Journey From Fes to Marrakesh : A Moroccan Adventure

Map of Morocco pointing to the various places we travelled to 

A few years ago we went to Morocco. There were many reasons behind that trip - the strongest one being a direct flight from Washington DC to Casablanca! We flew to Casablanca (the red line on the map). We travelled from Casablanca to Rabat which is the capital city and from Rabat to Fes by train  (indicated by the yellow lines). We then intended to go to Marrakesh (the purple line on the map) and already booked our lodgings near Marrakesh's central square - Djemaa el-Fna. The keys to the place would be handed over to us by a man who worked in a near by souk around seven in the evening. We reached Fes transit stop around seven in the morning and we felt very confident that come hell or high water we will reach Marrakesh well before we were expected. After all, it should just take at the most five to six hours from Fes!

City of Fes

We had plans to take a road trip since we had taken the train on our way to Fes. We obviously did not want to take the same route going from east to west as retracing our path would be boring. Also, my Moroccan colleague at work had sung praises about the natural beauty of the Atlas mountains, finalizing our decision. Limiting ourselves with all these criteria and our half empty pockets we started looking for a taxi. After half an hour of searching we gave up and decided to book the train tickets instead. By the time we went for the tickets, the morning train had already departed and the next train for the evening was six hours away!

This now was no time for indecision and we went back to the transit station armed with hot cups of coffee for re-negotiation. And we found Muhammad (may God grant him all the pleasures in life) who was well conversant in Arabic, Berber and French - unfortunately, his list of languages did not match ours! Our only weapon was our son's broken high school French and a lot of gesticulations! Muhammad's taxi was one of a kind. It was an ancient Mercedes and had a crack on the wind shield (more intricate details of this old lady will be revealed slowly in the blog). 

A typical taxi in front of Fes railway terminal

My colleague had cautioned us in no uncertain terms that we needed to be careful when booking a taxi from the transit stop and how they take the mickey out of the tourists. All that went out of the window when Muhammad wrote down a number on a piece of paper and we all nodded vigorously pointing at the map and fixed a route by rubbing our fingers all over it.

We then started for our destination to Marrakesh at around nine and felt very confident about ourselves. Muhammad conveyed to us (via our son's broken French) that he had taken a liking to us and he was going to show us a few beautiful places on the way. We were overjoyed! After a while he pulled the car to a stop in a pretty deserted location and brought out the same piece of paper with the number, scrubbed it out and wrote down another number which looked considerably higher than the first one! We had no other option but to nod again (not as vigorously as before though!).

Muhammad was in the best of his moods. At our request he turned on the radio which crackled for a while and we requested to turn it off after the crackling went on for some time. He had a cassette player (!) and again at our request he turned on a music which was probably Berber and had good rhythm. Any how, he drove us to a beautiful place called Ain Soltane, and from Google maps we figured that we were in the Middle Atlas. As we opened the doors of the car to get down, the handles came off!  We were shocked but Muhammad was quite unfazed and gracefully opened the doors for us from outside. He told us (via our son's broken French) that we shouldn't bother ourselves with opening doors and he will happily do so throughout the trip whenever we needed to get -off.

The place was very beautiful but dry and COLD. We asked Muhammad to turn the heater on and he did for five minutes and turned it off. He conveyed to us (via our son's broken French) that the car was unable to climb up the steep hill with its heater on. The old lady groaned as much - so we believed him. We therefore had to take a break for a hot drink which warmed us up and we continued up another hill.

Ain Soltane in Imouzzer du Kandar

Yours truly in Ifrane National Park

We were taken to another very pretty place near the Ifrane National Park. It was a beautiful spot with a lot of waterfalls and gushing streams, unfortunately, the name of that place escapes me (probably Azrou). There were forests of cedar trees, many fluffy haired monkeys and boy, it was COLD! The heater was off and Muhammad wound down the windows to get some fresh air. We huddled in a corner to shelter ourselves from the wind and asked Muhammad to put some music on again. He didn't have any Malhoun music that we took a liking to but Berber music was good enough! It was close to mid-day by then and we were not sure about how far we were from Marrakesh (there was no mobile signal). The cold was getting the better of us and we were hungry.

