While we were in Marrakech, we made a snap decision to hire a car and drive into the Atlas Mountains for the last night of our trip. We were nervous at first as we didn’t know what to expect. Everyone told us to go with a guide. “Hiring a car and driving yourself in Morocco will be scary! You’ll get lost in the desert! No one will find you! You might die!” Needless to say, we survived. We also found it surprisingly easy and relaxed into the experience quickly. We kept joking something would eventually trigger one of us – the crazy Moroccan-style driving, the hair-pin mountain bends, the hire-car check-in desk queue? – but we loved every minute of our spontaneous 24-hour adventure!
Our plan: to drive 180km south-east out of Marrakech, up and over the Atlas Mountains to Ait Benhaddou, a spectacular UNESCO fortified village, before returning to Marrakech to catch our flight home. All of this with a dusting of surprise visits along the way. Yes, admittedly, this was quite a lot to accomplish in such a short time, especially with twisty, turny mountain roads to contend with, but we got up early, didn’t dawdle and made it work.
No sooner had we torn ourselves away from our dreamy riad in Marrakech we’d started calling home, we were in the Atlas Mountains, winding our way around their dusty orange rock-strewn slopes. This Mars-like landscape is vast, stretching 2,500km across north-western Africa. It’s also steeped in historical mysticism as the setting for the old caravan routes, which saw gold, salt and enslaved people transported by camel between Marrakech and Fez in the north across the Sahara to Timbuktu, Niger and old Sudan, well into the 19th century.
Window open, warm air breezing in, I watched this seeming no man’s land of great ravines and deep canyons, scattered with Berber villages, and the incredible mud architecture of kasbahs (fortified family homes) and ksars (fortified villages) drift slowly past the window. Imagine navigating your way through this, carting a load of salt with you, on a camel? Hell, no.
I’m jolted out of my time-travelling trance when we hit a bump, and an impressive plume of red dust engulfs our unremarkable economy hire car. We hadn’t crashed, instead, we’d arrived dramatically at our first stop: a once-abandoned kasbah called Telouet, which admittedly doesn’t look at that from the outside. Despite its location on the aforementioned famous camel caravan route and its Stendahl-syndrome-inducing interior architectural beauty, most tourists don’t make it here, either skipping it for Ait Benhaddou or because they don’t know about it. So when you visit, it’s likely you’ll be one of few visitors as we were.
Kasbah Telouet was built in the 1800s as the seat of power for a rich Moroccan family. It was left abandoned when the state, discovering its ruling pasha was committing treason, seized it. It’s an incredible example of Moorish architecture, yet the Moroccan government is ambivalent about its existence, condition and future. Restoration work is privately funded by the El Glaoui family who constructed it many years ago and from the small entry fee donation of 5-10 dirham ($0.50 – $1 USD) collected from the occasional visitors like us.
Many of the intricate details remain in good condition. There’s also the most amazing view from the upper terrace across the valley. Traveller tip: Wandering around we overheard a guide talking about a pop-up souk in the nearby main street every Thursday, which most tourists don’t know about. If you read along with me often, you’ll know we love avoiding tourists around here.
We must press on, no dawdling remember. I won’t lie, the last 30km became a little uncomfortable, mostly due to the increasing heights and mountain bends you can’t make fast, but it’s worth doing it to witness Ait Benhaddou emerge like a desert mirage. Traveller tip: I was excited to witness Ait Benhaddou, and glad to be visiting in mid-March, not summer when I’d read coach loads of tourists descend here, thanks to its new-found fame as a Games of Thrones film set.
There she is! It’s a relief to arrive, get out of the car for more than 30 minutes, stretch our legs and find Mohammad, owner of Kasbah Tebi, our home for the night in Aït Benhaddou. He’s waiting – with his horse, of course – to say hello and carry our bags across the river to the house which sits at the foot of the old village, just in front of the Aït Ougram gate, one of the four accesses to the ksar.
As we stroll to the river, he tells us about Kasbah Tebi, how it’s named after his grandfather and that it has belonged to his family for more than 400 years. Mohammed’s family is one of the few who still live in the old part of Ait Benhaddou. Most relocated to more modern homes in the newer part of the village where we park our car, now linked to the old part by a new pedestrian bridge built to encourage people to move back.
↑ Spot the stork’s nest on top of one of the Kasbah’s four towers.
And relax. Kasbah Tebi offers the peace and tranquillity we need after a hottish, long day on the desert road. It’s beautiful in its natural simplicity and especially magical at night when it’s bathed entirely in candlelight (electricity is used sparingly). It’s set on four levels and there are little Berber lounges and terraces to unwind on. Before we plonk ourselves down, we opt for a quick wander around the shady terracotta streets to the top of this 11th-century settlement to see the setting sun turning the sky sherbet orange-pink.
Man, it’s been a long day. One huge bonus of staying at our accommodation is that you can request dinner if you like. So that night, at sundown after our walk, we settled in while Mohammed served us a three-course home-cooked meal for £10 each in the candlelit dining room. We had delicious vegetables from the garden cooked in a tagine, with bread and meat baked outside on a fire followed by delicately sweet mint tea, fruit salad and local biscuits.
I don’t know if the home-cooked meal or the lack of electric lighting meant I had an incredible night’s sleep. Either way, I was full of beans in the morning and ready for the return journey. Not before a hearty Moroccan breakfast of yoghurt, fruit, coffee and pastries on the terrace. We say goodbye to Mohammed and thank him for his warm and generous hospitality and set off for Marrakech, via a bizarre surprise: an abandoned Hollywood film in the Moroccan desert, why of course.
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