Day 21: The Trek to Sahara
We woke up early for our 7am meetup at Imagine Le Voyage’s office near our hotel. As it turns out, we would be traveling with 3 other couples – an Australian couple living in London, an Australian and German married couple also living in London, and a Polish couple residing in Dublin, Ireland. The company provided a minibus, along with a Moroccan guide-cum driver who would be taking us to our destination and back.
The drive from Marrakesh to Zagora, our jumpoff point for our Saharan trek was long at eight hours – but it is possibly the most scenic trip we’ve ever taken in our lives. Taking the journey was almost as exciting as the destination itself, as we were treated to the full spectacle of the Moroccan landscape. Our first stop at around an hour into the trip was overlooking the Ourika Valley, at the base of the High Atlas Mountains. There we could see the mountainside melting into the valley with shrubs and mud-colored Berber huts dotting the landscape. Then the road took us up into the High Atlas mountains. Our elevation was at around 2000 meters – and at the highest point in the Atlas, at Jebel Toubkal it stands at some 4100 meters, the highest point in North Africa. It was so amazing that we could see an arid landscape before us, but look up and you could see snow capping the mountains at its highest points. We drove through the High Atlas and down on the other side, where we could see the Draa Valley, which was once a flowing river but now nothing but an expanse of red rock. We then stopped at Ait Benhaddou, a well preserved kasbah (ancient fort) 32 kilometers from the town of Ourzazate. The kasbah had been part of the sets of movies such as Gladiator and Jesus of Nazareth, and we could see a village with ruins of the old fort and a granary. Trekking up to the top of the kasbah and back took us around an hour, and going back took us some time to find the right restaurant that we started out in, though all the restaurants beside it were also filled with tour groups. I guess getting so lost needn’t be so scary if you can still see other tourists around you!
We finally reached the small town of Zagora at around 5pm. Zagora is a town created by the French authorities in the 1930s right in the middle of an oasis, and we could see rows and rows of palm trees lined up around the area. Zagora may have been in the middle of nowhere as the jumping point to the Sahara, but it was an orderly town with wide streets and shops advertising camel and 4×4 treks into the desert at every turn. Desolate it was not. We loaded up with drinking water and took our bathroom breaks and set off for the desert.
The driver took us a few kilometers from the town limits and set us off beside the road, where our camels along with the Berber guides were waiting for us. Leaving our bus behind, we were guided to our camels (who were tied to one another caravan-style) and rode up their backs. Then the guides got the camels to stand up, and off we were for our sunset trek into our Berber camp in the middle of the desert.
The camel ride was an extremely bumpy one, but it was also very exciting as we were taking what would be the highlight experience of our Moroccan journey. We finally got off the road and were taken to some well-worn paths which seemed to be used by Berber locals. We converged with a few other camel-riding tourists, and after an hour of riding the sun was already receding. Finally, we saw dunes of sand and a few large tents propped up. This was our desert camp!
Our Berber host (whose name, not surprisingly was Mohammed) gave us some Berber whisky (actually tea), and told us more about Berber culture. They have no schools, but each Berber comes to know about four or five languages, maybe more as they interact with tourists from around the world who want a taste of the Sahara desert. A Berber guide starts out knowing Berber, but eventually picks up Arabic, French, a bit of Spanish, halting English, and who knows what else! All without no formal schooling. Then Mohammed invited us outside the tent for some prime time Berber entertainment – Berber telly, a.k.a. watching the stars.
Now, stargazing may seem campy or boring to some – but in the Sahara not only is this your only form of entertainment, it’s actually quite an exhilarating experience. We were treated to a cloudless sky with no moon as the entire sky was lit up with stars that you could never fully see when under a city. All of us were lying down in the cold Saharan night, just looking out for shooting stars (which were fairly easy to find) and admiring the beautiful night sky that you don’t see or appreciate for most nights in a year. It was very beautiful, and for such a static experience, could be the highlight of our entire trip.
After a while, dinner came – chicken tajines cooked into a bowl large enough for our group of eight. We had our dinner, and there was nothing else to do but admire the Saharan night sky one more time and then we tucked into our own little corner of our Berber tent, pulling the blanket over our heads to fight off the cold as we slept for the night.
