Stunning Todgha Gorge, Dades Gorge and Ouarzazate

After coming back from the Sahara and having our breakfast at the Mohammed's house in Hassilabied we headed back to central Morocco and to the High Atlas. On the way to Ouarzazate, we planned stopping at the two Morocco's stunning canyons: Todra (Todgha) and Dades. We needed to drive about 3 hours before reaching the first gorge. 
Even at a distance from Merzouga we could still see the nomad tents along the road.

Further away, the small towns re-appeared again, and despite early hours, people were already out on the streets, going about their day-to-day business.

It's always funny to see how some people use donkeys as transportation, while others drive expensive modern vehicles... :-)

Most of the towns in this part of Morocco have just one main street going through the town with houses lined up on both sides.

As we drove further, the landscape along the way was slowly changing back from shrub-steppe to hills and mountains.

A couple of hours later we drove into Tinghir.

In order to get to the first canyon, the Todgha gorge in our case, we needed to drive to the other side of town where the river comes out into the valley. Just as we were crossing it, we saw a crowd of women washing their clothes right there in the river. I asked Dima to stop, so that I can make a photo. One of the women, noticing me taking some pics, started to scream at us in French and moved in our direction. We  got out of there fast, before she could do something to the car or to us. This was the first and only time we got such an aggressive reaction for making a photo.

As we drove further up hill, at some point we were able to see the town from a viewing point. The red mud houses forming the town created a feeling that we were on a film set of an old SiFi movie with some Arabic décor.

Occasional lashes of green palm trees between everything else being red formed incredibly surreal scenery.

It took a while to get to the canyons with the narrow road finding it's way among the red mountain slopes.

Both the Todgha and neighboring Dades rivers have carved out cliff-sided canyons on their final 40 kilometers stretch through the mountains. The difference between the two is that in Todgha gorge the road is going on the bottom of the canyon, while in the Dades gorge, it goes alongside the canyon's wall. The last 600 meters of the Todgha gorge are the most spectacular. Here the canyon narrows to a flat stony track, in places as little as 10 meters wide, with sheer and smooth rock walls up to 160 meters high on each side.

Despite the fact the canyon is some kind of protected heritage site, the river is still being used for the laundry purposes.:-)

The Dades gorge is just about an hour away, if you go back to Tinghir, and take the N10. Alternatively, the maps show the possibility to drive through the mountains from one gorge to the other (see the blue route on the photo below), making it probably a much more interesting drive. However, we were not sure what kind of road to expect, as in Morocco some mountain roads might be only suitable for 4x4. We decided not to risk it and took the usual N10 road instead.  

There are not many inhabited places between the two canyons and driving through the empty plains created a distinct feeling that you are in "no man's" land.

Once at Boumalne Dades town, we took the road which goes alongside the Dades gorge.

As the road started to clime upwards, the views became incredible.

The mountains here are formed with a very weird looking rock formations. 

Just as we were going up a very steep mountain, it started to rain and the road became slippery.

Dima said that he is concerned about driving further into the mountains,  as our tires were quite worn, so we turned back, and came across a Kasbah that was hiding behind one of the mountains.

Altogether we drove about 35km into the gorge. Soon after we turned back and were driving towards the road to Ouarzazate, the rain stopped and we saw a rainbow just above the canyon.

We were not disappointed with our choice, as the road from Tinghir along Dades Gorge and all the way further to Ouarzazate is also known as "the road of thousand Kasbbah", a must see when visiting Morocco. 

The rest of the drive to Ouarzazate was not as spectacular as driving through the gorges, but still a very beautiful one.

When we arrived to the town, our GPS refused to find the address of the hotel we booked. Having seen the hotel's location on Google maps when choosing it, I took a chance by just poking a finger in some place on the GPS map that I thought looked similar to the one I remembered. Imagine our surprise, when it turned out that I was off by just about 100 meters :-) 

The hotel was about 5-7 min drive from the old part of town. We dropped our bags off in the room and went out for dinner. From what we saw Ouarzazate is not really a very interesting town, especially when you've already been to Fes, Marrakesh, etc. We walked around trying to choose a place to it but most of them were suspiciously empty. Finally, we found one that had customers, including tourist and ordered a couple of tajines and kebab. Disappointingly, both were the worst ones we had in Morocco. 

We were tired after having to wake up at 5 am and driving all day, so understandably we skipped the evening walk and went back to the hotel to sleep.

Next: the Atlas Film Studios, fortified town of Aït Benhaddou and Toubkal National Park

Merzouga: nomads, camels and The Sahara Desert

A smaller side road led from the highway to the Hassilabied settlement, near Merzouga that is just on the boarder of the Sahara desert. We could already see sand dunes towering at a distance.

