Friday, May 31, 2013

Photo Friday: The Sahara Desert



While my favourite time in the the desert is undoubtedly night time, I have to admit the morning comes pretty close. As day breaks over the golden sands, you notice tracks left by critters in the night - the telltale signs of scarab beetles, sandfish, and sometimes even sand cats.

The morning is still cool, not having yet been made insufferably hot by the beating down of the desert sun - did I mention how huge the difference is between day and night in the desert? - and the sand is cold, so cold that it feels almost wet.

At the crack of dawn, just when it's starting to get light, the Berber guides wake you up, clapping loudly outside your tent just in time for you to climb to the top of a dune to watch the sun come up over the horizon.



As the sun comes up, the silhouette of camels and their riders come up to you from across the dunes. Caravans of camels from other tour groups ready to head back to the village after nights out in the Sahara.

As they pass by me, I start realising how much of an oddity I must be to these people - a novelty, having an Asian person out here in the desert. They greet me with good-hearted konichiwa's and ni hao's, and although I'm usually bothered by this today I decide to let it go. It's too beautiful a morning to ruin.



Although I came out with about ten other people, as the sun rises the rest of them get ready to head back to Merzouga, too - I'm the only one who's going to spending an extra night out here, and today I'll get to visit a real Berber village out here in the Sahara.

"There are actually people who still live out here?!" I can't help but think. Sure it's beautiful and gorgeous, but it's also harsh and barren and where on earth do they get water from?!

I jump up on camelback and soon I'm watching the desert change under the rising sun - the sky becomes bluer, the sand becomes even more golden, and the flies start buzzing around my head again.

I'm seriously starting to wish that I'd had the foresight to bring a good insect repellent. I'm kicking myself for not having brought my Tiger Balm.



As we cross dune after dune, I ask Ibrahim how it is that he is able to tell one part of the desert from the other - it all looks the same to me, featureless, full of sand. "You just know," he tells me. I suppose that must be something that comes from having been born in the desert.

I learn that Ibrahim is also quite the aspiring photographer - he absolutely loves taking pictures of everything and anything, and several times he asks if I'd like to stop for pictures.

He calls himself the "Berber japonais" - the Japanese Berber, because he loves taking pictures. "Just like the Japanese," he says.

I have to say, he's pretty skilled with handling my Canon 550D and even slides down the sides of dunes to get at nice angles.





After journeying for about an hour or so, we finally arrive at the edges of the Berber village. There's a well there (that explains how they get their water) and even a tiny garden. Ibrahim draws up water from the well to give to Bob Marley Rasta, who I suppose must be pretty thirsty because he's gulping it down… Well, like a camel.







Between 10AM and 5PM, the desert is insufferably hot. It's unbearable and brutal, and it's pretty much dead between those hours. The only things that are awake are the flies, which refuse to stop buzzing around your head. It's nap-time between 10 and 5, because that's pretty much the only thing for people to do.

There's a little mud hut, which is about as basic as basic gets - a simple straw roof and a cut-out window through the mud walls, with a couple of rugs between me and the earth and a simple metal door. There's also a plastic sheet over the roof - "For when it rains," says Ibrahim, although I can't really imagine it raining out here in the Sahara.

I become very glad for the fact that I have my jacket on me, which I pull over my head to keep out the drone of buzzing flies. The flies are horrible - the droning really gets to you, and it's so much that I actually think I'm going insane.



When I wake up just in time for lunch, Ibrahim is preparing a salad out of tomatoes, onions, capsicum, cucumbers, olives and some sort of fish. There's olive oil drizzled over the top. It's simple but refreshing, and oh my god the olives. I've never been much of an olive girl, but the ones I've had here are the most delicious thing I've ever had.

In fact, I wouldn't have expected myself to like half these vegetables at all, because I don't usually have capsicum or olives in my diet, but I think Morocco is changing my mind about these veggies.



I decide to head out to check out the rest of this little Berber village.

Somehow it's not quite the village I expected - I kind of expected a little community of people living together happily, with simple but clean huts or nomadic tents, and a whole hoard of livestock, camels and goats. They've got the camels and goats alright, but the rest of the village looks… Well, run-down.