At Ifrane National Park

We let Muhammad know (via our son's broken French) that we needed to stop for lunch but Muhammad assured us that the places we were passing through (they looked pretty clean and tidy to me!) were cut-throats and the food was not even palatable. After an hour we were in an area which kind of looked like the picture below. There was no sign of civilization, leave aside any food and naturally, we became very irate. We did not have any breakfast when we started for Marrakesh!

Middle-Atlas

It looked as if he sensed the urgency and stopped a town or two later in front of a butchery which also served Tagine. The said Tagine was prepared from the fresh flesh that hung at the store front and you could decide which portion of the animal you would like your Tagine to be cooked with! Oh the shock and the horror of it all! I almost threw up but my significant other and his able son showed their bravery and marched right in after Muhammad and I followed them meekly. Muhammad devoured his Tagine with fistful of cumin and my brave men nibbled at it too. I however decided to stick to another cup of coffee - the only vegetarian option available. The Google maps started working and we found that we were on the route which took eight hours to Marrakesh and we had merely covered two hours of the stretch. It was already past one in the afternoon! When the situation finally sank-in we calmly asked Muhammad to hurry up (via our son's broken French) and he showed enough concern by starting to drive up to the speed limit, finally!

A freshly cooked Tagine

Lamb and dry fruits Tagine that we enjoyed in Fes 

Muhammad let us know after a while that it was his time for afternoon prayer and he being a devout Muslim had to pray - but he would pray while driving. He put on the Quran in his tape-drive and started praying. After another hour while the Quran was still playing, Muhammad himself, a man of the mountains, found the car to be getting quite cold. He decided to turn the heater on. There he was, lounging in the seat of the car with a stomach full of Tagine and the warm air from the car blowing towards him. He was going down the road at a breakneck speed, but he nonetheless found his eyelids weighed more than they usually should. As he slowly swayed to sleep, his car (with all of us inside) started to swerve along the road. It took all our combined shouting as well as a horn from a very scared truck driver to finally get him to wake up.

Then the burping started, not so loudly, and then, pretty loudly, to our amazement! They smelled bad too. I could tell that he had indigestion and I offered him some medicine. But he just laughed and pointed to his cup of coffee and I shut up (what does a woman know , right?). The car slowed down again and started swerving from one lane to the other. We were still on the mountains and still climbing up. Our son peeked into his face when this carried on for quite some time and informed us that Muhammad had completely dozed off! 

We somehow got him off his slumber and he pulled into a desolate gas station and then, disappeared inside a nearby building. For fifteen minutes we sat silently inside the car shivering in the cold while we watched the sun set and the place getting dark. It was four thirty in the afternoon and we still had to cover six hours of the route if it were done on the speed limit. The panic finally hit us. There was not a soul at that place who we could ask where Muhammad went. We did not know where we were, nobody else in the world knew our whereabouts, our phone was losing battery fast and we did not speak their language! My significant other ran straight out of the car and we got a glimpse of him and Muhammad after almost an eternity.

The hours that followed were filled with the realization that we might not make it to Marrakesh that night after all. Mohammad suddenly became very gloomy and started driving so fast that we got scared. We chose to sit quietly and submit ourselves to our fate. This act of submission and letting the idea of control go, actually provided a sense of peace which engulfed us. We travelled through darkness, passed many towns with names such as; Khenifra, Beni-Mellal, El Kelaa and many more. We then received one final call from our Marrakesh lodging before the battery completely died. They let us know that the guy with the keys would wait for us until nine and we could collect the keys next day early in the morning. Well, that was the final nail in the coffin and I closed my eyes and was soon fast asleep!

No miracle happened while I slept but I noticed that I was not shivering any more. The weather had warmed up considerably and we were driving through straight plain roads. Mohammad's indigestion had most certainly cured as he asked us for the phone number of the guy with the keys. They talked and then he let us know (via our son's broken French) that he asked the "key-guy" to wait for us! What elation! We slowly started seeing evidence of civilization around us. That shops, houses, pharmacies, street-lights and roadside carts can evoke such exhilaration was unknown to me until then! The icing on the cake was that we finally reached Marrakesh just after ten. Mohammad took it upon himself and found our key-guy for us. We paid him and also tipped him and parted amicably after exchanging our phone numbers. We promised to meet him when we were in Fes next time and we can gladly provide his details in case you want his services.

Djemaa el-Fna, Marrakesh