I saw in my dream, that when the shepherds perceived that they were wayfaring men they also put questions to them, to which they made answer, as in other places: as Whence come you? and how got you in the way? and by what means have you so persevered therein? for but few of them that begin to come hither do shew their face on this mountain. But when the shepherds heard their answers, being pleased therewith, they looked very lovingly upon them and said, Welcome to the Delectable Mountains.
Bunyan (Pilgrim’s Progress)
Every invading army seems to have come by Taza, occupied the town, fortified it or knocked it about. When explorer Charles de Foucauld visited in 1883 he mentioned how the Spanish traveller Badia (in the guise of Ali Bey) had been there half a century before, seeing ‘cette ville si florissante et si heureuse’ (this town so flowery and so pretty) whereas anarchy had reduced it to ‘la plus misérable’ in his day. Nothing is ever static, whether it is the lot of an individual, a family, town, city or country; ascendancy and decay are the left and right hands of fortune. Islam came to Morocco by the Taza Gap, the Taza Corridor, la trouée de Taza, and various dynasties occupied it before taking dominant Fes, as did the Alaouites in the seventeenth century, the dynasty that still reigns.
At the end of last century the weak sultan Moulay Aziz faced a rebellion based on Taza, with Bou Hamara, the Rogui (Pretender), eventually declaring himself rival sultan and creating a decade of chaos. He’d fled east earlier and came back as a convincing charismatic holy man, gaining power over the superstitious Berber tribesmen. One trick was to bury a helper with a straw to breathe through, so he could be seen to ‘communicate with the dead’. He would thereafter trample on the straw so the man smothered, then allowed the body to be dug up so the speaker was seen to be dead. Moulay Hafid succeeded Moulay Aziz and successfully destroyed the Pretender’s forces. The Rogui was dragged to Fes and paraded in a cage. He was then ceremoniously given to the menagerie lions but they only had a chew so the man was shot and the body burnt.
The French insistence on not destroying medinas after their conquest has left old Taza poised on its limestone outcrop while a new town has radiated out three kilometres down the slope, with the railway station at the foot. Quite un-touristy, Taza is a pleasantly relaxing place and the medina deserves to be explored. Not that we could on that occasion; we were under orders. But, for the first and only time on the long traverse, we lost the mules.
Lost is perhaps not the correct word for we had still to meet our companions of the journey ahead and, if the day began with a communal idiocy it was to end with a personal one. If our ends are in our beginnings, Allah help us, I thought. The date was 28th March.
That we were really starting came home as soon as we dressed, for the clothes we pulled on were those of our march. The day sack was not for a snack on a train, but for the long walk west, the start of that tentative line that had lain on the map like a mesmerising snake for two years. We fixed up a rendezvous with Ali (or we thought we did) and he shot off in a taxi to unite our gear with Hosain and the mules. We then went in search of breakfast, which was easy, and a taxi, which was not. We spent half an hour vainly searching for a taxi only to find a whole rank of them at the back of our hotel block. We were dropped off near the old town.
As there was no sign of Ali, Charles guarded our gear and I walked up to the top of the straggling town’s overspill. I walked past the ‘Provence’ to the Bab el Guebour, and down the sweep of road we’d come. From the fluttering gum avenue I had a fine view over the tawny plains to a kouba (domed structure, often over a holy site) in the valley below and the merloned walls of the old city above. The tawny cliff overlooking the road is pitted with troglodyte homes, well hidden by enclosed gardens and trees. There seemed to be mules-a-plenty down by the shrine but not our pair. I was about to walk back up the hill when a taxi shot past with Ali waving from it. We added Charles and the gear and drove out past the top end of the town. Not for the last time we had severely underestimated distances. “We can only improve on such a start,” I suggested.
A grey and a dark brown mule stood below a thorny tree in a layby: Taza and Tamri, animals who would become distinct personalities in the weeks ahead. Ali and Hosain had had a complicated time making their purchase, as one came from a town thirty kilometres off. They had to be stabled securely in the old town, and panniers and harnesses purchased. They were the biggest single expense of the whole trip and by far our biggest and most constant concern. Taza was a douce female and Tamri a dark youthful male. Mules are almost always bred from a male donkey and a mare and, while offspring are sexually differing they are (with rare exceptions) sterile. While we were marking time at Rabat, Ali was chasing here and there to find suitable beasts, arguing prices (a hint of our involvement and the price would have soared), and, on top of all else, having to convince authorities, officials and the police that we really weren’t a band of kif (cannabis) smugglers. With our bright blue tarpaulins covering the mules’ loads we stuck out like a patch of blue in a Torridon summer. How do you explain people who go walking for the sake of it in a country where the first sign of affluence is to ensure one is not walking. One of the first questions in any conversation was always: “Where is your car?”
It was 1015 by the time our huge pile of baggage had been loaded on top of our honest beasts. They didn’t quite buckle at the knees. We were to wonder on many occasions just what they made of our trip. Presumably they could not think ahead or make decisions based on predicted events. When the panniers came off they couldn’t know whether it was for five minutes or forever. Though we soon had a general overall pattern of continuity, there were always days that were unexpectedly different. There were to be days when we weren’t sure if the beasts would be fed and, after 96 days of this, the journey just stopped. As mules don’t write their memoirs we will never know...
“Hirrah!” and we were off.
We set off on a very hot morning, wending through the lush green of spring barley, criss-crossing the tarred road and then steadily climbing a long rufous slope until our legs felt like lead. Even with the brolly up, my clothing was soaked with sweat. There’s no escaping the harsh hammering of body and soul at the start. Even on a backpacking event like the TGO (The Great Outdoors) annual coast-to-coast across Scotland, the first few days are toilsome. After a week, the machinery is run in and functional, and then the crossing is over. This time we would be travelling far enough to stiffen the sinews and bear the ultimate fitness with us. There are no short cuts to fitness.
