Morocco bound

Take your pick – live like a Berber while tramping in the Atlas Mountains or be seduced by the opulence of a sultan’s palace. Three friends on a North African adventure chose both. Words: Amanda Jones; Photos: Kodiak Greenwood.

YOU HAVE TO WONDER if it’s a set-up when you’re in a Muslim country and someone asks, point-blank, “Are you lot drinkers?” Despite the hooded djellabah he was wearing, John Horne, who was doing the asking, looked as if he’d downed a few in his time so I took a calculated risk and confirmed that yes, we lot were drinkers.

John was a Brit – a bespectacled, erudite, eccentric and highly amusing Yorkshireman who’d spent the past 40 years circumnavigating the globe. He was currently living in Marrakech, working for a tour company and about to join me and my two friends on a five-day hike in Morocco’s High Atlas Mountains. “Right then,” he said, visibly relieved. “When you’ve walked all day you really need a pop at night. Got to bring your own though. No pubs up there.” John impressed us as a man who knew a lot about North Africa so naturally we felt obliged to take his advice. We turned the car around and beat a hasty retreat to purchase rum and wine. Moroccan wine, in fact.

That we could buy locally produced wine with great ease in Marrakech but not in remote mountain villages was an example of Morocco’s current dichotomy. Cities like Marrakech, with a population of more than a million, are startlingly modern and the ban on the sale of alcohol to Muslims is not enforced. In rural areas, however, people live as they have done for centuries, the beverage of choice being nothing stronger than mint tea. My friends, artist Susan Burks and photographer Kodiak Greenwood and I were in the country not only to exert ourselves in the Atlas Mountains but also to be among traditional Berber people. Apparently they were tolerant of the nasty drinking habits of nasrani (non-Muslims) and quite used to having them rock up to their villages with their own mule-borne bars.

Unlike the Himalayas, the Atlas Mountains aren’t very impressive from space; in fact they look like a poorly healed scar. But what they don’t achieve in height they make up for in breadth, stretching 2414 kilometres though Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. In Morocco they’re divided into three parts – the Middle Atlas in the north, the High Atlas in the central-south and the Anti-Atlas as they taper into the Sahara Desert. Jbel Toubkal, in the High Atlas, is North Africa’s loftiest peak at 4167 metres. We would hike toward Toubkal and drop below, but not climb to the summit. After five days of hiking we’d end up at a luxury Kasbah hotel as a reward to ourselves.

When planning the trip, I’d searched for a tour company that knew the area from an off-the-beaten-path perspective, finding New York-based Heritage Tours. They’d hiked the routes themselves and offered unvarnished opinions. I’d pushed hard to sleep in Berber tents while in the mountains, fancying it would be more authentic, but Heritage had swiftly disabused me. “Your friends will want to kill you when you’re 3000 metres up, it’s blizzarding and you’re hunkered inside a tent.” Snow in the High Atlas can arrive in October apparently, right when we were to be there. I conceded to small trekking lodges instead.

After three hours’ drive from Marrakech we reached our trail head at Oukaimeden, a popular ski resort in winter but a place with the look of an abandoned Soviet mental institute in the autumn. Over dinner we were joined by our mountain guide, Mohammed Calal Bouchahoud. A stately prince of a man, Calal had the dark skin and tall stature of the Sahara dwellers and a charisma that buzzed around him like a force field. He spoke French, English, Arabic and Tashelhit, knew every inch of the Atlas and had ascended Mt Toubkal more than 100 times. He was also a Hajji, meaning he had taken the pilgrimage to Mecca, the holiest city in Islam. In a country where the average annual income is $4000, any Berber who can afford Mecca is a man oozing social standing.

The plan was to walk for six to nine hours a day, our luggage and booze accompanying us on three stalwart mules driven by local muleteers. Without consulting Susan and Kodiak, Calal and I had conspired to take the more precipitous route up Jbel Oukaimeden, going from 2621 metres to 3292 in a matter of hours. The trail, or rather ribbon of goat tracks, was straight up, switchbacks be damned. Susan later dubbed it “Jbel I-hate-Amanda”, after her mantra with each furious, short-of-breath step. Kodiak, in his 20s, bounded ahead, camera in hand, pausing only to salute us from great heights. Calal floated upward as if every step took him closer to Allah and John had mumbled something about “ensuring the mules don’t roll the rum” and taken the flatter valley route with the muleteers.

Finally cresting the peak, I stopped to take in the view. The sky was brilliant, the air chilled and sparkling. Spread before me was the Atlas, one of the world’s great mountain ranges: layers of rock slanted sideways, stacked to the horizon in one direction and thinning into the smudge of the mighty Sahara in the other. It was a chest-swelling scene – even Susan eventually admitted so.

