Morocco: Atlas and Sahara

For a small country (By Indian standards of course) Morocco offers huge variety in landscapes. It has terrain that can pretend to be the American wild west, or the Arabian desert, or even the lush Himalayan valleys. And a few hours of travel, you can traverse all these fantastic views.

Starting from the culture capital of Fez, we headed southeast, towards the great Sahara. Almost immediately, you enter hilly terrain, and soon you are in the middle of the Middle Atlas. This range more or less marks the edge of Morocco's bread basket region. The Middle Atlas is lush, and as far as the eye can see there are green slopes, streams with rocky beds and sheep dotting the open pastures. I found the Middle Atlas to be the most pleasant region of Morocco that I saw, despite not presenting as dramatic views as can be seen in other parts of the country.



As soon as you cross the passes of the Middle Atlas, there is a stark increase in the arid nature of the landscape. There are dramatic moments where you can see the plateau between the Middle and the High Atlas stretching before you, and on the distant horizon loom the High Atlas with its magnificant snowy peaks.





And within some time, the looming horizon approaches, and suddenly you are in the dramatic surrounds of the High Atlas, the most significant physical feature of Morocco. The High Atlas stands as the barrier between the Sahara and the sea, and gives western and northern Morocco its mild Mediterranean climate. We crossed the High Atlas twice, to and from the Sahara, and the entire journey was simply one of increasing wonder.




Beyond the Atlas stretches the immense Sahara. As soon as you start descending from the mountains, you can literally feel the desert, long before you actually see it. The terrain becomes dotted with palm trees and oases, the soil, already red in the Atlas, becomes flat and dry, dust swirls in the air, and at long last, you see the fabled sand dunes in the distance.



The desert is not all just dunes of course, but equally obvious is that it is the dunes that make the lasting desert impression. A trip on camel back to spend a night in the middle of the dunes in a Berber camp was an experience unparalleled since a long time.


We had the strange and unexpected weather combination of clouds over the dunes, which made for unique views.



The desert surely counts among the loneliest places on earth. It makes you feel insignificant, exactly the way the sea stretching to the horizon does.



The return trip through the High Atlas brought us back to the the modernized world, and the bustle of Marrakesh. This another important Moroccan city paints a different picture to Fez. Having a hotel in the modern part of the city, the 'Ville Nouvelle', instead of in the Medina, showed us the modern facet of today's Morocco, and rounded off our trip with us hoping for a chance of an encore visit.

Morocco: Riads and Kasbahs

Riads are an essential part of Moroccan culture, and offer a wonderful cross-section view of Moroccan life. Very similar to a gujarati/rajasthani courtyard house in principle, it consists of a central courtyard with overlooked by balconies on all four sides. The outside of the building is unadorned, with all the intricate mosaic work reserved for the insides. The courtyard often has a fountain and trees, the narrow staircases showcase beautiful moroccan pottery, murals, silverware and the like, and are filled with the aroma of home cooking.



Many riads today have been converted from private residences into guest houses, and hence offer the tourist a wonderful window into this typical moroccan architecture.




Another very important feature which dots the moroccan countryside is the Kasbah. Essentially it is a walled clay fortress, most of them strung out overlooking the ancient caravan trade routes from the Sahara desert through the Atlas mountains towards the Atlantic coast.



Many Kasbahs are abandoned today, to be replaced by more modern buildings, often right next to the original Kasbah itself. Some of the most important ones are conserved, the most striking of which is perhaps the Ait Ben Haddou. This Kasbah has been used as the site for a number of famous hollywood movies. Today, it is a UNESCO world heritage site.





Another important site is the Kasbah of Telouet, ertwhile stronghold of the Pasha El Gloui, once one of the most powerful families in southern Morocco and vassal of the Sultan.



A fallout with the current ruling dynasty lead to a downfall of the El Gloui family fortunes. As a result the Kasbah is today rather dilapidated and not well looked after by the government, but still offers a wonderful echo of history for the traveller. The latticed windows looking out over the dramatic High Atlas themselves make the place worth a visit!

Morocco: Medinas and Mosques

Finally, on the north african coast! After months of planning and being excited and uncertain in turn, it was a great feeling to stand outside the Mohammed V international airport in Casablanca.
Casablanca, the commercial capital of Morocco, was a slight anticlimax though. The city came across as a poor cousin of Mumbai, full of traffic and crowds and an overall sense of poverty.



The only stand out is the magnificent Hassan II mosque, built in the '80s with the specific purpose of giving Casablanca the landmark it lacks, which it does in grand style.