We could see the zigzags of the tarred road far below in a valley (headed by the dainty cascade of the Ras-el-Oued) then wending back and forth over to the left. A high knoll land-marked the heights we aimed for. A village indicated water, and rebellious bodies collapsed under some trees while the ever-active Hosain loped off to return with two five litre bottles of water. We consumed every drop over a long rest, long enough for Ali and Hosain to make and consume a tagine with a loud-voiced local. A steep gully took us up to meet the tarred road where urchins were selling the edible hearts from the fan palms that grew among the arid limestone crags. A hoopoe went whirring past, like a plastic whirler on a stick. An attractive zaouia (religious building) in the gut of the valley produced a deranged beggar who tailed us on up through oak forest and only vanished when we were hailed by a well-to-do family picnicking by their car. They asked us, “Where is your car?”
Just before the edge of the secretive world of the Dayat Chiker (dayat means lake, but the waters there have long gone apart from a small seasonal area) we stopped to let the others catch up and also for me to find four half bottles of whisky I’d left hidden two years earlier. Cache-ing whisky was not a common practice, but that year I had my Transit Camper and everyone seemed to leave some whisky so I had far more than the limit for entering Spain. My idea of doing a swap of Red Label for a Vévéy etching of old man’s heads in Fes misfired when I was told to look at the booze shop round the corner: the price was considerably less than the UK Duty Free. Reconnoitring up from Taza I took an easy option and hid the bottles among the oak-scree slopes of the pass where we would come on GTAM—a vote of confidence in our expedition happening. My scrap-of-paper map led me to the cache at a second attempt but we left it in situ until Ali and Hosain arrived. We told them there was whisky hidden on the slope, and watched their looks of disbelief double when we found some. (The haul disappeared fairly quickly, oiling the wheels at Bab Bou Idir the next night; neither Charles or I made much use of it.)
The road split on the edge of the flat, hill-encircled plain. ‘Taza 22’ was a satisfying figure. The left branch wends south to Merhraoua (Meghrawa) and the right makes a dramatic mountain circuit through the Tazekka cedar and cork oak forests and then down again to the Taza Gap. We aimed for the best of both since to the right lay a cave system I’d explored on that Transit visit, which Charles just had to see, and Jbel Tazekka, the last real summit at that end of the mountains, just had to be climbed. We then aimed to wend south by Merhraoua to the Jbel Bou Iblane snows, well launched on our route.
The nearby Chiker Caves had been explored for five kilometres (by Casteret) but had to wait that day. Happily some locals at the fork were able to answer our questions about water availability and we struck right across the middle of the Dayat Chiker. A tiny stream drained eastwards but our water came fresh and pure from a well which shepherd boys indicated. They also raced off to bring fodder for the mules. Kids always appear, seemingly out of nowhere, and although in many countries they’d be an unpleasant menace, in the Atlas they are friendly and helpful, immensely tough and with the smiles of angels and the spirits of imps.
Our first day, a hard graft ascent in torrid heat, had been quite exhausting, which made the arrival of coolness welcome. While not yet desert-suffering from heat (that would come later) we could understand why so many Arab poets became lyrical about the shadowy hours of evening. The blazing fever of daylong heat can be tiring and stressful and one longs for the night to come with its kindlier cold. That was one reason why our encampments would become both the most reliable and repetitive pleasures of GTAM.
We had one of the few grassy sites of the trip, the whole area being grazing land in prime bowling-green condition. The only snag of being pitched on a snooker table was finding anywhere out of sight for functions one prefers to perform with some privacy. There was also the interest of pitching the new Vango tents for the first time. A large, domed, Discovery tent acted as kitchen tent, dining-room and sleeping place for Hosain, while Charles, Ali and I had a Micro 2 each, following the advice of the Arab proverb, ‘Keep your tents separate and bring your hearts together’. The high-tech aspects of the tents were initially daunting but before long we could pitch and strike quickly and appreciated their fine qualities. The Discovery inner was never used which considerably increased the space inside. Little did we realise how soon and often all four of us would be cringing inside it while the rain belted down. On the Dayat Chiker it was frost that came down, to give the coldest night of the trip when of course, while preparing for bed, I discovered my sleeping bag had disappeared.
I could last remember seeing the bag at Imlil so that left plenty of scope for the loss. An unlikely explanation was that it had been stolen for, despite stories one hears, I have found Morocco remarkably honest. In the fish market at Essaouira I once pulled out my handkerchief and scattered coins all over the place. There was a noisy diving and searching by all and sundry and grinning gamins (urchins) soon had my hands full of money, including those who a minute before had been giving me the classic greeting of “Bon jour; un dirham”. In Agadir when a grocer innocently gave me change from a 50dh note instead of 100dh (he was serving ten customers simultaneously) the man beside me spoke up before I could open my mouth. I’m forever leaving things behind (spectacle cases, alarm clocks) but they always find their way back to me. As did the sleeping bag a year later, when I happened to be given the same room in the Hotel Central in Rabat that Charles and I had occupied before GTAM. I thought I might just check if I’d somehow left the bag there. I was led to the lost property cupboard—and there it was.
On arrival at camp, Ali ceremoniously brewed the first pot of mint tea he’d made since Taroudant: delicious and naturally on the sugary side of sweet. The distant sunset (el maghrib) call to prayer came half-heard from a remote village. After dark, when the frogs were machine-gunning the stars and the night reeled to the cicadas, we had a tagine supper and were ready for bed not long after eight o’clock. The pattern was set: plenty to drink, good food (none of your cement-mixer school of camp cooking) and long hours of rest.