Tacheddirt, the highest and possibly darkest village in Morocco, was our first night’s destination. The educated and progressive king of Morocco, Mohammed VI, promised electricity to all when he took power in 1999. He’s been true to his word. Tacheddirt has lines strung and waiting. The problem is that nobody has figured out how to divvy up payment for the power so the hamlet remains off the grid, lit by candle and oil lamp. Berber women still cook over fires, grind flour on a stone wheel powered by donkey, use machetes in the fields, do laundry in the river, hand-sew their clothes and use mules for transport. Electricity is not likely to change any of that overnight.

With each day the scenery became more striking and untouched. Our mules snaked up barren rock faces and along narrow mountain ledges, clinking shamelessly. After the severe rock of the peaks, the landscape dropped down and turned suddenly verdant, the path an arbour through fruit and nut trees. The flanks of valleys were terraced with stacked rock walls, some to keep goats in and others to keep them off the neon-green barley. Even the air took on a sylvan light. At lunchtime we’d round a corner and find the muleteers had arranged a picnic beside the glinting waters of a mountain stream. There we would lounge, eat tuna salad, dates and khobz bread, drink mint tea, take a siesta and hit the trail again. It felt like a scene out of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel.

Over the course of five days we hiked southwest from Oukaimeden to Tacheddirt, Tacheddirt to Imlil, Imlil to the Azzedine Valley and finally to Ouirgane, driving back to Imlil. Our evenings were spent lying about sipping illicit alcohol (that word, ironically, comes to us from the Arabic al-kohl, meaning the spirit or essence), listening to John’s James Bondian tales of global derring-do and feasting on couscous and tagine meals. Some of the guest-houses were fancier than others; most had between three and eight rooms and all were comfortable and attractive with excellent food.

Imlil, a buzzing metropolis with several hundred locals, is the launching spot for those not too lazy to ascend Jbel Toubkal. Reminiscent of a miniature Kathmandu, the town has dirt streets populated with emaciated travellers sporting dreadlocks, ethnic tattoos and hand-loomed harem pants. It is also home to the famed Kasbah du Toubkal, an old fort-turned-Berber-hotel that sits above the town and draws a more upmarket crowd from around the world. We stayed in Dar Imlil, a beautiful Berber-owned-and-operated hotel on the outskirts of town. With great food, chic décor and the best view in the valley, we were quite content to sit and watch the first snows fall on the mountains surrounding us.

To recover from our gruelling Toubkal non-ascent, we said goodbye to Calal and John and headed for Richard Branson’s Kasbah Tamadot in the Asni Valley, 32 kilometres from Imlil. Imagine a scene in which the parched and weary traveller arrives at a sultan’s court, a walled Shangri-La with fountains, rose gardens, petal-strewn reflection pools, carved doors, silver chairs, silk divans, stuffed dates on golden platters and, blessed day, not one but three bars and a spa. Tamadot was once the home of famous Italian designer Luciano Tempo; Sir Richard found it when attempting to fly around the world in a hot-air balloon. Factually, his 80-year-old mother discovered it while he was cogitating upon the vagaries of navigating an inflatable from Morocco to Hawaii and she explored the Atlas, so we have her to thank for what is now one of the most sumptuous Virgin hotels.

It has 18 palatial rooms and six Berber tented suites so I finally achieved my tent experience – only it was heated and had a sitting-room, shower, claw-foot bath-tub, dressing-room, plunge pool and a vast deck from where I could gaze up at Jbel Toubkal and pity the die-hards who were huddled in their tents while a blizzard raged outside. While submitting to a massage in the marble-arched Tamadot spa, I thought about the fact that less than 80 kilometres away there were still villages without electricity and residents who had never seen a city. I marvelled at this for a moment, then turned over for my head massage.

Getting there

• We flew Royal Air Maroc out of New York to Marrakech; round trip in economy from US$1035.
• Heritage Tours arrange transfers, guides, hotels, air fares, food, cultural encounters and shopping. www.heritagetoursonline.com
• The cost of our hike, less Kasbah Tamadot, was US$1800 per person, including accommodation, guides, transport and food.

Where to stay while hiking

• Kasbah du Toubkal: En suite doubles from US$210, dormitory-style accommodation from US$170. www.kasbahdutoubkal.com
• Kasbah Tamadot: Doubles start at US$470 per night. www.kasbahtamadot.virgin.com

Where to stay in Marrakech

• Riad Al Massarah: Very quiet and chic, it has no restaurant but a quiet location. Doubles US$120. www.riadalmassarah.com
• Angsana Riad Blanc: A new luxury boutique hotel. An opulent palace, it is a work of art well worth seeing. It also has a Moroccan-Asian fusion restaurant open to non-guests. Doubles from US$320. www.angsana.com/marrakech/riads/blanc.html