detail to observe today just big, bold, dry landscapes on the R109 through the Anti-Atlas between Taroudant and Tafraoute.

The occasional goatherd appears out of nowhere.

You swing around a bend to be confronted with a crumbling village perched on a hill and a series of dramatic sweeping valleys as you go.

 

It could be the llanura of Argentina...

...with mesas and wild agave like that of Mexico ...

...or even mirror Central Australia.

 

The road less travelled (the R109/R106) offers rewards for those who dare to take it.

 

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