We're two thousand light years from home...

...Seen you on Aldebaran, safe on the green desert sand...

With apologies to the Stones, but that line has been running through my head for the last 3 days. We're only just over 2000  miles from our back door, but it feels like we're in another millenium. Quite apart from the contrast in culture and lifestyles, look up at the stars and you could believe that you're also on another planet... 

I thought that our sky at home was pretty clear, but compared to what you can see in the night sky down here, we live in a fog. No wonder the Arabs got to name most of the stars before the Western cultures got out of bed - the night is just full of them. By way of illustration, just take an A4 sheet of black paper and a thimble-full of table salt. Sprinkle the salt on the paper...Moroccan Sky At Night. I've tried to photograph it but unless you've got some kind of fancy turntable that'll keep pace with the Earth's spin, it's a waste of time. We just sit here and marvel at it all....

We're currently holed up in a campsite (boo...hiss...) in Ouarzazarte, hiding from a howling gale. And taking the opportunity to do the laundry. Given the draught, it won't take long to dry.

We wouldn't be here otherwise. 3 nights of wild camping are behind us, and we've never slept so well. Clear air, tent wide open to the stars, and a silence so profound it almost hurts. It must be like this, being stone deaf. Not a light showing anywhere except overhead, not a sound, not even a breeze for the first 2 nights. Absolute. Total . Silence.

By contrast camp sites, the ones that you pay for, are much overrated in our opinion. It's not the cost - pennies by comparison with home - but the lack of advantages over what we've been doing. With our own electricity generator, hot water shower and barbeque the only thing we're without is a wall around us. Which we don't feel is worth worrying about unless it's blowing a hooligan, like it is right now. And the downside to commercial nightstops? Noise. Dogs, mainly. Never hear them during the day 'cos they're all fast asleep, making up for their evening activities. 

Drive you nuts, they do. So, even though we'd like to put some dosh into the local economy, until they sort out their Canine Chorus we'll sleep in the hills when we can. A couple of nights ago we fell asleep to the smell of the herbs we'd crushed on the way in...

So, our travels have taken us up hill, down dale and everywhere in between since we left Midelt. Having not explored the area too much before, we decided to spend a few days in the Middle-to-High Atlas just wandering about. We started by picking a route from Chris Scott's book but eventually made up our own from what we could find on the maps that tied in with satnav, Wikiloc and anything else that indicated "Fun". We've just transferred 270 photos to this laptop and at some point I'm going to have to trawl through them and find a few, from the many, that'll give a flavour of what we've seen. Here's one or two to get us started:

The fact that we've taken so many is probably a good indication of how awesome this country is for its geology, if nothing else. 

Interesting people, too, if you make the effort.The guys in the photo below had run out of coolant and had stopped at a dry river bed. They'd been digging in the damp sand under the bridge to try to find water. We were the first vehicle along in the 3 hours it'd taken them to get a litre of muddy water out of their hole. We donated the water we'd got from a stream up in the mountains and kissed goodbye to our shower that night.

We've not spoken English except between ourselves since leaving Spain. I can't say that conversation has been easy or fluent (between us and everyone else, I mean!), but it's good fun and the response from the locals is really good. Our French is improving daily but the Arabic is still patchy. All that we learned either is pronounced differently here or they speak more Berber than Darija, so now we're getting our heads - and tongues - around that, too.

Driving has been a mix of good tarmac and typical mountain piste - rougher than a badger's a*se. A massive road building programme is gradually eating up the old tracks, but we've still had 3 very demanding days - for us and the truck - "doing" some of the more well known pistes as well as some of those not in "The Books". We did the first half of the Cirque du Jaffar; only the first half because the famous gorge was blocked by a lot of fallen stones. (Actually, the route doesn't go down the gorge but the Navigator was seduced into believing it did because of another vehicle, who'd turned back. The Driver, in accordance with previous agreements, didn't question the decision and didn't ask to read the guidebook...)

We might have got through, but it's an impossible place to organise a recovery if anything were to go wrong, and the margin for error was just too narrow. It's the first time we've ever turned back from a goal we'd set ourselves, but discretion won this time. We got out and walked it instead...




