Rocks, the kasbah

We were up bright and breezy this morning to prepare for a long days travelling. Indeed getting up at 6:30am felt more like a work day than something you would choose to do as an adventurous day out in Morocco.

We breakfasted at 7:00am and were on the road by 7:30am. Aziz kindly informed us of the plan as the journey began. First off we would go to Ouarzazate (pronounced Wah-tsar-sat) via the highest mountain pass in all of Africa, the Tizi N'Tichka pass which everyone in Morocco seems to be proud of, judging by the fact that people can reel off the detail of the pass being 2260 metres above sea level.

The pass is in the high Atlas Mountains, and I don't think I appreciated how windy and windy it was going to be. It took an eternity to get through the mountains and even though our destination was only 200km away, we didn't get there until 11:30am.

Stunning views along the mountain route, managed to get a nice ass shot here too

That said, for once in my life, i found the journey through the Atlas Mountains to be rather spectacular, and well worth it. I am usually more interested in man-made wonders than appreciating the natural environment around me. But here, every single turn in the road brought us another vista which we could snap. I was in danger of delaying our day by making Aziz stop all the time so I could get some good pictures, but he was very accommodating and slowed down when he thought I wanted a picture so I could take it from the car. 

Berber villages on the mountainside

The winding ascent to Tizi N'Tichka, only about halfway up at this point.

We got to a pass called Tizi N'Tichka (pronounced Tij-in titch-car), which as i mentioned above is the highest pass in all of Africa, at 2260 metres. We were going to get out and have a picture taken next to the sign but it was so wet and windy that we left it after two failed attempts to have a photo of us in the car while Aziz took a picture of us under the sign.

After our ride through the mountains our first stop was to the Atlas movie studios, which has sets from lots of famous films. Aziz referred to it as the second Hollywood, and i wondered if this was an idle boast, or if any other countries could make that claim. Well I say famous films, but on closer investigation, they are usually remakes of famous films - I pride myself on knowing a few things about cinema, but I never knew Timothy Dalton appeared in a remake of Cleopatra!! Other less famous titles include Ben Hur (remake in the 90s), Moses (French film) and Wes Craven's 'The Hills have eyes 2' making me wonder why would they shoot that all the way out here?

Car from The Living Daylights

Plane from Jewel in the Nile

Ok, i am being a little bit disingenuous here, as this is also the place they shot scenes from Gladiator, The Passion of the Christ, Kingdom of Heaven, The Living Daylights, The Jewel in the Nile and according to the guide they have just finished filming bits from season three of Game of Thrones there too (reminding me that i need to watch the first two seasons), so there is some genuinely famous stuff here too.

Behind the set of The Passion of the Christ

Egyptian temple set which was used in Series 3 of Game of Thrones(?)

Overall, The sets were very good fun, and something different to see on your average day out in the Moroccan countryside. I was amazed at how wonderfully realistic it all looked until you tapped it with your finger to find it was plastic or fibreglass, and I love looking behind the scenes and seeing all the scaffolding etc.

Ridley Scott's Jerusalem from "Kingdom of Heaven"

We moved on to our first kasbah, in Ouarzazate. A kasbah is the Berber name for a palace and the one we went to managed to tick all the boxes of being a palace but actually left me feeling a little bit underwhelmed. It was a series of empty nondescript rooms, with only occasional decoration. My initial impression of it was that the outside of these kasbahs are much more interesting than the inside. I didn't. Spend too long in here, and was really relieved I didn't pay for a tour guide who would have cost £10 (which was twice as much as the ticket) and shed very little light on the place in my opinion (i.e. Tour Guide: and if you look to your left, here is another empty room without any decoration in it).

View from the inside of Ouarzazate kasbah looking out

Non-descript room number 113, and if you look to your left....

From there we moved on to the reason for the day trip out, the visit to Aït BenHaddou. This is a ksar (a fortified town) and is a UNESCO world heritage site (another one ticked off!) and is considered a classic example of Berber civilisation. The word aït is actually Berber for family, and Ben means son, so the literal meaning of the place is Family of the son of Haddou. It was built as a stopping point on the Saharan trade routes before the caravans moved on to Marrakech but surprisingly is not as old as you would think (about 400 years old). It has since been abandoned by the Berbers apart from a few families who stay there still because they have nowhere else to go.

Ait BenHaddou looks promising.....

So I was looking forward to walking around abandoned streets, taking photos of all the narrow passageways. The approach towards it was lovely, it looks very impressive perched on the side of a mountain ( I am struggling to call it a mountain after going through the Atlas Mountains which makes the Lake District look like a couple of speed bumps), but once again getting inside the ksar was a little bit underwhelming.

People might not live there anymore, but almost every street is full of people with shops trying to sell you an authentic piece of Moroccan tat, which you got the feeling was actually not hand made by the owners but bought in en masse from the Souks in Marrakech. There was one exception to this, and it was a man who was making pictures by burning the canvas using the sun's rays through a magnifying glass, which was interesting enough, but other than that I passed by most storekeepers without so much as a second glance.

The deserted streets of Ait BenHaddou. Erm......

It was also a little bit disappointing that we couldn't actually go inside any of the houses there and investigate what it was like to live in the ksar, they were all closed off and bolted. On the plus side though I made my way to the top where the storage tower for the ksar was and from there I managed to get some lovely pictures looking down over the whole town wiith the backdrop of the mountains in the distance.

Ait Benhaddou from the top looking down.

On top of Ait BenHaddou with the Atlas mountains in the background

We left here and made a slow trek back to the Tizi N'Tichka pass via a back route. On the way we passed many other kasbahs, which reinforced my feeling that these things are not as special and unusual as I first thought. Pretty much every town has a kasbah, in various states of disrepair, and all the village does is abandon that when it. Becomes unusable and builds something newer right next to it.

Town in the valley, these people must be fit to get up and down there every day!! 

Again, the journey back was long, windy and bumpy (we were off road for a large part), but the scenery was absolutely wonderful with villages on mountainsides or down the bottom of deep valleys or just admiring the mountain range as it went past. There were a couple of funny sights along the way, like the cows sitting on top of a bus or an amusing sign for a restaurant called 'Le Coq Hardi' which brought out my inner child and made me giggle somewhat....

'Le Coq Hardi' was next left.....i think i will give that a miss....

I was starting to flag by this point as it had been a long day, full of travelling around, and no respite, so I was thankful when we got home and showered and could relax for the evening with another lovely tagine in the hotel. The food in this hotel is amazing, and no other restaurant I have been to here comes anywhere close.