We booked a stay at the camp in the desert. A nomad tribe that lives now in Hassilabied (they lived in the desert before through out the year) was arranging all the details. The owner, Mohammed, was waiting for us at his house. We could park the car there, and start our desert experience.
Following Mohammed, we walked towards the bottom of Erg Chebbi, a Saharan erg, which offers the best desert experience. The dunes here are very high and stretch for hundreds of kilometers, all the way to the Algerian boarder and beyond. There, one of the tribe members was waiting for us with a couple of camels to take us to the camp.

 Once sitting safely on the camels, we started our ride to the desert.

The rest of the group, that was also staying at the camp that night already left, so there were just the two of us. We had no idea how long it will be before we will reach the camp, so we asked the guide. He said that we will be going faster than normally, as he wants to catch up with the rest of the group, and that he expects us to be at the camp within an hour.
Our guide was walking the whole time, and the hot sand apparently didn't bother him that much.

The sun was still up, and being behind us, ensured that the pictures of the dunes turned out to be simply gorgeous.

The ride was very bumpy, but nonetheless, I tried to make some pictures of Dima on the camel, while riding one myself. Since you really need to hold on to the camel, hence, using only one hand to hold the camera, and turning fully isn't really possible either, half of the pictures taken were quite useless, but a couple did turned out to be all right.

Dima was laughing at me the whole time I was attempting to get a decent shot.

In about 30 minutes we finally caught up with the rest of the group, and slowed down. The ride became much less bumpy, and we could relax a little and not to worry about falling of the camel.

At this point I must say that riding a camel is not very pleasant, because despite multiple blankets used as a saddle, it is still very hard, and after some time your behind starts to hurt like hell. Also riding up and down the dunes doesn't help the situation. So, by the time we got to the camp, Dima and I were both more than happy to get off the damn animal. At this time I tried not to imagine how we will go back the next day...
When we all got off our camels, the nomad guys "parked" them for the night. "Parking" was binding one of camel's front legs, while they were lying down, so that the animals will not be able to stand up and walk away.

Our camp was 6-7 tents placed in a circle and was surround by the dunes from all sides, preventing the wind gusts and the sand from flying around. Just behind the tents, there was a WC, with a proper toilet and no water :-) Also, we had a round table and some chairs outside where we could later sit, drink and watch the stars above.

In the mean time the sun was slowly setting down and we went to watch it disappear behind the dunes.

 Dima had a sudden urge to fly :-)

After dark, the guides started to make dinner - classic Berber chicken tajine. While waiting for it to be ready, we had the chance to properly meet the rest of the group. There were 12 of us in total, 6 couples and everybody about the same age. And one of the couples was Dutch :-)

When dinner was over, we all went outside hoping to watch the stars. Unfortunately, the night was cloudy and we could only see a few. Too bad, I was really looking forward to it. 
For entertainment, the guides took out their drums and started to play.

It was really a unique experience to be in the Sahara, between the endless dunes, watching the desert fall a sleep and listening to our guides singing old nomad songs.

The guides warned everybody that we will need to wake up at 5am the next morning if we want to see the sunrise and slowly people started to disperse to their tents.

When we were waken by the bell the next morning it was just starting to get light. Being one of the first up, we climbed the tallest dune closest to the camp and waited. It was a bit funny to see all the couples sitting about 100 meters from each other waiting for the sun to come up. 

Luckily, we didn't have to wait long and the sunrise was gorgeous.

In about half an hour, the sun was completely up and after making some final pics of the camp and of the surroundings from our watching post, we headed back to our tent to pick up the stuff we had.

The guides were preparing the camels for the ride back to the settlement, where we would have breakfast at the Mohammed's house.

We asked the Dutch couple to take our pic together before climbing our camels one more time.

The way back, although gorgeous from the scenery perspective, was a true test of our pain tolerance:-) Crazy bumpy all the time, going up and down the dunes - half way I started to feel desperate and really had to force myself from not screaming "get me off this stupid camel, I will walk the rest of the way!" Dima was in pain too, but he bravely suffered in silence. I think the rest were pretty much feeling the same.

Finally, 30 excruciatingly painful minutes later we finally got back to Hassilabied and the guides laid the camels on the ground so that we could get off. I swear, the relief of not having my ass bumped anymore was probably one of the best feeling I've ever had. Dima felt exactly the same way, and his words were "you would have to kill me, to get me ride the camel again". I agreed :-) May be we had bad luck with the way the saddles were put together, or may be our much too sensitive behinds are to blame, I don't know. What I do know is this: I am never, ever going to ride a camel again!

Anyway, despite the drama and the trauma (:-)), the whole trip was absolutely worth taking and we enjoyed immensely being out in the Sahara desert and learning some things about nomads and their way of life. 

Next: Stunning Todgha Gorge, Dades Gorge and Ouarzazate.