Take Me to the Kasbah - Exploring Morocco's Atlas Mountains

More from No Crowds reporter, Penny, on how to explore the Atlas mountains of  Morocco in grand style. 

From our balcony at the Kasbah du Toubkal, we looked across the valley to the summit of Mount Toubkal and spent our first evening just listening to the call to prayer echoing and repeating village to village.  By day, you can walk in the mountains – with or without a guide, with or without a mule to help you on the climb.  You can walk the 10-11 km to a “nearby” lodge above a traditional village inaccessible by car (and devoid of the sounds of cars) and come back the next day.  You can arrange to climb to the summit of Toubkal itself.  

But we didn’t find it easy to leave the Kasbah – why not just sit in one of the towers (your choice again – windows or open air?  Wind or no wind?) and play chess, drink mint tea, watch the hawks and the mountain crows, listen.  By night, the candle-lit dinners, romantic or gregarious – choose the spot you prefer.  Figure out what you want once you get there – that’s what we did.  It would have spoiled the whole thing to have too many plans.

We booked through Kerrie at Discover Ltd, who was incredibly patient as our plans changed repeatedly due to work schedules, volcanic ash and whim.  And Lahcan, the ever-available concierge-and–everything-else at Toubkal made sure it all worked on the ground.  Mule?  No mule? Are you sure 20 kilometres up and down in one day with no mule?  Did you enjoy dinner?  Answer -- How could we not? (Lahcan had arranged last-minute accommodation, meals and lots besides in the village for a group of UK students trapped by Eyiafiallajokull – we eavesdropped as their teacher, finally departing, asked, all but in tears, “Is it all right if I hug you??”)

Are we allowed to say that one of the pleasures of the stay was the crowd we fell in with?  Met some interesting people from all over, great conversation, great company – Sometimes just a small crowd is a pleasure….

If you think you are going to need some liquid relaxant, you will need to bring it along to the Kasbah.  Set-up will be provided, but alcohol will not be sold or served.  We really like our wine, but we didn’t miss it at Toubkal.  There was plenty of intoxication on offer without …substances.

Also recommended:

In Marrakesh:

• Small, romantic Riad Demueres D’Orient.   Despite our late arrival, dinner was ready – little Moroccan salads of aubergine, zucchini and chick peas followed by melt-in-your mouth pastille.  All in the candle-lit dining room, fire roaring, looking out onto the garden.  Our room was lovely and quirky, the staff welcoming and genuine.  Highly recommended.
• Over –the-top luxury at Riad el Finn.  Can I just say that I am now a fan of leather floors?  This Vanessa Bronson-owned combination of three former houses was the venue of the birthday party that was the instigation of the trip.  Multiple garden areas, including a roof terrace for breakfast and sunbathing, a well-stocked library, hand-loomed carpets everywhere,  tea served at 4 under palms (and with terrapins), understanding bartender Abdul, two swimming pools.  Many of the  rooms are huge, with indoor and outdoor anterooms.  Ours featured 20 foot carved ceilings, a sunken marble bathtub and those  leather floors.  With all of this quiet beauty – the sounds of birds and fountains throughout – and the marvellous food, once again I was not as eager to explore Marrakesh itself as I should have been.  Just let me stay here!!

If you are going out towards Ouarzazate, we can recommend Ksar Ighnda, with the caveat that if there are any crowds there, you will be able to hear them.  If you go out the back way, you find yourself in an oasis garden.  It is less than 40 acres, but due to an ingenious and probably ancient irrigation system, you can find a typical morroccan meal growing – carrots, barley, maize, plums, apricots, irises, palms and then olives and  herbs, until it gives out onto the desert.   Overlooking all is Ait Benhaddou, a Kasbah seen most recently in “Gladiator”, and still partially inhabited.  As for the crowds, avoid room 303, which sits in an echo chamber above the bar – although once awakened, we looked up, out our door, to a deep blue sky and stars so close that it was hard to believe that we were on the ground at all. 

Recommended reading:

“In Arabian Nights” by Tahir Shah – Stories recently gathered in the medinas of Fez and Marrakech by the author of “The Caliph’s House”

“A year in Marrakesh” Peter Mayne – the year was 1952, but it’s fun to imagine the streets  as they were then, as you walk down them now.

Dash to Marrakech

This just in - from a first time No Crowds reporter with a tale of travel defiance and derring do - plus hot tips on how to show a determined volcano who's boss.

Dear Kate –

My advice is that if you really want to see Morocco with no crowds, go while a volcano has closed all the European airports. Some of the places we went to wouldn’t have had crowds in any event – but for mostly empty, try it during a volcano.