I slept in all the warm clothes I could muster inside my bivvy bag, but the cosmic cold eventually chilled my feet. A surprising amount of mule traffic clattered along the road, but it was mostly sheer excitement that kept sleep at bay. In the morning every blade of grass stood on end, like hairs on the head of fear, gone white in the night. The tents were shining with tumbled stars of frost. I was up at six (in self-defence) but an hour passed before the golden sun found us. We discovered the one single deficiency of the tent material. On warm nights the flysheet material stayed taut but given soaking wet or hard frost—just the conditions when one doesn’t like to go outside to tighten guylines—the material sags. This could lead to flysheet contact with the inner which could lead to wet penetrating.
The Gouffre de Friouata (Friwata) is a pot system of considerable interest to cavers. Originally the only entrance was the 20-metre wide hole on the hillside into which it would have been very easy to stumble (how much livestock over the years had done so?). However, in pre-war days a tunnel was angled in from the side and a flight of concrete steps was built on the walls leading down to a huge scree fan and down the scree to a ‘squeeze’ at the beginning of exotic passages, explored and unexplored. We stopped about 200 metres down.
Two years previously I’d been alone with just one poor torch which gave a certain edge to my explorations. Since then, a small café has been built by the entrance and we waited there for our two friends before going down. The guardien was astonished when our two friends arrived with two mules (“Where is your car?”), but with a guardien, we could all go down together which was pleasant. Head torches shone into many new corners, catching glittering red falls or white sculptures, pillars, draperies and pools, a fantasy world created over many centuries. Unfortunately, we got rather tied up with a party of flip-flop-wearing city types who latched onto us and our torches. What with a young male’s posturing and teenage girls giggling, the ambience was rather spoilt. Wealth and education are by no means an unalloyed blessing as they lead to the loss of national characteristics—and happiness—and an acceptance of the noisy worst features of Western civilisation.
The guardien swung open the iron entrance door to what could have been a coal-cellar and we descended a flight of about fifty concrete steps to end at a hole in the wall of the great pit. What a theatrical revelation. One almost felt like applauding. Voices echoing led our eyes down to see tiny figures below; not trolls but tiny because they were a long way down. The steps, stuck on the sidewall, are a trap for the unathletic. The family who raced down puffed noisily back up in very different mood; at least the girls had stopped giggling. Looking up, the real size of the opening became apparent: 20 metres in ragged diameter with an odd blue patch of jigsaw sky. The descent was made into blissful coolness.
About 750 irregular steps led down the scree that filled the bottom. Perhaps the roof had fallen in, leaving one wondering what passages lay buried and undiscovered. One passage, a tight ‘squeeze’ down a vertical climb, had been cleared at the lowest point of the scree and odd steps either of concrete or cut in the rock led on through a tortuous maze. We spent an hour exploring without reaching the end of that main route, with some aids and worn rock or footprints in mud to guide us. At the furthest point we switched off our torches so everyone could experience complete darkness, a sky instantaneously devoid of stars, a heart thumping with blood...a girl screamed.
There were plenty of attractive features: waves that curled but never broke, lances that flung shadow weapons at us. One gleaming pillar looked like ice and I climbed over to check, but it was only translucent rock. Drips were forming new stalactites and stalagmites and there were some delicately rimmed pools. Sadly, features too accessible had been vandalised and graffiti was spreading, odd behaviour in a place which struck me as almost holy with tapestries of colour, bosses and capitals and pillars fit for a minister, echoing like a cathedral. The teenagers giggled some more as they pointed out to each other monstrous tits and rows of bulls’ bollocks.
Outside once more we had cold drinks. Cool as it was inside, the climb up all those steps had us dripping with sweat. The whole plain below the gouffre was a patchwork of fields and terraces were being built up the gullies opposite. A pair of mules was refusing to cooperate with the ploughing of a field and the poor ploughboy was in despair as his team repeatedly took off in opposite directions. We cut right across the end of the plain and up through evergreen oak forest to reach Bab Bou Idir, a strange mix of development and decay. The map rather optimistically called it Centre d’Estivage. Taza scout troops were occupying the pinewoods and doing all the things scouts usually do with rope and wood and dib-dib-dibbing. Ali and I had to go and chat to officialdom. Tourists with mules were not something they had been faced with before. An old lag of a soldier took us up to a possible camping spot on a col which gave splendid views in all directions: out over the Dayat Chiker eastwards and over blue expected hills to Jbel Tazzeka. Below us the forest plunged down to the Taza corridor. We had endless visitors (word of the Red Label had got out) and a sociable evening in the Discovery. The scouts’ cheery singsong went on until midnight, the sound coming up to us in wind-borne waves.
Jbel Tazzeka is only 1980 m, but thrusts out from the Middle Atlas to dominate the historic Taza Gap (the communication mast on top can be seen from the train). It is isolated enough that the magnificent crowning cedars are possibly a subspecies of Cedrus atlantica. Some of the larger specimens were young trees in the days of Moulay Ismaïl—or Cromwell. There was oak as well and west, on the road down, are forests of cork oak Quercus suber with their denuded trunks. From the age of 27 until they ‘retire’ at 75 the cork oaks are compelled to hand over their trousers every nine years. Some of the fields lower down were heaped with cork, high as coal bings. As well as cork products, the bark is a useful source of tannin, with Fes and its leather industry close to hand.
Natural forest like that teems with bird life and the ground was rich with flowers: pansy, minute daffodils, gagea, romulea and many more. Rather a contrast to the sterility of Sitka spruce plantings at home. We’d set off at 0600 and were home at 1400, a 29 km hike to ‘bag’ our first hill. We were rewarded with mugs of tea and hot, fresh bread with our favourite Aïcha brand marmalade before we went off to find the charming official in charge of the Tazzeka National Park. We had mint tea and were shown around the visitor centre he’d been creating. The fenced areas we’d noticed are an attempt to reintroduce deer. Tazzeka itself is a cedar reserve while other areas are earmarked for different agricultural uses. Practical dreams: man as long-lasting partner rather than transient exploiter.
