Tinghir - Marrakech: Oasis Hopping

So indeed, I made it to Marrakech, the radiant city to which the country owes its name. This picture shows my bike on the Jemaa el Fna, the busiest square of Africa, looking towards the minaret of the Koutoubia mosque:

The shortest route to the youth hostel in the Guéliz quarter was straight through the medina. Great thanks to the anonymous hero who mapped it in OpenStreetMap, so I could ride through the maze like I'd lived there for years, routinely avoiding handcarts and mopeds squeezing past, only casually glancing at my phone screen sometimes!

But the most salient experience of the last week is the confrontation with the phenomenon of the oasis. Every time I reach a green palm grove lined with ksar villages after half a day of pedaling through brown nothingness I feel a great sense of achievement and even revelation. And after the light rain in Tinghir the desert finally delivered on its promise: a burning sun in a plain heavenly blue blanket above your head. I changed my dress accordingly and adopted this desert cycling look:

Also, the tourism industry in and south of the Atlas mountains is different from the one in the cities. It is more oriented towards adventurous wanderers, travelling by 4WD, motorcycle or bicycle. I felt more understood there than in mediterranean Morocco. There are fewer souvenir shops selling cheap crap at high prices, and the auberges that provide accomodation along the pistes are sometimes spartan in facilities but always give you high-carb food in lavish quantities.

The area is sparsely populated, which is reflected on the roads. You can follow the red lines on the 1 : 1 000 000 map with your bike and still feel alone among the endless rock. Again, quite a difference from mediterranean Morocco where trucks and shared long-distance taxis make that you have to be on your guard all the time.

Marrakech, on the other hand, is very busy as the second city of Morocco, but still it's cleaner and less chaotic than Tétouan or Fez. I didn't see goats or sheep in the city centre and garbage is collected instead of scattered. Also, the hustlers trying to sell you souvenirs or guided tours are present in even greater numbers, but take "no" for an answer more easily.

9th of November: Tinghir

Wrote my blog post and met Anne-Sophie and Loïc on the campsite. They're from France and riding to and around Morocco, passing through Tinghir on their way to the sand dunes near Merzouga that are referred to by the tourist industry as "the desert". They share my observation that every place that calls itself a restaurant in Morocco is to be avoided. They are usually tourist traps that are too expensive to the point of ripping you off, and leave you with diarrhea unless you order a tajine, which must be well-sterilized after some 20 minutes of simmering.

It looks like Moroccans don't ever go "eating out" like westerners do. If they have something to celebrate, the wife and mother spends a day in the kitchen cooking a delicious meal. Eating outside of a home is only done if you're on the road or in a hurry, and thus tends to happen in low-profile fast food outlets advertised with the word "Snack". That's where you see Moroccans eating and where you'll get a better deal too.

Anne-Sophie and Loïc have a nice website at http://www.bicyclou.fr/

10th of November: Tinghir - Ikniouen

So today I finally set out to cross some mountains on unpaved tracks, referred to as pistes here. First I did some more shopping in Tinghir, and tried to find a mechanic or blacksmith that could make the missing part for my click pedals, to no avail. For mountainous rough tracks I find it easier anyway to be able to quickly move a foot of the pedal to keep your balance.

The piste from Tinghir to Ikniouen, in the heart of the Jebel Saghro, is a good one. It's not really paved, but still surfaced with a layer of loam, and the slopes are never very steep. Here and there crews are working on improving it further; perhaps they are preparing it for a visit of the asphalt machine some time soon.

The ride is easy and not terribly eventful. Immediate after Tinghir, there is another oasis with date palms and a village, but after that, it's fields of little rocks with some heather-like plants. At a little mountain pass at about 1850 metres, I meet a guided French group of motorcyclists. After that pass, I enter an inhabited valley again, but the road goes through the desertlike pebble fields somewhat above the valley's bottom. I find a flat spot out of sight from the main road and build my tent there. I finally use the second cooking pan I bought before entering Morocco to make couscous with some fried vegetables and olives, which is the best camping dinner I ever made. Locals come by for a chat, and offer help, but do not try to convince me that I should stay in their home as they did elsewhere. Perhaps, along this piste, they're very accustomed to campers.

