Epiphany in the desert

I've been in Morocco for only a couple of days and was truly starting to hate the place. Oh I know... you're supposed to travel with an open mind and a positive attitude, leaving the preconceptions and all worries behind, but I was having a lot of trouble accomplishing that. First of all, I was a little uneasy about the country. A friend sent me an e-mail warning me of all the hassles and scams. Secondly, potential travel companions didn't materialize. I was feeling rather blue, and the hassles did not help the situation.

I've just spent an entire month in Malaga, Spain in a language institute. It was such a great, social experience: sharing an apartment with three other students, spending 20 hours a week in class, excursions with the whole school, hanging out at the beach, partying late at night around the city. I knew beforehand that Morocco would be a dramatic change, so after the course was over, I went to Granada by myself for a couple of days to get reaccustomed to traveling solo again. That failed miserably though, as I ended up staying in a 10-bed hostel with super fun Canadian and European girls which insisted on having a lot of fun. Damnation! Instead of easing myself into a walkabout, I ended up sipping sangria and eating tapas with bunch of party animals until the wee hours of each morning. All this fun has caused some serious "fun withdrawal" symptoms as soon as I landed in Africa. Having been warned against staying in Tanger, I made my way through the customs, where a "guide" tried to weasel his way into my wallet for being helpful. Then another. Then another. Having wished them all a good day and receiving "fuck yous" in reply, I got to the train station and learned that the last sleeping berth to Marrakech was just sold. Great. Ten hour ride curled up in a seat. When the train finally arrived, the attendant asked me for a ticket, then literally ripped my backpack and a bag with food out of my hands and proceeded to throw them into the first open compartment (incidentally not the one I had the reserved ticket for) and loudly proclaimed: propina, propina (Spanish for "tip, tip"). He wouldn't let up even after I gave him a tip of advice: "don't carry luggage when it's not wanted", so I yielded a few coins, which he grudgingly accepted mentioning he was expecting three euro. Well, well, well...

The train ride was not bad at all, but as soon as I stepped off the train in Marrakech, my mood started getting darker again. I couldn't get a cab to take me to medina on a meter. Every cabbie was suggesting a sum five to ten times the usual. Not wanting to walk, I finally found one to take me for a bargain price of three times the usual rate. Hotel search was fruitless too. The two recommendations I had for nice, inexpensive backpackers' places were all full so I picked a pretty much random place which turned out to be a total rat hole. And then of course were the scams. Having to deal with scams at EVERY single moment was starting to get just a little bit tedious. Buying cigarettes. Taking cabs. Being approached by street urchins, beggars and kids. Evading pickpockets. Beating off "guides" with a stick. Even having to bargain for a goddamn glass of freshly squeezed orange juice that the vendor insisted cost ten times as much as the advertised price. It was hard to relax in this place: very hard. I was able to find one single oasis of peace: a rooftop restaurant in one of the side streets of medina, where I would enjoy crepe Maroquanne and mint tea everyday, while reading a book or thinking of what to do next. But I knew I wasn't going to last here. I needed to get away and get away quickly. The worst thing was, that Morocco was not a place with solo travelers. Almost everyone in here was either traveling as a couple or in a group, so finding someone to hang out with was proving to be very difficult. So after a couple of days I decided to do the unthinkable and I joined an excursion. An organized tour to Merzouga, a town in the Sahara desert. Normally I would shun such an organized, itinerary tour, but here it turned out to be the best decision possible. Instead of going through all the hassles, it solved the problem of company, food, accommodations and sightseeing, and in turn saved Morocco for me.

Our guide, Idris, turned out to be one hell of a guy. An avid nargile smoker (we stopped at a tobacco shop where I got some of my favourite apple tobacco), he would organize a water pipe at our every pit stop. I don't know if he had relatives all around Morocco or something, but this, this was what I needed. Sitting around the table with old bearded Berbers and backpackers, puffing away, drinking mint tea. Aahh... the sweet smell of life. We pushed towards Sahara in a Jeep with Bob Marley blazing through the speakers stopping at various valleys and kasbahs forsightseeing. And when we'd stop overnight, we'd produce the largest hashish joints the world has ever seen, and sit by a fire happily getting stoned listening to Idris sing and bang away on his drum. We got to the desert late afternoon on the second day. Having mounted the camels, we proceeded towards the Berber camp we'd be spending the night at as the sun begun to set. And as the darkness fell, I looked up and saw the first star come up and had the amazing feeling: it was just like the three kings going to Bethlehem following the Evening Star. The sound of camels huffing, the grains of sand sliding from underneath their hoofs, the warm Sahara wind and the unbelievably clear skies. It was a feeling very difficult to describe. Not religious, not spiritual, but... profound. It felt like being transported in time, understanding a piece of history and living in it.

We got to the camp, had dinner, listened to music by the fire and just relaxed. Lying there at looking up at the stars: no air pollution, no signs of technology, I drifted off to sleep. Next day we left early so we could have breakfast in Merzouga. After we got back into our Jeeps and left, I suddenly realized that I forgot something that I was supposed to do. Something that I planned to do before ever coming to see the Sahara: to take some sand back with me as a memento. Damn it! Me and my non existent short-term memory. I was crushed. It seems so stupid to want some sand, but it was very important to me. I hate your usual souvenirs: stupid little wooden clogs from Amsterdam or miniature Eiffel Towers from Paris. I like things that are either practical, like a hand-woven Turkish bookmark or a Lappish knife, or sentimental and even then I rarely treat myself to a souvenir. But this was supposed to be one of these occasions and I missed it. I reached into my pocket for a gum and... my fingers were covered with red sand. THE RED SAHARA SAND! I came with me! It remembered about me, even when I forgot about it. It was an amazing moment, like Sahara saying "come back to visit one day". I thought how did the sand get into my shorts and smiled at the answer. Fate. Or rather, a reward for doing something just because you felt like doing it. Before we left the desert I climbed one of the dunes and sat down to watch the sunrise. I'm usually not impressed by the image of sun going up and down, but this was a special occasion. When it was time to leave, I had this... urge. A really silly urge to roll downhill, which I used to love to do as a child, rolling downhill on the snow. And so with a great "Geronimo!" shout, I rolled a good 100 meters down this tremendous dune, laughing and screaming, while the sand filled my hair, and as I found out later: my pockets.

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