The wind had been increasing steadily all day and the quartz-sharp clarity had blown away. We went to kip with our torch beams ghosting through billowing mist. The pines surged like surf in the night with rain catapulting off the branches. It was like sleeping below a taut jib, going out at six was the equivalent of being thrown overboard. A couple of hours later Ali brought tea but he was the only one keen to set off after the rain eased. We bundled everything together and went however. The Governor of Taza was due the next day which may have encouraged us; Ali is wary of officials. Or maybe our nomadic encampment was a bit scandalous (we didn’t even have a car).
The earliest account of Atlas travelling I’ve come across is in the writings of Leo Africanus, who was probably a Granada-born Moorish traveller captured by Christian pirates in 1520 and presented to the Pope, Leo X, whose name he took. He had travelled ‘in the region of Barbarie’ himself and describes fine woods and lofty trees though much was cold and barren. Even in summer, if you dipped a hand in a stream, you risked losing it! A party of traders travelling together ran into an October storm of hail then snow, were robbed by Arab bandits then all took shelter in some caves with some Berber shepherds. On the third day they descended, and found their abandoned carts had been pillaged and one of the party taken hostage. Leo, having his mount taken, went on three days by mule to reach Fes. The description of the area fits the Middle Atlas convincingly.
Our mules’ accoutrements had been thoroughly overhauled while we were on Tazzeka and we held the bridles as the skittish beasts were loaded, then walked on to warm up. We turned off the tarmac on the road to Adman at a dip, the Bab Taka (the word bab meaning gate is used in that area instead of the more usual tizi, meaning pass). That village, using its local resources as all do, was into cork: walls were capped with cork, roof-eaves were cork, livestock pens were cork, even a child’s toy lorry being pulled along on a string was shaped from cork.
There was a green and lush landscape, watered by seven sources and dominated by jagged rock pitons (pinnacle-shaped hills). There didn’t appear to be a way through but we hit a clear winding stream, secreted between pink limestone walls. It snaked on through verdant glades and oak forest, the trees twisted as old men. Charles thought the area was just like the Yorkshire Dales. The weather certainly was, with the wind knifing us on the grazing lands we followed above the deep-set Oued Arba. South, in the murk, there was a hint of big, snowy mountains. Yet this was a peopled landscape, with charcoal burning in the forest. When the time came to stop we turned down to try and find shelter by the river. A cheery soldier with a donkey caught up and suggested a suitable place, and after sending his animal off home by itself, he became our pal for that day, finding entertainment in all we did. He brought fodder for our hungry mules. As we’d only had tea and toast for breakfast we had healthy appetites. Soup, bully beef with spiced vegetables and a rice pudding was our typical supper meal. A boy from the nearest farm had brought down a jar of buttermilk and huge, round loaves of bread. We enjoyed roughing it, brews in hand, with a tired moon leaning on the shoulder of the hill. There’s a different level of restfulness in those circumstances. The normal world had orbited off into unreality while the weightless wonder all around becomes the centre of all.
Following the Oued Arba gave very varied walking and the landscape became richer, oleanders and olives choking the bank. It was impossible to be very sure of where we were on our map, as there was too much physical detail to crowd into the 100,000 scale and not enough names. Having gone ahead we also became concerned about missing the mules. An old man pointed ahead, saying “Lalla Fadila”, but a few minutes later a youth gave the same place as being back the way. “Just follow the river”, we’d told Ali. We stopped at a place where we could see both banks. A solitary figure on the hillside opposite was a red dot among white speckles—a goatherd and his flock. His dog barking indicated someone travelling below and our mules duly appeared. A man on a mule overtook, once we’d paddled over, then paused and asked if we’d like tea up at his house.
He had named his home Beni Raham, which actually agreed with a name on the map, while the Oued Arba had reconstituted itself as the Oued Beni Raham. The house was a huge grey sprawl with a flagged threshing floor surrounded by immense walls of stacked firewood. We lay on cushions on a rug outside, amused by wandering chickens, many-coloured goat kids, a puppy looking like a miniature St Bernard, and the usual shy (two-legged) kids. Later we went inside, kicking off Brashers and Reeboks, to enjoy mint tea and warm, crisp bread with smen (butter) melting over it.
We couldn’t pick out the track ahead but after dropping down to cross a bridge for the long haul out of the valley we discovered why. The strata rose vertically and so did the path. We ground up to the Tizi Tafrannt and were looking down onto Merghraoua, quite a sizeable place with a fine mosque tower and an old fort on a guardian hill. There was also a caïdat (rural government office) at the end of the tarred road. A piste ran on into the Bou Iblane range to the south.
Our desire to explore the place was over-ruled by Ali who didn’t want to have to spend time with the inevitable bureaucracy. We outflanked the town on the right to pick up a series of zigzags as the piste worked back down to the river again, the same river but now calling itself the Amezouarou, which had put in fifteen cliff-held twists and turns since Beni Raham, reason enough for our up-and-over route.
The mules took short cuts from elbow to elbow and cut corners off the river. Hosain enjoyed Ali putting his feet in the water and the wind blew my brolly away. I also left the map behind at one stage and went back only to be met by a bevy of giggly women who were bringing the mysterious object. They had black, lacy shawls over a glitter of kaftans and were not at all abashed at the stranger’s presence.