11th of November: Ikniouen - before Nekob

The morning is freaking cold, and when I inspect the rear wheel again, I see that a spoke has broken again. I true the wheel with one spoke missing - that seems less dangerous than trying to do serious bike mechanicery    here on the pebbles in the middle of nowhere. That night, I would unscrew the spoke from nipple, and conclude from the absence of Loctite that it is the replacement spoke that broke again. Perhaps the hole in the flange is damaged so that is now has a spoke-cutting sharp edge. So I'm just carrying on with 35 spokes in the rear wheel for now.

In Ikniouen I buy groceries, assisted by Mohammed, a pubescent boy who I met on the way to the village. He is sent out on his bike to get a can of sardines. He guides me to the bakery in a back street and refuses any compensation for that.

Near Ikniouen there is a bit of paved road, but after a few kilometers I leave it for the piste that leads over the Tizi-n-Tazazert, which is a mountain pass at 2200 m according to Michelin, 2283 m according to the Rough Guide, 2300 m according to the gîte d'étape located near the summit, and 2330 m according to my phone's GPS.  The piste is much worse than the one from Tinghir to Ikniouen and it takes me perhaps two hours to climb the 400-ish meters from Ikniouen to the pass. I have a break on the summit to eat something, and then appears a moped driven by Youssif, a 12-year-old son of the lady running the gîte d'étape. I suppose driving a moped at 12 is as illegal in Morocco as it is in The Netherlands, but you're as likely to see gendarmerie royale on the Tizi-n-Tazazert as you are to see a barbary ape in the Flevopolder. He is late to convince me to visit their café, I already ate food I brought myself, but can still take this picture:

So there we have the unpaved African high mountain pass that I was looking for. The rock spraypainted in pink formed part of some kind of finish line. Perhaps there's been an MTB race there.

The piste for the descent was even worse than the one for the climb:

This is good stuff for a technical downhill rider, not for a trekking bike loaded with full intercontinental camping gear. While downhill mountain biking is considered an extreme sport, doing it with my bike is more like chess: planning your strategy in advance and executing it with slow, controlled, steady movements.
It does help to empty the mind: you have to plan your line, watch for little rocks, steer, brake and pedal. The pedaling has to provide traction at the right times, but not make the bike go so fast that the bags fall off at the bumps.

Then, coming around a corner, I see some bags and gas canisters on the piste. Looking around, I also see 2 mules on one side of the piste and a helpless girl of about ten years old on the other side. She is covering her face with her hands.
Shit. I have to help her. Get the baggage back on the mules. But how? Until two weeks ago, I knew mules only from history books. I can't see how the bags were supposed to fit and what made the whole thing fall apart.
Happily, after maybe half a minute, a small motorcycle appears from the opposite direction. The rider is the kind of old-fashioned farmer who does not blink his eyes, and speaks soothing words in Berber to the mules as he loads the stuff on their backs again. I offer him my supply of packing material, and the tie-wraps come in truly handy, so I also get a bit of the savior role too in the end.
Then, also a woman who is presumably the mother of the girl appears. We exchange thanks and everyone continues in his own direction with a great smile on his face.

I do not make much progress and around 15:30 I am still 27 km away from Nekob, the planned end point, and there is a fierce headwind. I pass by the auberge near the Bab-n-Ali, a famous peak formation, and after initially riding on I return to it to stay there for the night. The auberge is 27 km away from the nearest paved road, is not hooked up to the electricity grid , and has no heating against the cold winter nights in the mountains. To counter this, they have a solar panel and the pisé walls retain the afternoon heat very well. My room looks like this:

The owner is a modest and honest man. Youssif told me that the three tourist accomodations along the piste have to live off 2 4WDs and 1 motorcycle per day on average. The auberge owner confirms this. He says that earning a living here is hard at times. Still, when a convoy of two large French 4WDs with 8 people passes by, and they stop to ask how far the paved road still is, he says: "27 km. Good piste from here on."

