Is there really anywhere in the world where the words Elvis Presley, Madonna and Manchester United mean nothing?
Well, yes, there is, and I’m sitting in the middle of it – it’s called the Sahara.
Mohammed, our chef, shakes his head when asked if he’s ever heard of the modern world’s biggest icons, and Ahmed, a Berber Tom Cruise with a voice from the gods, registers a blank.
We’re sitting round the campfire in the Moroccan Sahara, 40 miles from the Algerian border, digesting Mohammed’s sumptuous lamb tagine and being serenaded by some beautiful Berber music – not just a form of entertainment but oral storytelling that has been passed down from generation to generation, tracing the ancient mysteries of Africa and the Mahgreb.
We try to reciprocate with some home-grown sing-along but, somehow, “Doo wah diddy” doesn’t quite cut it. It’s my turn and, after a slightly self-conscious attempt at playing Ahmed’s goatskin drum, I feel my residual Western bashfulness melting away, with the cheering thought that there’s nothing more strenuous to the next four days than more of the same, some mouth-watering food and a few camel rides to the dunes to watch the African sun set.
We’re here to experience the real Morocco – the people, the food and the culture. And, although we are on a guided tour, our group consists of just three (plus our hosts at the bivouac and a guide), which is a welcome antidote to the round ‘em up and ship ‘em out mentality where you’re never allowed to forget that you are, indeed, a tourist.
After two days amid the relentless energy of Marrakech, exploring the alleyways of the medina with its souks, spice shops (Spanish fly, anyone?) and jewelry stalls, we set off for the desert with our guide Brahim, a contemplative Berber history graduate who has worked for the BBC as an advisor on nomadic culture.
It’s about a six-hour drive from Marrakech to the desert town of Ouazarzate (pronounced Waz-ar-zat), where we spend one night before heading off to a fixed bivouac at Erg Lihoudi, two hours south of Zagora, another stop en-route. The drive down through the High Atlas mountains, still snow covered in early February, is breathtaking and brings us first to Telouet, a Berber village in the High Atlas dominated by a kasbah that once served as the palatial residence of the powerful Glaoui tribe.
The kasbah itself has fallen into disrepair but its glorious heyday is still evident in the harem, whose rooms are adorned with Islamic mosaics and sugary-white filigree stonework of the most intricate design.
Ait Benhaddou, the next stop, is a painstakingly preserved, 12th-century kasbah made entirely of adobe (baked mud and straw) which was recently made a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has been the setting for around 20 films, including Gladiator, Jesus of Nazareth and Lawrence of Arabia. Climb to the upper reaches and you’ll be afforded a fantastic view of the never-ending hammada (stony desert) and surrounding palmeraie.
After spending the night in a small, traditional hotel in Ouazarzate, it’s up with the dawn to continue our journey into the Sahara proper. Ahmed and Mohammed have already pitched up camp at Erg-Lihoudi, so all we’re required to do is find our tents and dump the rucksacks before following our noses to one of the traditional Berber tents (made of thick woven cloth held up by wooden poles) to see what Mohammed has cooked up for lunch. He dispels any illusions we may have held that racks of stainless steel utensils and a Nigella-style kitchen are prerequisites for making anything vaguely edible. With just a tagine (a conical stone cooking pot as well as the name for Moroccan stew), a stove, a wooden spoon and some wonderfully fresh ingredients, he produces the most delicious beef tagine – a combination of meat and vegetables liberally seasoned with cumin, paprika and cinnamon, the staple spices of Morocco.
After lunch, sweet tea is served in the communal bivouac – in fact, it’s practically on tap. But this is no ordinary cuppa – tea making nomad style is an elaborate ritual of pouring the liquid from glass to glass, back into the pot and then into the glass again, which gives it its all-important froth.
While we’re sipping tea, a deep-throated rumbling announces the arrival of our camels, Peta and Bilkhir. They’re being saddled up for an afternoon stroll to the erg (big sand dunes) so we can watch the sun go down, but they’d obviously rather carry on with lunch. We’re given the option of walking, but it’s much more fun pretending to be Lawrence of Arabia, especially as we’ve just bought ourselves Berber head wraps.
As the sun sets and sienna and pink clouds streak the horizon, the dunes and hammada beyond change from khaki to tan to umber before our eyes. The silence is absolute and, as a city dweller, I have experienced nothing like it before. No police sirens, no dogs yapping, no annoying neighbors. All I have to do is sit back and contemplate the hushed vastness of it all – and the triviality of my worries in comparison. Whatever, the desert nomads must be on to something: Depression, the ever-increasing Western malaise, is practically an unknown concept to them.
We manage to rouse ourselves sufficiently to meander back to the bivouac in time to watch Ahmed baking sand bread, a centuries-old method of baking that uses a sand “oven”, which is a volcano-shaped mound of sand, full of hot ashes, onto which a flat, circular lump of dough is placed. More hot ashes are poured over the top and after the bread has been left to bake for around 10 minutes, Ahmed produces a fluffy loaf, not unlike an Indian-style nan-bread, which makes a tasty accompaniment to dinner, a rich prune tagine.
The kasbah of Oulad Driss is about an hour’s walk from the bivouac and is southern Morocco’s biggest. It’s no museum piece, but a living “city” of interconnected houses populated by a huge extended family. After taking tea with a local family, we watch children play barefoot hopscotch, sketching in the dirt with a broken twig. A “stilo” (pen – French is widely spoken in Morocco; a legacy of colonization) seems to be the children’s gift of choice but I raise a grateful smile from one boy with just a cheese-and-onion Pringle.
After four days, we leave the desert to spend our last night in Marrakech and take an evening stroll round the Djemaa el-Fna, the city’s huge, frenetic main square and an event in itself. Tourists and onlookers jostle for space with snake charmers, jugglers, acrobats, pickpockets and hustlers, while delicious aromas waft from row upon row of open-air food stalls selling everything from soup to snails.
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