There isn't any real 'village' either - it's more of the one family who is unwavering in wanting to remain the desert, and their mud-house. Mud-house, goat-keep, and solar panels.

ca



Yup, solar panels. Because you really can't get by without electricity, and if you're going to do clean renewable and sustainable there's probably no better place to get electricity than in the Sahara, right?

I'm a little bit surprised, but a part of me dies when I think about how hard life must be out here.



Later in the afternoon, Ibrahim asks if I want to check out the oasis. "Sure, why not," so we head out, and soon there's a little place with a few trees and shade. Another surprise - it's not the palm trees and big lake that I'd expected, but just a place with a little bit more water so that plants can grow.

Seriously, where do I get all these desert stereotypes from?!



Ibrahim lays out a couple of mats and tosses me a tree branch to use as a fan to keep the flies away. He also insists on calling me Fatima Couscous, which he says is my 'desert name.' I don't know why he decides to name me after a food, but it's pretty amusing, so why not?

The desert is brutal. Brutally hot, and by now it's been some 20 hours without access to the comforts of everyday life. No internet, no showers - and right now I could seriously do with both, especially the shower. The heat is making me sweat and I'm feeling sticky, icky and gross. Internet access would be good too, because without internet I'm feeling lost and frankly unsure what to do with all these hours doing nothing.



When it finally gets cool enough, Ibrahim saddles up the camel and we head over to tonight's campsite.

Bob Marley Rasta doesn't seem to enjoy having his harness fiddled around with too much.



That evening after getting to the campsite, I get to watch my second desert sunset.









In the morning, I see sand-cat tracks, and kick myself for not having stayed up last night to see the cats. I love cats. Love. So when Ibrahim tells me that there were four sand-cats around our campsite last night, I'm cursing and swearing for not having been able to see them out and about, hunting sand-fish and desert insects in the dark.





One thing strikes me - how easily the wind, which whips up at sunset and sunrise, seems to erase all signs that people have ever walked paths in the desert. There's so little moisture that the fine sand picks up as easily as dandelion fluff, and the wind blows tracks right over. The sand ripples like waves, and soon there's no evidence at all that anything had ever walked here.



And yet somehow, through all this harsh brutality, things do survive. It's the Sahara, it's extreme, it's inhospitable, the days blur into one another, but life is there. There are desert cats, desert dogs, sand fish, scarab beetles, all depending on one another for continued survival.





A poem creeps into my head:

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Listen to Tuesday: Audra McDonald

audragobackhome

When I started listening to Audra McDonald a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was "How on earth did I not know about this amazing woman earlier?" A five-time winner of the Tony Award and a Julliard graduate, Audra was classically trained but performs in musical theatre and acting.

Her voice is nothing short of stunning - it's truly one of the most remarkable voices I've ever heard. A master of agility, she seems to tackle challenging repertoire with ease. In one word: wow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vS9eBqmqfmA

After a seven-year gap, Audra's newest album, Go Back Home, is interesting because popular showtune standards are noticeably absent. There's no Wicked, no Gypsy, and nothing anywhere near any Andrew Lloyd Webber. Instead are lesser-known but beautiful pieces by Sondheim and Jason Robert Brown - so it also makes for a great introduction for those wanting to venture more into the world of musical theatre.

Buy on Amazon or iTunes.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Saharan Sands, Morocco


Bob Marley was a Jamaican singer who was best known for reggae songs like No Woman, No Cry and One Love. I'm not sure that Bob knew that he had also lent his name to a camel.

Going out into the Sahara desert, I was atop the back of a camel named Bob Marley Rasta. Bob Marley Rasta and the caravan of camels - sounds catchy, no? Camels are sometimes known as the ships of the desert for their ability to carry loads over long distances and the general awesomeness of their being able to go for a really long period of time without drinking water.

I guess you need that sort of survival and adaptability to be living out in the Sahara!


Waking up next to the Sahara must be one of the best ways to wake up. The start of the desert was all of a hundred metres away - you could have gone out to it any time you felt like it, really. My one night at the auberge was pleasant, with only myself and a French couple staying, so it was quiet and I slept easy. In the morning, I was woken up by the French couple saying bonjour to the auberge staff outside my window – not a bad way at all to wake up, with birds chirping outside and the cool mornings.