You asked for our “getting out of the UK while volcanoes erupt” story and here it is:

We awoke on Thursday morning, 15 April, to the news that all UK airports had been closed. This was not good news because we had Easyjet tickets leaving the next day for Marrakech. Our plans were to spend the next week visiting the desert and the mountains of Morocco, ending up back in Marrakech the following weekend for a friend’s 60^th birthday party. By Thursday afternoon, it was becoming clear that European airspace would be more closed, not more open, the following day. And we would not be able to get to that tent at the edge of the Sahara on Sunday night if we weren’t in Morocco by Saturday morning.

I might have accepted our fate, but Dan is made of sterner stuff. We were going to be in Morocco, somewhere, on Saturday morning. That was that. The Eurostar website crashed repeatedly as he tried to get tickets to Paris, and then even to Brussels. We thought about heading for the ferries, but word was that it was chaos in Dover and Southampton. Dan conscripted his co-workers into service, and the redoubtable Claire called her mother in France – ‘”Lille”, came the response (with, as Claire relates, much Gallic shrugging of shoulders) try Lille.

Sure enough – should I share this? I hear that Iceland has a bigger volcano than Eyjafjallajokull so we may need to keep this secret – when we went in to book Eurostar tickets to Lille only, we got through. We were able to book the 5:40 am Brussels Eurostar to Lille! From there, we booked TGV Lille to Paris and Paris to Marseilles. The Marseilles airport was still open. The Air Maroc website showed seats available on the 9:30 pm to Casablanca, with a connection to Marrakech, so we bought them. Now all we had to do is actually make our connections and outrace the ash cloud to the south of France. (Contingency plan – night trains through Spain, ferry from there.)

St Pancras at 5 am Friday 16^th April was unusually crowded for the time of day, but not as bad as it was to become throughout the weekend. Little known Eurostar fact: they apparently allow more people on than technically have seats. There were people sitting in the luggage compartments and in the jump-seats by the lavatories. They did not look unhappy – It beats swimming the channel.

Things were also pretty calm in Lille when we arrived at 9:30 (having lost an hour of time), and in fact we were able to change our 11 am connection to a 10 am train into Paris.

Gare du Nord at 11:10 am was a bit of a scene, but could have been worse -- we made it out to the taxi ranks outside, across the street and to the southeast (not the infamous rank to the right coming out of the Eurostar that you have to wait at forever) and headed for Gare de Lyon.

The situation there was not for a “no crowds” blog – complicated no doubt by the fact that the eruption was being celebrated by a train strike. The Paris airport had by this time closed. I’ll hand it to Gare de Lyon – they had staff stationed at the edge of the ticket queues discouraging people, especially order-loving Brits and Americans, from getting in them. We explained that we wanted to exchange our tickets for the 3:15 train for the 1:15 to Marseilles. “Just get on,” they advised.

So, when the track number was identified, we joined the surging herds climbing into the cars. Dan found a ticketmaster, who assured us that the train was ‘complet’, and that we should get off – but we observed that we were far from alone in skulking about, obviously without proper tickets. Following the advice of a well-dressed fellow skulker, we settled ourselves into two very comfortable and roomy seats in first class as the train started moving. What were they going to do? Throw us into the Provencal countryside at 300 km per hour?

Little known fact about the TGV – they did nothing. They didn’t even ask for a ticket. So we went first class from Paris to Marseilles holding a second class ticket for a different train. As Dan says, “Hey, this is the best train ever!”

Another taxi ride at 5 pm to the Marseilles airport – which might actually be closer to the Aix stop, but in any case, we were there in time to beg for a place on the 7:30 flight, direct to Marrakech. Seats were available, they said, but our ticket could not be exchanged because that facility is available only by phone. We pointed out that their phone line at that point simply said to call back. They said maybe Air France could do the ticketing for them, but in the event Air France could not exchange tickets – only sell new ones. We did not want to buy a third set of tickets to Marrakech. This posed a dilemma because there were web reports that the Spanish airports were about to close, which meant that Marseilles, too, might close before we got on our scheduled 9:30 flight to Casablanca. (The Marseilles airport, by the way, given that it was the only airport in France that remained open, was remarkably calm).

To make an already too-long story a bit shorter, 15 minutes before flight time, the Air Maroc stationmaster dropped by the ticket desk, and agreeably changed our ticket to the 7:30 flight, which proceeded to take off – and land -- in Marrakech as scheduled. Hoorah! We made it to our Riad just a couple of hours later than we would have on Easyjet (had it flown!) – and we had made a journey, not simply stepped off the airplane into another world. We also got a chance to practice our French, and reflect on the history of France and North Africa, St Exupery, etc.

That said, we were just as happy, ten days later, to take that non-stop Easyjet flight back to Gatwick.

Yours in travels and travails,

Penny