Day 4
We had a day long drive ahead, and had to make an early start. Breakfast done, we set out, towards the Sahara. We first passed a town called Ifrane. Set in the Middle Atlas, this town is locally called the Switzerland of Morocco and has snow during its winter months. Its “hill station” image meant that it had a huge number of villas which were apparently rented out for weeks. The town is also famous for the Al Akhawayn university.
Next up was Azrou, which means ‘great rock’, and is home to forests where the Barbary macaque is found. We stopped at what seemed a tourist spot. Our first attempt to shoot a family pic resulted in an NSFW image! We also caught an aspiring Formula 1 driver!
After Azrou, the mountains began changing their hues. The greens were fewer and browns became more prominent. It was a beautiful landscape, vast and dotted with small towns. Far away, we could still see snow on the Atlas mountains. Gorgeous gorges, followed and we caught a brilliant shade of blue that turned out to be part of a dam. The colours reminded us of Pangong.
We stopped at Midelt for lunch. This was a town famous for apples, and even had a festival in October. Lunch was Chawarma and meat skewers. I loved this spelling of Shawarma because of a Malayalam wordplay!The mint tea, we realised, is a bit bitter when dried leaves are used. We preferred the fresh mint leaves version. The meat skewers took a while, but we were entertained by WiFi, and the first spotting of a species we had thus far missed on this trip – the Japanese!
Beyond Midelt, the hills and valleys were desolate places. This vast, empty landscape was something I never really got used to. On the roadside, there was honey being sold in coke bottles, and kids with their hands stretched out, begging. 🙁
The landscape was now absolute brown, though of many shades. Even the man made stuff was mud-coloured with no embellishments. We were now in the Errachidia province, and stopped at an Afriquia gas station for nus nus, where we found that the Japanese had well and truly invaded. At the check post, Hisham told us that the desert that we were going to was less than 50 km from the Algerian border. But it was closed because the Algerians and Moroccans were sulking with each other over a territory called Western Sahara – a part of Morocco that wanted to be independent, and was supported by Algeria. In this context, the Hotel Darna signboard at the check post made a lot of sense.
Rissani was the last town we’d see before we entered the desert. We picked up water and toilet paper, the two non negotiables as per our tour operator’s instructions. Hotel Yasmina was about 40 kilometres from there, and we began seeing the Erg Chebbi dunes. The last 14 km were bumpy roads towards the dessert. This was the first time we had encountered bad roads in Morocco. As per Hisham, they had kept it this way by design, since tourists felt this gave the trip an authentic feel! A 4×4, meanwhile, raced past us, we were a bit like Nadal on a grass court.
450 km and over 10 hours later, we were at the Yasmina auberge. To say that it wasn’t exactly as shown on the internet would be an understatement. But our business there was brief. We unpacked in the spartan room, transferred essentials to the overnight bag, and headed towards the camels which would take us to the desert camp. In the next 5 minutes, I experienced the most painful hump ever! No amount of titli asana had prepared me for this! It didn’t help that I was trying to balance the bag, camera and towards the end, my Berber headgear (scarf) while battling flies. Elsewhere in Morocco, seat belts were mandatory. I wished this creature had one. My camel seemed a Mohanlal fan, its handle was skewed to one side, so Hassan, our camel navigator had to adjust it midway during the one-hour-plus trek. D was having fun though, even posing with her selfie stick while astride the camel!
Pro tip: Given that 90% of the stuff we took wasn’t used, just carry water. Try not to have too many things dangling!
The sunset was worth the effort and there’s something very soothing about a blazing sun going down amongst dunes. As we got closer to the camp, we could see tourists climbing dunes. At the camp, Ibrahim and his son Omar welcomed us. Ibrahim’s has to be the most callused hand I have ever seen! There were about 8 tents – five for tourists, each of which could accommodate four people. One of the remaining three was called a ‘restaurant’. We walked a bit on the dunes and took photos of the moon rising.
Following a campfire, Whiskey Maroc with peanuts, some music and drum play, we had a Tajine for dinner, predictably. Toilet was a western toilet in which lots of insects had committed suicide. Pro Tip: Do your thing, get out. Don’t try complex moves, don’t look around.
We were sleepy and a warm tent was all the encouragement we needed. All of the hype about the desert being really cold didn’t actually happen. Maybe we just got lucky. I needn’t even have worn the one pair of jeans I had brought specifically for this. The blanket was all we needed, D didn’t even use that!