We camped early, in the lee of a bluff, but it was a dusty, windy spot, surrounded by bare, ploughed fields and some of the oldest, thickest olives I’ve ever seen. My tent hardly flapped in the wind however and I took my brew inside and finished writing a short story which I’d begun the day before. We had haggis for supper. Both evening and morning were so grey and raw that, for once, I didn’t have a picture of the site, probably the least memorable of the trip, except we did see our first Atlas (Moussier’s) redstart. By the end of the next day there had been such a succession of pleasures that I found it hard to remember everything.
The day before we had travelled all day in a southeast direction, down-river, which seemed strange as we were supposed to be working up into big hills. That river had drained a vast upland area that was basically a desiccated plateau and now, coming to a real upsurge of hills it turned away to the northeast and, of course, changed its name, to eventually flow into the Moulouya. Our piste turned southwest, the general GTAM line throughout, heading for Tamtroucht, our next map name, beginning with a tortuous assault on the bluffs above. We left the piste to its endless frenzy of bends and braes for a gentle up-valley walk. A tiny hanut (shop) was welcome for drinks, mantles for the gaz light, and an introduction to Taggers, a chocolate biscuit akin to Blue Ribands and for which we were to develop a craving. We nearly died at the price quoted but then realised he was still working in the old system; rather like someone today quoting a price in pounds, shillings and pence he was using old francs or the more common riyals (where 20 riyals equal one dirham). Leaving the village one of the huge, fast, bright green metre-long lizards shot across the path. There was a south-of-France feel to the valley, hemmed in by limestone cliffs, with vines and olives and fruit trees as well as the chequering of little fields. We stopped to see an olive press in operation, a patient mule walking round and round the basin with a huge stone wheel pulping the black mess. Woven filters strained the over-scented oil and a black stain ran down from the site. Morocco is one of the great olive-producing countries; in the Roman ruins of Volubilis near Meknes there are 55 surviving olive presses.
Continuing, we came to an extraordinary pass, for all the world like a scree-filled Lairig Ghru only several times the scale. Unimagined labour appeared to have cleared fields, no bigger than tabletops, at the foot of the slope. We met a party of women staggering down under huge loads of firewood, bent double under the weight and using short sticks to act as a steadying third leg. The canyon wound on, sheer cliffs on the left, the oak becoming mixed with juniper. We reached cedar country again after a fearsome sweat up through white boulder-fields, passing the 1000-metre altitude we would hold for weeks ahead—probably until we drove down to Marrakech in S3 days’ time.
We came to a col and, beyond, could see the fuscous flat of the Guelta Tamda (tamda meaning lake), which confirmed our suspicions that we had overshot the intended path off up to the Tamtroucht road. We yelled at the fast-disappearing mules and went back to the col for a well-earned rest, brew and a recce. Taza stood with her neck draped over Tamri’s. The lake had dried out and when an ancient on a mule came up he confirmed we could continue over and then cut up to Tamtroucht, the next, last map name before we were right in the mountains. Had the lake held water (rare these last few years), going on would have been impassable; the crags rising from its wood-lined edge had a five-metre tide line. The tamda was an extraordinary mind-ambushing place (“weird and wonderful” in my log). We left a trail behind us as if we had been walking through black snow. There were goats on the cliffs with a boy herd above them who could not have been into double figures in years, controlling their erratic flow along the crags by voice and well-aimed stones. A British mother seeing her child in such a situation would faint or have hysterics.
We saw many groups of ruddy shelduck, an attractive bird with brick red, black and white combination of flight colours. We’d see them on just about every small lake in the Middle Atlas. The tamda went on and on then, beyond a banding of tumbled trees and branches, lay a flood plain which was being ploughed. There was a small farm perched on a crag above, chimney reeking, half-hidden in trees. We could have been approaching Arolla in Switzerland.
The cedars were magnificent and grassy spots among them cried out for our stopping. We walked up by a clear mountain stream called the Souf Igrane. Heaven is portrayed as a walled garden in many cultures. This was ours, and the walls were not made by hands either. A more delectable place we were not to see. We only went on far enough to try and obtain a fix of just where we were, then camped. It was quite important to find the path shown on the map which went up to Tamtroucht. (The place would be a sure location.) A very useful spot height helped the map and altimeter studies and I was chuffed to find the path where expected. Years of Atlas eyeing did the trick. I was doubly pleased because Hosain and Ali hadn’t noticed and had gone past with the mules. Later I walked up a bit and met a man on a mule, leading two others, who was so astonished at seeing me he could only stutter out the usual “La bas!”
Our tents stood in a green glade among the cedars. Ali lit a fire and at dusk baked scrumptious bread on the girdle I’d brought from Scotland. (A flat stone would have done just as well.) We sneaked a few of Ali’s round loaves, eating them hot and plastered in strawberry jam. Chicken with a cheese sauce went with the last of our Taza fresh vegetables. The day ebbed into a quiet dusk where the only sound was a solitary frog’s pleeping. The wind had gone. Firelight lit a small oasis, roofed over with a web of branches, patterned with stars. In the morning, like the sailor in The Coral Island, I was to think, ‘I’ve woked in Paradise!’
Nothing could have been a greater contrast than the following night’s site however. It was a Sibelius world somewhere on the edge of nowhere, offering a scrofulous green patch to camp among jagged limestone, shadowed by freak rocks and looking along the miles of Jbel Bou Iblane’s snowy flanks and the open strath of the Bled Tiserouine (Tisserwin). The air had the tartness of mountain cold and spirals of choughs shrilled overhead.