 12th of November: before Nekob - Tamnougalt

The piste is indeed good, and offers spectacular views over a canyon-like valley with a green bottom. I reach  Nekob around 10:00 so I can get some more supplies again. From Nekob on, I follow main roads through the river valleys in the desert. Where these valleys are wide and flat, the river water, coming from the Atlas, is diverted with irrigation canals to forests of date palms. It makes for the beautiful view where you have a lush green palm forest at the bottom, then earth-colored ksar villages above that, and above that the huge earth-colored mountains. I already had pictures of such valleys last week, but now I also have them from the inside:

After taking a small road on the opposite site of the river from the main road Zagora - Agdz, I ended up spending the night in this riad (cosy bed-and-breakfast in historical building) in Tamnougalt. This happened so because the guide for the famous Tamnougalt kashbah lured me into it, insisting for example that I take my bike into the narrow village alleys, so that of course I won't feel like manouvering it out again in the dying minutes of the afternoon.

Nevertheless, it was a very nice place. The house is owned by a French woman, who happened to be present with a friend, and managed and restored by Mustafa, a man from Ouarzazate. We had dinner together, talking about the history and about the dates that are grown there. The box I'd bought on the bridge over the river Drâa contained probably the first dates I'd ever eaten in my life. They're like bananas: sugar and starch. The difference is that a banana has a skin and dates have a stone.

This day I also saw a rotting dead donkey by the roadside. I saw what that strange grey-black thing was only seconds before I would reach the point where the wind would be blowing from it in my direction. Even as an urban child I had the reflex to reach for my nose, but the kick of the stench hit just before my hand reached it. Happily it was not bad enough to make me throw up instantly, as is reported by people who open up freezers full of meat that have been left thawed for months.

13th of November: Tamnougalt - Ouarzazate

In the morning the guide from Tamnougalt accompanies me to the cash machine in Agdz, because I don't have enough cash to pay for my stay. This was agreed already at check-in, no worries. In  Agdz I also have to buy sunscreen; the lowest protection factor they have is 50. After Agdz this day was all about the traversal of the Tizi-n-Tinififft, a high point in the road along the Drâs river at some 1660 meters above sea level. First there is a climb, then an annoying plateau with lots of little ups and downs and then the descent to Ouarzazate. In the ascent I even see some longboarders coming down:

From the pass I can see the High Atlas. Only a couple of days ago, I crossed it in only a t-shirt, but now it is covered in snow.

In Ouarzazate there is a cheap municipal campsite. I build my tent there and cook another delicious variant of camping couscous, with hot pepper this time.

14th of November: Ouarzazate - Telouete

The cold was biting this morning and that made that I was not up and running as early as I'd hoped to be. Cold nights are no problem, I have a sleeping bag for that. But the cold mornings, when you get up and have to break down your tent, which does not work with gloves on, those are a bitch.

Leaving Ouarzazate I pass by two film studios. Somehow the southern oases of Morocco are popular for shooting films. It doesn't matter if the director needs a dusty landscape to repesent Utah, the Sahara or Central Asia; it's here that the footage is shot. In Tamnougalt, for example, some parts of The English Patient were filmed.

I take the small, old route from Ouarzazate to the Tizi-n-Tichka pass over the High Atlas. Traditionally, the road over the Tizi-n-Tichka went by the Ounila river and then past the fortress of the Glaoui family. The French wanted to reduce the power of the Glaoui, and to that end constructed the paved pass road via another route. Recently the old route has also been paved and I ride that. It goes through such a beautiful oasis valley again. The special thing here is that the green valley is almost uninterrupted from 1000 to 1900 meters of altitude, so you can see the vegetation change from a date palm oasis to an alpine pine forest gradually. On the mountains, you start to see alpine tundra instead of desert.

