Paveena and I made a short trip to Morocco at the beginning of June, primarily to attend a friend’s wedding in the city of Marrakesh. The wedding was held in a beautiful Riad – essentially a large former courtyard residence that has been converted into a boutique hotel – owned and managed by a sister of UK entrepreneur, Richard Branson. The Riad was comprised of a labyrinth of courtyards, gardens, pools, terraces and staircases. Hidden in a small, nondescript and dusty alley, the Riad proved to be a cool and soothing oasis to the chaos and blistering heat that lay outside its walls.
While Marrakech has an amazing souk (outdoor market) and some beautifully ornate mosques, the main one being a stone’s throw from the Riad, we didn’t feel like it was a place where one would want to spend a lot of time. A few relaxing days in the Riad and the odd trip or two to the souk was enough for us. Still, the wedding was lots of fun and aided by Marrakesh’s famed herbal substances, a good time was had by all.
After the wedding it was time to head south. Travelling in a 4×4 vehicle, we drove for the better part of a full day before reaching the town of Zagora. Along with several other members of the wedding party, we switched our mode of transport to camel late in the afternoon, arriving at a tented desert camp at nightfall. Unfortunately the camp was filled with other tourists and the usual tourist trappings – e.g. local dancers, and it was all a bit too contrived for us.
The next day we continued on our own, driving ever further south, before reaching the frontier town of M’Hamid in late afternoon. We were extremely grateful for the air-conditioning of our vehicle as the outside temperatures – in the high 40s c – were truly brutal.
Our destination was the sand dunes of Erg Chigaga on the southern border with Algeria. Shortly after M’Hamid, the road ended and it was time for a bone rattling, three hour off-road drive through a featureless, rocky desert. It was probably asking a bit much for Paveena, being six months pregnant; to endure this ordeal but she stuck it out with her usual stoic fortitude.
The drive took longer than expected and we arrived at our thankfully deserted camp with only 30 minutes of daylight left. Our camp was set among the dunes, a 40km stretch of golden Saharan sand with dunes of up 300m high. After another dinner of chicken tangine – we’ve both now had a lifetime’s fill of this dish – we walked a short distance from the camp to a spot where I wanted to make some night time images. For anyone who has been in the desert, with its total absence of light pollution, the stars that fill the night sky are spectacular. Unfortunately, a few clouds drifted into the frame while I was taking some long exposures which ruined the pictures but it was still a fantastic experience lying on the dunes in complete silence looking up at the millions white pinpricks that dotted the inky black sky.
As we made to head back to our camp, I realised that we had wandered further than I had originally thought. We became unsure of some of the landmarks that we had picked out with our torches on the way out and after about 15 minutes, we realised that we were lost. The compass function on my i-phone meant that I had a broad idea of the correct direction, but with minimal lighting in our camp, we realised that we could easily become hopelessly disorientated. While not a disaster as we would surely find the camp in daylight, neither of us particularly wanted to spend the night in the dunes away from the camp.
After ten minutes of mounting frustration, we climbed to the top of one of the higher dunes where we managed to pick out a sliver of light from a paraffin lamp. A big sigh of relieve was emitted simultaneously from both of us especially as we realized that the direction we had been walking would have taken us well past the camp.
Deserts are supposed to be cold or at least cool at night, but at close to midnight, the temperature had only dropped a little. Moreover, the mud walls and dark woollen fabric roofs of the tents acted as highly effective insulators, trapping in the day time heat and turning the insides of the tent into a baking oven. Sleeping inside was clearly impossible so we dragged our lumpy mattresses outside and slept under the stars.
The next morning, with temperatures pleasantly cool, I was up well before dawn, hiking some distance into the heart of the dunes. When asked why he liked the desert so much, T.E Lawrence (aka Lawrence of Arabia) replied “because it is clean”. Certainly, in the early morning and late afternoon when the low elevation of the sun creates flawless symmetrical patterns of light and shadow, it is hard to think of a cleaner and more perfectly simple landscape. It was this play between light and shadow that I wanted to capture. As the sun rose, the colours of the dunes also changed – from rose-gold to yellow-gold. Providing balance between the dunes was a mix of sun-bleached soft and hard sand.
While the following images were all taken within a two hour period – and it is virtually impossible to ever do justice to a new location in such a short time frame – I hope that they give some glimmer of the majestic beauty of the area.
jattinn kochhar
August 2, 2010
stunning! Actually,i don’t have the right words.