After an afternoon of lazing around, walking around Merzouga and sipping on mint tea (I love that stuff, it's my catnip) we headed out to the desert at sunset, just as the sun started turning the world shades of gold.


It didn't take me very long to realise that wearing a headscarf was invaluable - it kept the sun off the back of my neck, saved me from sunburns, and most importantly kept the flies off my ears.

Let me explain. I have this paranoid fear of insects crawling into my ear. Any buzzing near my head makes me flinch reflexively - I jump and swat anything around my head, and I've actually wound up hitting myself a couple of times because of it. (I never said it was a smart reflex.)

I have a mild heart attack any time I hear insects buzzing near me - that moment when they're so close to you that the sound just gets louder and louder until it's right beside you. I become paranoid and start thinking that they're going to crawl into my ear canal, and they're going to lay eggs and hatch and eat my brains or something gross and disgusting.

My ears are starting to feel funny just typing all that.

At this point, with a dozen flies circling my head and buzzing all around me, it was actually terrifying. A few times I wound up covering my ears when it all got too much. Thank goodness I was wearing a headscarf, which was absolutely the best thing because it made damn sure that none of those flies would be getting inside my ears.

A headscarf and sunglasses - style for the Sahara!
The person who was leading my camel was a Berber named Ibrahim, born and raised in the desert. I didn't speak very good French and he didn't speak very good English, so striking up conversation was challenging but rewarding when I managed to learn a ton of new vocabulary and grasp the meaning of sentences in French!

Ibrahim told me that the camels needed to be led because they won't walk without someone in front of them - which is why he couldn't be on camel-back too, because if he were we wouldn't be able to go anywhere!




The sand dunes of the Sahara (which, by the way, is Arabic for 'desert' - so Sahara Desert really means 'desert desert') looked just incredible - so soft and pure it was almost unreal.

My sense of perspective went entirely out of whack, because there weren't any trees or familiar things to compare the size of the dunes to. Looking at the dunes from afar, they didn't seem that big, but once I started climbing them I started to realise just how much of a workout it was!


We got to the place we were staying for the night - sturdy tents right next to Morocco's biggest sand dune, Erg Chebbi. We got there just in time to see the sun go down and climbed one of the smaller dunes nearby to watch the sunset.

Some people are made for treks, trails and exercise. I am not one of those people.

It was surprising how difficult it was to walk. The sand was so fine, dry and soft that although every step was like walking in cloud, it was like walking in cloud that was sinking. It was almost like getting a proper workout - being unfit as I am, I soon collapsed on the sand and lay down to catch my breath!


I was surprised by how quickly the desert cooled down as soon as the sun set. There must have been at least 10 degrees of difference between evening and night time - although the afternoon and evening was properly hot, night time was chilly and almost cold. And here I was wondering why I had been told to bring a jacket with me!




Dinner in the desert was traditional Moroccan Berber fare - a three-part meal of chicken tajine, couscous, and lots of fresh Moroccan fruit. Being so far out, we didn't have electricity, so we had dinner by candlelight.



After dinner, we sat outside and started playing music - North African beats and rhythms on all sorts of drums, some Berber singing, and everyone whipped into a wild frenzy of food-induced full-belly happiness as we danced around under the moonlight. It didn't take me very long to overcome my self-consciousness about my dancing - by the time we started going round in circles in trains, all sense of inhibitions had been lost to the beauty of the desert.

As the night started to wind down, I walked out a little away from the rest of the group to simply enjoy being in the desert, laying out on the soft sand looking at the star-speckled night sky.

Singing, dancing, eating and being under the beauty of the stars and Sahara desert - what more could you ask for?

Camel Trekking in Merzouga
Web: Camel Trekking Merzouga
Email: merzouga.cameltrekking@gmail.com
Phone: + 212 667 879 247
Disclaimer: My night in the desert was provided by Camel Trekking Merzouga. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this post.