The first real view of Jbel Bou Iblane had come when we pulled up out of our magic valley to Tamtroucht. The forest had been denuded and only a few skeletons remained. The scene was a bit like upper Deeside in winter: the pines yielding to big sprawling hillsides, grey and patched with snow and the greater summits rising beyond in stark, laundered whiteness. We’d just reached the village, a tiny, unimpressive place for a name which had dominated our progress for so long, when a boy of about ten appeared, striding strongly along, his hand on the bridle of a laden mule. Behind him came a line of other mules, most being led, a few with infants perched on the loads, along with the hens. A younger boy drove the goats. This was our first meeting with a family migrating or, to be accurate we were seeing transhumance, which is the regular posting back and forth where a migration could be just one way. They went resolutely forward, eyes front, speaking to no one, and dropped down into the trees. Sadly, because of the late winter, we were to encounter few other families on the move.
‘Transhumance’ never quite conveys the thrill of meeting the process in operation, one which calls to us and blows the dying embers of romance in our souls into a brief warmth. In a world where everything is stereotyped, regulated and dulled by security such a sight is bound to ‘remind us of heathery origins/And cave man doubts’. The pied piper is always ready to lead us astray. Then I laughed for weren’t we on a similar journey—even more so—following no seasonal round, low to high, south to north, but a mighty east to west, the whole extravagance from end to end? And I quite consciously bit on this juicy apple of truth, knowing it would never come again. I didn’t want to prance after the band on that occasion; we had our own procession.
As we left Tamtroucht there was a solitary, stately cedar on the right, the ‘Tree of Reconciliation’, commemorating where in earlier times the tribes, often hostile, rallied to the Makhzen (central government). For centuries the country had been divided into the Bled el Makhzen and the Bled el Siba with the sultans ruling a variable holding from Fes or Morocco (Marrakech) and making punitive harkas (literally, burning) expeditions against the tribes. This was a system well used by Queen Elizabeth or (more briefly) Mary Queen of Scots. They constantly toured the country and were given the hospitality of the great lords, thereby severely denting their wealth and restricting their opportunities to create mischief.
Perhaps the closest analogy is with the old Highlands—Lowlands situation in Scotland. The King of Scots faced exactly the same situation and, with varying degrees of success dependent upon character as well as force, controlled those clans who if they were not uniting against the government were quite happy to be fighting and plundering among themselves. Just as central government (by then in London) used the Campbells and other ‘loyal’ clans, the French used the ‘Lords of the Atlas’ to control the mountains until able to subdue the remaining dissident areas. There was no single Culloden to settle matters, however, and there were ghastly battles on mountains like Jbel Baddou or Bou Gaffer in 1933. Culloden was 250 years ago but I have picked old mortar cases or tins of boeuf assaisonne off the slopes of Bou Gaffer. The scene had been described to me by someone who was there, as a child hiding with the women in the caves while the men fought mortars, machine guns and aircraft with muzzle-loaders which—in style—predated Culloden. French toehold to departure was only a period of 44 years, which included both world wars. It deserves pointing out again that from Independence to the present is probably the longest spell of relative peace the country has ever known. They would not be clearing and ploughing the rusty slopes of the Bled Tiserouine otherwise.
Another similarity to the Highlands is that enforced peace and the corollary of adequate food has meant an explosion in population numbers and a scattering to the corners of the world. Morocco’s population has exploded since Independence and the investment in expanding agricultural resources has an amount of desperation to it. There has been a huge shift of population to the cities, especially Casablanca, or to France (and Belgium) where many a little corner shop, the Moroccan hanut, will be in the hands of a Tafraouti. But young adults now make half of Morocco’s population. Where will they go? Where will they find employment? The change, in my lifetime, has been nothing less than astonishing and I think history, which likes to record in sizeable chunks, will mark down the second half of the 20th century as something of a Golden Age.
New pistes appeared which were not on the map and luckily we were within hailing distance as Hosain shot off on a wrong fork. The correct piste tied itself in knots along bald flanks above the deep northeast drainage which, as ever, cut so deeply so suddenly. When others comment on the vast scale of everything, always emphasising the wide horizontal distances, I’m apt to mention the equally impressive scale of verticalities. There isn’t much level walking in the Atlas Mountains. By such standards, the Bled Tiserouine is a plain—an elevated shelf of pastureland with long strings and scatterings of sheep and, like ink blots on a letter, the occasional dark patch of a nomad tent. Water was scarce despite the streaky snow on the flanks of Jbel Bou Iblane. We camped just above a well where the flocks came, in turns, to drink at the long trough. The map actually indicates one ‘bain pour les moutons’ and Peyron warns of a well with a reputation of being poisonous. We took his word for it.
Facing our camp on the flank of Jbel Bou Iblane at 2000 m, were several sturdy buildings and a ski tow. I’m told there were grand plans for a ski resort there but development rather came to a halt. Whenever the conditions were right for skiing, the road in was always blocked, while in summer, there was inadequate water on site. We had hardly pitched our tents when a soldier came over from the buildings to say they were now the offices of the local caïd, and could we please report.
There was a feeling of unreality about our visit: outside was a scene that belonged to the time of Abraham and his flocks, whereas inside we were led past smart girls busily typing, into the caïd’s office. His suit and tie made us feel somewhat travel soiled. He explained that there were plans to develop the area, that a new district (caïdat) had been created for this high wilderness. “Come back in ten years and you will find a town here”, we were challenged. I said I hoped we’d be back long before then and, simultaneously, we said “Insh’ Allah”.
Ali was an assistant with a tourist agency and this always needed explaining. The company’s brochure, illustrated from a selection of slides I’d provided, happened to include a picture of myself sitting in a group of happy village children. We were always amused to see the reactions when officials came on this: the long stare, the quick glance across the table, another look, the cry of “It is you!” and as like as not another handshake for someone who was obviously involved in their world rather than just a casual tourist.
“You are good friend to Morocco?”
“I hope so.”