I stay for the night in Telouete, the place of the Glaoui's kashbah (Berber fortress). The latest incarnation was built during the French colonial era, when the Glaoui leader ruled most of the South of Morocco under French supervision with the title Pasha of Marrakech. He was notorious for his decadent parties and his collection of sports cars. The kashbah interior has the typical Arabic decorations with zellige mosaic, cut-out plaster and cedar wood that I've come to know since Sevilla.

I stay in a hotel that has no heating nor pisé walls, and the nights are cold even inside. I hide under two layers of thick Berber covers.

15th of November: Telouete - Âït Ourir

This is the day of the Tizi-n-Tichka, the highest mountain pass road constructed by the French colonial regime, with a series of spectacular hairpin bends that is featured as the cover photo on my Michelin map of Morocco. I leave Telouete around 7:45, not before buying some bread straight from the oven at this bakery that still uses a woodfire:

You know, I used to hold some contempt for those who idealize "artisanal" food containing only "honest" "natural" ingredients, and long for the times when people still bought their food right from the farmer or craftsman who had made it. I thought - and still think - that we're much better off now, getting constant quality from our supermarket, which nowadays also offers the bread straight from the oven, and is bound by strict norms on how fresh the fruit and vegs have to be. I always felt some urge to write responses to http://leesvoer.net/ along the lines of ""So you think we should bake our own bread from locally-grown organic wheat again? So you love bread made with tree bark in the dough, as they had to do to make enough for everybody back in the day?".

But here in Morocco I do find that the locally-produced food in the mountain valleys is simply delicious. The bread, the pancakes, the butter, the chicken if I get to eat it as a vegetarian. 

Still I think it is because the whole experience is good, not the product in itself. It's special to see someone fire a wood oven, put dough in it, see it come out as bread and then eat it. Or to ride 100 km gaining 1200 meters in height to arrive in a gorgeous-looking mountain valley where they have this special kind of butter on square pancakes. That is more special than going to a supermarket and getting the same bread you always got and hastily eating it before you have to leave for work. But I expect that in a blind taste test, the bland wholemeal loaf from Albert Heijn is nevertheless better than the products of the bakery you see up there.

Having said that, from Telouete on it was a real mountain landscape I was riding through, and palm trees seemed further away than in The Netherlands. From 1900 meters of altitude on, there are patches of snow on the north faces that haven't molten yet. In some melting water pools on the road, I see fresh ice crystals that must have frozen in last night.

Over the twisting and turning single-track paved road, I reach the main road over the Tizi-n-Tichka a good kilometer before the summit. The main road is surprisingly quiet - maybe one lorry every minute, and even fewer cars. And then there is the monument at the summit:

The picture is taken by a couple from Los Angeles. There are more tourists who congratulate me and have a small chat. My phone's GPS, by the way, indeed gives 2260 m, which gives some credibility to its numbers for lesser-known mountain passes.

I put on a raincoat, have lunch, and then head down towards Marrakech. Descending the Tizi-n-Tichka is an intoxicating experience. The road just takes you and violently guides you through its hairpins, twisting down in irregular, incomprehensible ways against the cliff.

This thrilling section stops near Taddert, at about 1650 m above sea level. There I buy some more food. The road descends more gently from there on, and at some point starts climbing again to a smaller pass called Tizi-Âït-Barka or Tizi-Âït-Imguer. It is in the descent of that that my front brake suddenly starts shreeking loudly. I'm a bit scared that something might be worn badly there, I have used the brakes heavily in the short life of the bike with all these mountain ranges that I'm visiting. But perhaps leaving the dry desert air for the first time after re-adjusting the brakes in Tinghir is the best explanation.

The valley on the North side of the High Atlas looks different. Houses are more free-standing and less defensive. As we get lower, grass and weeds appear again. Along the main road, there are many villages with shops and markets.