Friday, May 24, 2013

Road to the Sahara

The High Atlas Mountains, Morocco.
Public transport in Morocco is by and large reasonably-priced, but it can be a challenge to get from one city to another. Although there is a train service in between Fes and Marrakech, there are towns farther out that are considerably harder to reach. The two main bus companies are CTM buses and Supratours, and journeys can be as long as 12 or 13 hours.

On the east edge of Morocco, near the border with Algeria, the Sahara desert begins. Of all the towns and villages on the edge of the Sahara, Merzouga is perhaps the best known - it's the closest to Morocco's biggest sand dune, Erg Chebbi. From Merzouga, there are several tour companies that take you to spend nights in the desert.

Merzouga and Marrakech are 12 hours apart.

I hate bus rides. I avoid travelling by bus at all costs - I don't mind them if they're under 4 hours long or if it's a mini-bus, but other than that I'd rather pay more for a train or plane than spend that amount of time cramped up on an uncomfortable vehicle with barely any leg room.

As you might imagine, I was not at all looking forward to spending 12 hours on this bus. But I really, really wanted to go to the Sahara desert, so I decided to suck it up and get on a bus. I was used to being able to buy tickets on the bus, so I didn't think it would be a problem to just appear at the station with my bags and enough money for the bus.

Turns out I was wrong.

I arrived at the Supratours station at 7.45AM, taking care to be extra-early. I don't think anything could have prepared me for the panic I felt when the people at the bus station told me that the one and only bus from Marrakech to Merzouga that day had been fully booked.

"Okay, breathe, think. You're in Morocco, north of bloody Africa, your French isn't all that brilliant, and the bus you need to take today is full. Fuck."

I suppose the desperation must have showed, because after practically begging them to tell me how else I could get to Merzouga, the people at the counter (albeit somewhat reluctantly) pointed me to another bus station about ten minutes down the road at Dob Doukhal. As soon as the shutters opened I was at the counter - and honestly, I could have danced for joy when I found that this bus had an available seat.

So I waited for the bus to arrive at the station. Imagine my surprise when I realised that the bus I was going to be on was the exact same bus that had departed from the previous station. The same bus that they had told me was fully booked and that I could not get a seat on. What?!

I was pretty frustrated at this point - it didn't make any sense to me that one station would have seats sold out and the next would have seats available, when both were to be on the same bus. It felt like the first station was pushing people away, for whatever reason who knows, but it was completely bizarre and felt rude. In the end I thought 'Whatever,' and because I was still pretty tired, decided to just go to sleep and not think about the utter weirdness of the whole situation.

About three hours into the journey, I woke up and saw this outside the window:


The bus was driving through the High Atlas mountains in Morocco, and although the mountains weren't on my itinerary for this trip, I was so glad that I at least got a chance to see them even if only from the window of a bus. The lush green contrasting with the rest of the Moroccan desert, driving by waterfalls and rivers.

About a quarter of the way through the journey, we did a comfort stop. Everyone got out to stretch their legs and grab a quick lunch. I decided to grab some orange juice.


Orange juice was probably one of my favourite things about Morocco. It's remarkable, really - it's such a simple thing, but in Morocco it is just unbelievably fresh. It is literally freshly squeezed orange juice - in some places, you can see the oranges being cut up and pressed right in front of you.

These were literally the most delicious oranges I've ever tasted in my life.

This is the freshest orange juice you will ever taste.
And then in to the bus it was for another eight hours. We drove through Ouarzazate, which has become known as a filming location - Gladiator was filmed here, and it was also used for scenes in Qarth for Game of Thrones.

We drove through lots of little towns and villages, picking up and dropping off passengers along the way. I tried my darndest to go to sleep and hope that by the time I woke up I would already be in Merzouga. It turns out that sleeping for eight hours on a bus isn't the easiest thing in the world.

Still though, I made it to Merzouga in the end. As I got off the bus, I was immediately accosted by people who were trying to 'help' me find my hotel for the night (protip: they always expect a generous tip at the end, so always firmly decline!) Thankfully I had a pick up waiting for me, so I managed to escape that pretty quickly.

The hotel that I was staying at for the night was called Auberge Le Petit Prince (such a cute name!) and although basic, I was impressed at how thoughtful it all seemed - clean white bedding and mud walls that made the room look almost rustic chic. There were even insect nets over the windows to prevent bugs from coming into the room when the windows were open!