There is a dramatic change in relationships when questioners discovered one is on a return visit. There may be a certain suspicion that the question is loaded as, if you have been before, you are not so likely to be an easy mark for the taxi driver or tout, but that soon goes. You don’t keep returning without good cause and, tout or caïd, you will soon be asked, “You like our country?”
“Yes, I like Morocco very much.”
“How many times you been?”
“Nearly every year since 1965—over 30 times.”
“Then, monsieur, you were visiting my country before I was born.”
Some cards are easy to play.
At least they are for us. Officialdom can be heavy on ordinary men. Everything is regulated. The right papers can mean a world of difference. I’ve had a youth who’d thumbed a lift hauled out of my car and given a virtual body search and a verbal hammering because he was breaking the law by being with tourists when not ‘officially’ in the tourist industry. An opened wallet might have changed that ugly situation of course, or exacerbate it, one never knows—it is not a climate we understand very well. We gave the caïd one of our forms with all our personal details on it. This always went down well with officialdom. They worship forms. After all, when the French left Morocco they had four times the number of bureaucrats running the country as the Brits had in India.
Free contact with tourists has dangers, of course. Ideas can be swapped. There’s never been a time or race when young men don’t dream dreams (and we old men see visions). The tourist is a dangerous asset, much better corralled in Agadir or seeing the country from the goldfish bowl of an air-conditioned bus. What and how far to allow things presents one of these chewy problems for authority. There are extremists tugging constantly in all directions. Whatever one feels, Morocco has steered a middle course and enjoyed a peace, prosperity and a freedom found in few countries. The occasional annoyances (even horrors) may be tolerable for the overall multum bonum.
The tourist potential in Morocco is tremendous but not an easy concept to explain (never mind in broken French) to an isolated official with no tourist experience. The Jbel Bou Iblane massif is still terra incognito and while part of me delights in that of course, some wealth coming into the area would only be for the good of the local population. There’s a certain arrogance in denying development when it could bring benefits such as schools, a clinic, decent roads and a souk, something more for people than the harsh minimum which many still face every day. That’s a problem I’ve been masticating all my life and, likewise striving for a middle way, have drawn fire from the extremists. Truth never lies in extremes.
Charles was happy to depart at 0440 to climb Moussa ou Salah again, the first ‘Munro’ of GTAM (3172 m). Calling metric hills after the Scottish 3000-footers is a foible dating back to when I took school parties to the Alps. They wouldn’t climb anything under 3000 m as they jokingly declared them not to be Munros. Charles slid the stove into my tent as he left but after an hour I set off, in full light after the fish scales of frost had gone, for modest Jbel Achlem Alem (2462 m). It is the highest of the breaking wave crests on the northern side of the bled (countryside), its limestone rock face wrinkled as an old face. The weather was cloudy but the main interest was the flowers: the yellowest of yellow raffenaldias and minute pansies which sensibly grew up through thorn scrub so as not to be eaten by goats. Higher, there were romulea, gagea and huge areas of Ranunculus calandrinioides with pink-tinged flowers, a species the professionals were desperate to see later. Horned larks, like busy mice, were rummaging around the dreich summit. Our intended route on, the Tizi Bou Zabel, had a long rising line of white leading up to it, indicating the direction of the track but also warning that the route was banked with snow. Back at camp I considered the alternatives if the snow stopped the mules using the pass.
I hadn’t gone with Charles for Jbel Bou Iblane’s summit of Moussa ou Salah (3172 m) as we’d done it previously. Jbel Bou Nacceur (3326 m) is the highest of this almost unknown area. Only Peyron had written about it, briefly, which lured Charles, Ali, Len and me to visit in 1992, backpacking and bivouacking over Nacceur and then obtaining a mule for Iblane out to Taffert—just along on the route we had planned for the following day. When the weather deteriorated on that trip, the muleteer quickly wove rope from grass to support the panniers between rocks as a shelter! We’d ran for our lives off Iblane as a thunderstorm swept in. Ali got a dose of snow blindness to add to his learning curve.
It was extraordinary how one doesn’t see people on a big open slope. Charles was only 400 m off when we spotted him. A brew and we were off at 1100, up to a minor pass and then a stiffer climb to a higher pass. Conditions underfoot became claggy so I retrieved my boots from Tamri. There was some hail. Berbers are either born optimists or they are so fit that they are prodigal in expending energy, for the mules were driven on up that line of snow until it was quite impossible to proceed. Even then we were sent on to the tizi (2300 m) to see if the mules could win through from Taffert further on. We did not like what we saw. On a rather dubious Victorian era Alpine climb the guide Melchior Anderegg once gave his führer the comment: ‘Es geht. Aber ich gehe nicht.’ (It [the route] may go, but I don’t). We were not going to risk Taza and Tamri. Spears of sun were piercing the armour of clouds and waving across the ridges as if looking for a place to wound. The Tizi Bou Zabel was closed to us.
We regrouped back on the lower track and wandered along to the Taffert maison forestière, a forestry building akin to all others in having a pitched roof of pink tiles, very French alpine chalet architecture seen in some of the few protectorate buildings that have been maintained. There was an avalanche of dogs but the place seemed deserted. The previous time we’d been taken in but only under sufferance, as we didn’t have the local caïd’s blessing (a bit difficult as his office lay two hours by car down the Fes road). However, the burly haj soon thawed and we had a curious night in the haunted atmosphere that would have served well for a horror film.