Around 16:00, when it's about time to stop and find a place to sleep, I see a teenager inflating his bike tire. I offer him to patch it and after initially declining, he catches up with me again and asks me if I can fix it. We patch it together, in the verge of the N9 with lorries howling by, with a friend who passed by looking on from the back of his mule.

I sleep at a French-style hotel that is luxurious for Moroccan terms, and I get a portion of couscous that could serve three or four. They also have Flag, a Moroccan beer (alcohol is available only from the more upscale bars and restaurants in Morocco). It's very light, neither hoppy nor malty. Doordrinkbier.

16th of November: Âït Ourir - Marrakech

The day starts again with a superfluous Moroccan breakfast with pancakes and butter. I notice that I like butter again. Over the course of the trip, I have shifted from a sort of sports nutrition diet where I frequently eat carbohydrates from bananas or cereal bars to a more traditional hard-working-peasant kind of diet with 3 or 4 heavy meals a day. Doing so is certainly more convenient on the Moroccan countryside where hard-working-peasant food is available and urban-weekend-warrior-sportsman food is not.

The road goes through a plain with mediterranean vegetation. It all seems so green after the desert. I'm further South than before crossing the High Atlas the first time though, and I think I see more palm trees accordingly.

Marrakech does not have much of a skyline. The low houses just begin at some point without warning. The first neighborhood I see looks like a bidonville, a Moroccan slum with low, improvised houses. But along some broad boulevards it gets better soon and after a few kilometers I am at the edge of the medina. As described above, I can slice through that with my phone's GPS and I come out on the other side on the Jemaa el Fna, where in the morning there are only some orange juice salesmen who all greet me and try to start a conversation. 

I'm looking for a guarded parking for my bike however, and when I find it it also has a toilet, and when I use that I find that despite the luxury of the hotel, it has given me diarrhea again. I don't want to know the slightest bit of what goes on in these Moroccan kitchens. When I cook myself in the outdoors, it's not the high ideal of good hygiene either with limited utensils and water, but I never get sick. What are they doing in these restaurants to get my stomach to go into flush mode?

I look around the medina and try to find a place with good WiFi to gain some information on my brake's condition. I go into a café on the Jemaa el Fna and want to go to the toilet again. They are nice about this: they realise that on this square, they're going to get a lot of visitors just for the bathroom, so they have signs pointing to it from the entrance and ask a fixed fee of 2 dirhams.

I find however that none of the toilets has toilet paper, and not even all have the typical Moroccan set-up of a tap and a bucket, though one has a tap and a plastic bottle. The toilet lady sees me searching and offers toilet paper. After giving it to me she demands 5 dirhams. That's a bit much to me, and I quickly look around. I remember the tap and bottle, and I see that on the sink there's also a big bottle of antibacterial handsoap. Her eyes trace the line of my eyes and she must realise what I'm thinking: tourists have left hands too, and if these are the circumstances, I'm not afraid to use mine!

And she gestures that I can have the toilet paper for free.

Later that night, the stomach problems appear to have subsided, and I have dinner at La Comédie, the cleanest, most European Moroccan restaurant where I have been yet. The toilet is clean, has toilet paper but no buckets, and there are even air dryers for your hands with a sensor. The staff is friendly and quick and they have vegetarian menu options. They would be a very clean and well-run restaurant in any European capital. But as I'm getting used to by now, the pizza was not well received by my intestines.

And further plans

Take one more day to visit some sights in Marrakech. Ride over Tizi-n-Test through Anti-Atlas, and then via Tarfaya to Laâyoune. From there, take a bus back to Marrakech. It must be early December by then. Then I can take a train to Tanger and perhaps a ferry to Gibraltar. If the ferry which goes only once a week does not align well, I can take a ferry to Algeciras and ride to Gibraltar. And then I can go back to The Netherlands from Gibraltar or Spain by plane.