First night at Auberge Le Petit Prince, Merzouga.
In the morning, I checked out some of the village of Merzouga. It turns out there isn't very much of it at all - Merzouga is tiny, literally so small that you probably wouldn't even need a bike to get around. Walking is enough to go pretty much everywhere!

Each family even has their own little plot of land to grow plants in a communal garden. There's a very basic watering system for the plants - one central drain, and each plot gets watered three hours a week by having the drain water diverted to it. For a desert, I was impressed by how much green there was - and on the edge of the Sahara, too!



Saturday, May 18, 2013

Pin It Forward: Introducing Pinterest UK!


Today I'm really excited, because I finally get to tell you guys about the Pinterest UK campaign!

Pinterest is a site that needs no introduction - an online pin board and tool for collecting, organising and sharing beautiful ideas and images from all over the web. I've been a fan of Pinterest for a while now, using it to remember everything from travel ideas to DIY crafts and dream homes (still a girly girl at heart, ha ha!) I love that I can follow people and their boards, and easily keep up to date with what they're a fan of.

My favourite part of Pinterest is that it doesn't just save images for you - it also saves where it's from, so it's not just collecting images but bookmarking a reference! It's only a small thing, but believe me it's the little things that matter when you're planning anything at all.

With the Pin It Forward campaign, Pinterest is bringing its focus here to the UK - they've unveiled a ton of cool new features for users this side of the pond, including a new British English language setting (seeing 'colour' spelled with the letter 'u'!) and making UK content more easily searchable. I think it's great that Pinterest isn't standing still even being the huge site that it is!

I like pinning travel ideas and indulging in travel porn (beautiful, perfect, National Geographic-worthy images of places) on my board, Travel and Wanderlust. Right now I'm pinning images for my upcoming trips to Greece France and Poland, but there's also images from when I was planning for my Iceland trip and all sorts of dream-destination type pins there!

Follow The Cheryl Keit Project's board Travel and wanderlust on Pinterest.

Being such a huge community-driven site, Pinterest has boards dedicated to everything from fashion to fancy dyed hair to faraway places. If you'd like, you can check out Katy from Starry Eyed Travels - she has a ton of boards with pins for dream homes and of course travel!

Perhaps you would like to follow me on Pinterest, too? If you're not on Pinterest already, you can sign up here and start following me straightaway!


This post was written in collaboration with Pinterest UK as part of the Pin It Forward campaign. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for writing this. It's just insanely cool to be part of all this! Squee!

Friday, May 17, 2013

The Red City, Marrakech, Morocco


Marrakech is known as the Red City.

Even simply flying over, it's not difficult to see why - against the desert sun, the red clay of the city is the first thing that strikes you about it. Almost all the walls are some shade of clay, brick-red. When you look out over the Old City, or the medina, there's not a skyscraper in sight, and the whole unfamiliarity of it all makes you feel almost as though you're in a world from a very long time ago.

Indeed, some of what is in this city is from a very long time ago.


The El Badi Palace was built the 1500s, and although it is a ruin today its name means "The Incomparable Palace." Even today some of the mosaic remains preserved, and with a little use of the imagination you might be able to see how the palace looked back in its glory days.

The Palace is pretty large, and most areas are free to explore. With roofs and ceilings it would have been an absolute labyrinth to get lost in, but now that so little of the building you can literally look into the rooms and see the maze as you would building plans. There are few information boards, which meant that half the time we were wandering around wondering what the function of each room would have been, which was pretty fun in its own way.


In the palace courtyard we saw people planting trees in what must have been swimming pools or gardens back in the day. You can only imagine what the palace must have looked like with swimming pools in the courtyard and richly mosaicked floors - every bit what you might imagine of Arabic-styled lush palaces!


It was surprising how well the red clay kept the heat out of underground rooms. Where the some rooms still had their ceilings, the insides must have been at least 5-8 degrees cooler than outside. Absolutely perfect for the dry desert heat - a very Moroccan style of eco-friendly air conditioning, I'd say!
We also saw a lot of White Storks building their huge nests in what remained of the palace's towers!
We then headed back to Jemaa El-Fna for some pretty henna from one of the multitudes of Moroccan ladies sitting under their umbrellas.

