Morocco is one of the most diverse countries in Africa, with high mountains, sweeping desert, rugged coastline, and the winding alleyways of ancient medina cities and souqs.
From Saharan dunes to the peaks of the High Atlas, Morocco could have been tailor-made for travellers. Lyrical landscapes carpet this sublime slice of North Africa like the richly coloured and patterned rugs you’ll lust after in local cooperatives. The mountains – not just the famous High Atlas but also the Rif and suntanned ranges leading to Saharan oases – offer simple, breathtaking pleasures: night skies glistening in the thin air, and views over a fluffy cloudbank from the Tizi n’Test pass. On lower ground, there are rugged coastlines, waterfalls and caves in forested hills, and the mighty desert.
The varied terrain may inform your dreams, but it shapes the very lives of Morocco’s Berbers, Arabs and Saharawis. Despite encroaching modernity, with motorways joining mosques and kasbahs as man-made features of the landscape, Moroccan people remain closely connected to the environment. The nomadic southern ‘Blue Men’ brave the desert’s burning expanses in robes and turbans, with mobile phones in hand. Likewise, traditional life continues – with tweaks – in the techniques of Berber carpet makers, in date cooperatives, in medina spice trading, and in the lifestyles in mountain hamlets and ports like Essaouira.
Often exotic, sometimes overwhelming and always unexpected, these ancient centres are bursting with Maghrebi mystique and madness: the perfect complement to the serene countryside. When you hit town and join the crowds, you follow a fine tradition of nomads and traders stretching back centuries. Unesco has bestowed World Heritage status on theFez medina, the world’s largest living medieval Islamic city, and on the carnivalesque street-theatre of the Djemaa el-Fna in Marrakesh.
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