The mosque is built on a promontory on the Atlantic ocean, with the vast grime of Casa behind it. It is simply awesome to look out over the Atlantic, and know that the next mainland coast in that direction is that of North America!





The trail through Morocco continued by train inwards, towards the imperial cities of Meknes and Fes. Meknes for us turned out more of a stop over rather than a real visit, and the shut fastness of the imperial city gates only left a lingering curiosity of the wonders inside.



Fes is the real gem, and worth every minute of the time you manage to spend here. It is the capital of moroccan handicrafts, and specializes in many things: leather, pottery, fabrics among others. Is is said that the king's palace in Fes is the grandest among his many palaces in the country, very likely due to the fact that the city is home to his wife's family.



Fes has the third largest medina (walled town) in the world, after Istanbul and Cairo. The hidden twisting lanes are built with the express intention of confusing foreign invaders, something that it still manages to do easily.



Rising over the shops and houses are large and small moorish towers, signifying the nearly 400 mosques in the medina. Many of the mosques have stiking intricate tile designs, often made by the patronage of rich merchants. The city has a number of noted institutions of religious studies like the Bou Inania Madrasa, and the Al-Karaouine university, one of the oldest in the world.






Fes is a stimulation of the senses, an appetizer to the wonders of this country while being in itself a vivid and unforgettable delight.

Cologne Cathedral - Colossus on the Rhine

It was the tallest building in Europe until the Eiffel Tower was built.. despite the fact that the record stays lost for nearly a hundred years, it still seems an impressive introduction to the Cologne Cathedral, looming large and black on the river Rhine, easily dominating not just the skyline but the very life of the city of Cologne. Germans all proudly say that this was the only building in Cologne that escaped destruction during the second world war bombings, without mentioning the fact that it was purposefully kept intact as landmark.


The Cathedral of Cologne has a long and colourful history - like most buildings worth mentioning in Europe - and yet today it defines the city. It is everywhere.. on souvenir t-shirts and mugs and keychains, on the glasses of the typical local Kölsch beer, and of course very much present there physically right in the centre of the city, immediately outside the main station. No matter if you have been told before it is still surprising to every visitor just how close to the main station it is.. you come out and, well, there it is! I am yet to meet anyone who escapes without an Oh! of surprise.


I find it very difficult to describe the Cologne cathedral as 'beautiful' - I personally think its rather forbidding, especially on winter evenings with the moon hanging behind it - but I cant escape the word Impressive. In fact I have already given myself away on that front in calling it that in earlier post. It makes for a wonderful object for photographs, day or night, cloudy or sunny!

Lorraine: A border land with no borders

I heard of the regions, or rather, the words 'Alsace' and 'Lorraine' as part of 10th standard history of the world wars. Not knowing much about where they lay and what they are, they were then just words to be learnt by heart, a part of two history chapters that made the world wars sound as if they took place within a day of each other, and lasted only about that long.
Anyway, I had found out since that these words are regions, and that today they are in France, and that one of them - Lorraine - is actually the closest french region from Düsseldorf. So, I immediately grabbed the opportunity of the easter break to plan a visit. Alsace, of course, is still pending, maybe I will make it there next easter.

Lorraine: contested between germany and france for years, occupied by one or the other at their whim, and today with open schengen borders, only 300km away. It is a region that is said to have had strong german influence at one time: the village names still make me believe that, but the people have completely and perhaps knowingly broken from that unwanted history, and have bid to become more french than france itself. I had instances of people being offended and disdainful when asked if they speak german, and just about deign to try a few words of english.

Metz is the capital of the region, and is home to a wonderful cathedral and an old city on the Moselle river. The obvious comparison to someone staying in the Rhineland is of the Metz cathedral with the one in Cologne, and despite Metz having a far prettier colour and masses of beautiful stained glass, Cologne for me remains far more impressive.






The Lorraine countryside has an important series of historical monuments from the world war period: The so called Maginot Line, a series of fortifications along the border designed to hold at bay a frontal German attack until the french army could be mobilized. The germans, though, simply entered france around the Maginot Line instead of attempting a passage through, resulting in the fact that most of the Maginot forts faced no action at all, and are still considered by the french as an embarrasing piece of history.



Nancy is the traditional capital of Lorraine, and for a tourist it is completely dominated by the grand Place Stanislaus, at the city centre. With wonderful weather, the city was full of sidewalk cafes and restaurants, and the square was lit at night in a way that the french manage make much better than anywhere I have seen in germany. All in all, Place Stanialaus was for me the most impressive single city square I have seen in Europe so far.