Rather sadly we went on, determined to call a halt at the first water. This proved to be just outside the cedar forest: a stream beside an orchard. We pitched on an andrair, a level threshing floor by a barn (with a pitched roof of cedar boards), a shepherd lad of about ten graciously giving us his blessing. By the time he’d watched us pitch, had tea and chatted with Ali, his flock had disappeared and he went off at a trot. Every village has several andrair for, like every part of agricultural or constructional work, threshing is done in concentrated fashion: the communal cooperation of crofting. Grain is laboriously cut by hand (usually by men) and carried home or to the threshing floor (by women). The crop is harvested at just the right time so the grains don’t detach with all the handling but dries out to the correct looseness. It is then threshed: piled on one of the floors and trampled by the poor donkeys or mules tied to the central post, walking round and round. Forks of natural growth are used to toss the straw in the air so the chaff is separated; nothing is wasted. Explaining this to some female tourists, I was asked, “But what about the mules, you know, err, they err, might make a mess?” So I told her the remedy: “The mules wear nappies!” I don’t think she believed me.
Tamri had developed a sore on his back so Hosain tried to re-shape the saddle to remove the pressure and Ali rubbed on some Savlon. The boy’s dog came and lay patiently in hope of food. Soup, pasta, corned beef and onion sauce, apricots and custard, coffee and biscuits: not much for a dog. The dog had called up reinforcements for breakfast, but had even less chance of sharing our muesli. As we walked along the road the shepherd boy greeted us with solemn dignity.
Any hope we’d had of making a level contour around the western extension of the Bou Iblane ridge soon disappeared as the slopes broke into cedar-clad cliffs. We began to descend the road’s zigzags but then cut off down a dry river bed to reach a spur beyond, up which ran a new piste, when we eventually found it. Before then the mules had descended ground never intended for mules and thrashed up through maquis (scrub) slopes. We were gasping as we followed.
A deep gorge and tiered crags showed our descent had been wise. “Better the devil we can see”, canny Charles admitted. Off to the west a huge scarp dominated, down valley we could see the tortuous road vanishing in the foothills down to the Taza—Fes road at a place with the delightful name of Birtam Tam. A mule track led us up to Arbal, a village of neat stone houses and cedar shingles. We stopped at the source (spring) at the head of the village where the water was led off along troughs of hollowed cedar logs. Ali and Hosain couldn’t get over such an abundance of wood. We brewed and had some warmed-up bread, making it almost as good as new (we also carried a simple toaster and a reserve of oatcakes should all other options fail).
The sky had turned the sad grey of an approaching storm and the atmosphere was stale. What should we do? On cue a local came down and asked if we’d like to stay in the village. As it was still early we dithered. There was a growl of thunder and several voices immediately replied: “Thank you”, “Chokrane", “Barakalowfik”. Taza and Tamri were loaded and we angled up into Arbal to be welcomed into a home which seemed to have an endless number of look-alike brothers all wearing identikit pullovers. A female carried off a loudly complaining chicken. “Tagine au poulet”, grinned Ali, and nobody minded.
As mint tea is always served, many times a day sometimes, it may be wise to describe it. By the end of GTAM we regarded the beverage as the nectar of the gods. The British introduced tea from the east back in 1854 (Moroccans added mint), as well as the uniquely bulbous-shaped teapot. Some of the older ones may well have Manchester stamped on the bottom. The best brand of green tea has the slightly ominous trade name of Gunpowder.
Everything is portable in the uncluttered Moroccan home (we tend to fill space, they use space as part of the design concept). A girl brings in a low table with glasses, fat-bellied teapot, sugar box and tea, then a kanoun (a glowing charcoal brazier made of clay). When the kettle boils the teapot is rinsed and the glasses washed again. Tea is popped into the teapot and washed then the boiling water is poured in. Fresh mint is carefully washed, inspected, crushed and added, followed by an unbelievable quantity of sugar. Sugar comes in huge 2 kg cones and is broken by gently tapping with a hammer. The pieces almost fill the teapot to over-flowing. The pot is placed on the stove awhile, then our host tries and rejects several tastings and, eventually satisfied, pours the golden liquid into glasses from a great height with unerring aim, so the tea gurgles up with a frothy head. The glasses are passed round, one says “Bismillah” and sips. Tea is sipped scalding hot which is difficult for European tender fingers and lips and those hoping to drink quietly. Often home-grown walnuts, dates or cookies accompany the tea. There is nothing better to induce a feeling of utter relaxation and content.
The Arbal children were shy, never having seen strangers, never mind the like of us, but balloons and conjuring tricks soon had them laughing. A huge dish piled with layered pancakes was brought in. They were large, crisp and oily. We ate them with hard boiled eggs. “Bismillah”.
Big eyes and snotty noses were pressed to the window grill. I did some homework on the route ahead and considered going for a walk but great goblets of gluey rain swept in. We were pleased not to be on the trail or setting up camp in the instant mud. We were cold inside the house, even with blankets round our shoulders. Going out for a pee required an escort, to keep the dogs at bay, a collection of fine-looking white huskies. Time rather dragged as it was too dark to read and we’d not been on the trail long enough to just float mentally when given the chance.
A mountainous tagine duly appeared: chicken, spuds, tomatoes all heaped in a spicy dish and eaten with huge flat loaves of brown bread: “Mizyen” (good) is a word learnt early on. The Atlas produces an unending variety of bread types, all enjoyable, besides the pancake-type goodies, crispbreads and endless honey-sweet goo-ey objects, all with unpronounceable names but hobs would always get us bread. There was refreshing leben (buttermilk) to drink. A tagine is a casserole-style meal (and also the name of the clay dish with the conical lid in which it is both slow-cooked and served), mostly vegetables and a few spices and meat to flavour. No two are ever the same and I don’t think I’ve ever had a bad one. As they are left to cook for hours on a charcoal brazier, our supper came at 2100. We weren’t used to such late nights. Our hosts, several brothers, had never entertained Europeans before. The remoteness of such villages is hard to convey. No wonder the Berbers call themselves imaziren, the free people. Hospitality was given to us as it would have been in the Highlands several centuries ago. Our first night under a roof would not be forgotten.