Having been defeated, we retraced our route and went down to El-Rich to pick up another line. This was tarmac again but took us through the Gheris gorge
 

A bit of a cheat pic...no other vehicles all day, so the tracks out are ours.

to a wild camping spot ("telling the Thyme?"). Stupendous views in all directions, but surpassed the next day by the rock walls of the Todra Gorge, which we've recorded before in pictures. More Europeans in that last mile than we've seen during the previous week put together - a Must See destination for all the tourist trips, I think. Up onto the Djebel Sarhro via a Scott route which was all tarmac to Ikniounn, where we passed this guy having a rest.... 

...given the increasing wind, we reckon if he's still on the road he's on his side and blocking it, feeding the goats with free hay.

The route eventually gave way to rough track up to the Tizi-n-Tazazert pass (2316m).  A serpentine descent with enough bumps and leaps to completely disorganise the back of the truck. A wild camp near N'kob preceded a venture onto the MH14 because we wanted to refill our wine stock at Ouarzazarte. Working on a trip meter and compass we managed to lose the published route but discovered another which led us in a semi-circle back to the N9 near Agdz.

Parts of this diversion were quite knarly. What you can't see from the picture at left is the almost sheer rock wall to the left and the 1200 feet of fresh air straight down to the valley floor to the right. Nobody was coming the other way, I'm happy to say. In fact, we didn't see a living soul all day. 

 This was Thursday 19th. The gathering clouds suggested a change in the air, and dropping baro pressure confirmed it. The wind picked up and gave us a disturbed night with the tent fabric snapping and cracking like pistol shots in the strengthening breeze. 
 So, the planned "rest day" was abandoned in preference to a run for cover, and here we are. Hopefully the local pooches will be taking Friday off, although I don't think the same will apply to peacocks...we have a resident. Maybe a photo tomorrow if we can corner him.

  And here he is in all his show-off glory. We're now into Saturday and have decided to stay here another day. The main reason for this is the increasing strength of the wind. As we arrived in town yesterday, driving at 50mph, the plastic bags and bottles that litter the roadsides were overtaking us...and last night was the wildest we've spent so far, wind-and-weather speaking. I thought at one point that we were going to have some damage to sort out this morning, but we've got away with a thick coating of pink dust, stuck to everything due to a short rain shower at 4am.

Last night I wrote: "The weather report confirms the low pressure system moving to the north of us, which has dragged in a lot of dust from the Sahara today. As I type this the keyboard is getting gritty and the Moroccan wine we're sampling is getting warm, so time to go. Maybe we'll move on tomorrow to the High Atlas, maybe we won't. Depends on how good the wine is!" Since the plan has changed, we took a dusty, windblown walk into town this morning and did the shopping...

PYO, self-service, Morocco-style. Mud is free.

Mike took his camera and tried to get some shots that would show a bit of local colour, but people were generally reluctant to allow it. This isn't unusual and we always ask permission first. Most folk today refused, and not with an apology, either. The owner of this fruit and veg stall in the souk was obliging, although he didn't want to be in the shot..

..and the owner of this hole-in-the-wall garage wasn't around to ask:

Note the appropriate adherence to Health and Safety regs - the fire extinguisher and hi-vis jacket - and the meticulous tool control. The only advertising for this little business was the "mechanique" painted on the door. That, and the trail of oil stains on the pavement outside.


 

Another victim of last night's weather. This is a shop canopy, or rather, it was. The owner had obviously decided to take the day off rather than fight the wind to set it up again.



The internet forecasts 3 or 4 days of this, but calmer further south, so we may revise our plans again and make for lower latitudes tomorrow. 





Right now, it's a relaxing afternoon in the tent next door, reading and sampling a second bottle of Moroccan Cotes-du-Rhone. That's what it says on the label, anyway.


Oh, and if anyone reading this has left a very expensive roof tent ladder extension (see previous self-satisfied post re a DIY version) behind a tree, let me know the grid reference of where I'm sitting and I'll post it back to you.

Saha!