I made a huge mistake when I was looking to get my henna done - not shopping around! It's a very expensive mistake, because in bargaining culture the seller starts at a higher price (extremely high if you're not a local) and the buyer tries to push the price down.

As we were looking through the photos of various henna designs, we asked how much it would cost.

The first lady we went to told us it would cost 300DH, or €30.

€30!!!!!

So we did try bargaining the price down, and she told us that black henna would cost more than the regular brown traditional henna - but that it would stay longer, too. After bargaining we managed to get the price down to 200DH, about €20. We still weren't entirely happy with the price, but we were on holiday and it was something like a 30% discount right?

We said okay, sucked it up and agreed to the price.
Sanjana getting henna'd.
Bonus glitter as a finishing touch!
Henna usually costs around €2-3. We paid €20.

It turns out that by not shopping around we'd paid some 10 times more than we could have paid for the henna.

It was gorgeous henna with all sorts of beautiful intricate designs, but goddamn was it expensive. What was worse was that after I found out that I'd completely overpaid for it, I found myself completely unable to enjoy the henna, because every time I looked down at it all I could think of was that I had let myself be overcharged to ten times of what it should have cost.

The henna overcharging put a real downer on the trip. It shouldn't have been such a big deal, really - money is something that can be earned back, but it was really upsetting. It just seemed wrong to me that people should charge and accept that much.

It would have gone a long way toward helping her and her children - she was 24 and already had three kids, we managed to gather from our combined efforts of stuttering French - but somehow it still seemed unethical to let people pay ten times what it should have cost.

I felt like a real miser for being that upset over money, especially seeing as how I hadn't been quite as upset by how much I'd paid until I found out afterwards.

Lesson learned, folks: SHOP AROUND.
The said expensive henna.
The amazing food in Marrakech did seem to make up for it a little bit though. Food wasn't as cheap as I'd expected it to be - it was still a significant amount of money, at around €5-10 a meal, but it was pretty good food so I was content.

Of course it figures that the very first meal we'd have out would be a right cultural experience - sushi and paninis sound particularly Moroccan to anyone? Ha ha!
Sarah having sushi and Sanjana having a panini and chips.
Okay no seriously though. We did start to get more of a taste for Moroccan cuisine when we watched the sun set over the horizon, bathing everything in swathes of gold over a good mint tea and avocado juice.


And as soon as it got dark, Jemaa el-Fna changed completely - gone were the snake-charmers and ladies painting henna, and out came the street food.



I love street food - it's probably one of my favourite ways to get to know a culture, through eating with them. The problem is that Morocco is so clearly touristy - even seated at the tables and ready to order street food, I didn't see any local Moroccan faces, only those of tourists looking for a taste of just-enough-exotic.

I wasn't in a position to judge, clearly, since I was among those tourists. But I found myself wishing that I knew where the locals really hung out - not the stalls with TripAdvisor boards fighting for your attention, trying to get you to buy from them, but the cafes or restaurants in the inner parts of the souk where locals buy bessara for 5DH a bowl.

That being said, although the deep-fried eggplant cost 30DH a plate of five instead of 1DH a piece, the food was very good. Khobz bread comes with pretty much every meal, and the fried calamari was delicious. It wasn't exactly the perfectly-crispy-on-the-outside, not-overcooked-and-dry cuisine from Jamie's Italian, but the whole atmosphere of street food and barbecue smoke made for a great dinner.



So even though it was clear that I was being overcharged for everything just for being non-local, I guess that's just how things work in Morocco. Tourism is Morocco's biggest industry, after all, and poverty is still very much real. I wondered why there were kids on the streets that weren't in school, and it almost seemed okay that they were overcharging me for being a tourist if I had the means to travel and all they wanted to do was to make a living.

It was an odd moment to be thinking about the ethics of travelling. It's still a pretty new topic for me to think about, and I've yet to figure it out. I'm not sure I ever will entirely, and it's still really confusing.

But throw me some good ol' street food and I'll be alright for the most part.

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