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Mountain Biking in Morocco

by John Turner

As we flew into Casablanca, you could almost smell Spring through the window, so brilliant were the fields of wild red poppies below. This was May, the best month for a bike riding visit to Morocco. I took the train, three hours in comfort, across the coastal plains to Marrakech. My ultimate destination, the High Atlas Mountains, formed a broad snow-covered backdrop to the ancient city. Mt Toubkal at 4,167 m (14,000 ft), Morocco's highest, looms as a massif above it.

Next day, after an early morning run through the city's labyrinthine soukh, I met up with the rest of my Exodus Tours mountain bike group - our guide and a driver/cook together with a disparate bunch of adventurers from the UK and France. Brian and Hilary are into bird-watching. Hilary's a rumbustious mountaineering tomboy, never stops talking, insists she's originally from Bristol but her 20 years in London overrides any vestigial West Country accent. We tag her "Noisy East End Bird". Brian is half her size and remains calm in his wife's storm except when it rises to gale force. Marcus, an engineer, is a fit young beanpole from Portsmouth with a wonderful dry sense of humour. He and I become good mates. Later, as a duo, we tend to push the pace a bit thereby becoming known as: "Mad Dog and Englishman". And Rick, my tent mate, is a bearded American-born Parisian. He's a widely travelled economic journalist with the Herald-Tribune who appears too fragile and professorial to undertake such a trip but does so by sheer determination; emits a sparkling sense of humour and profound historical knowledge. His French came in handy because that's Morocco's lingua franca, as you know. Mine barely extends past "thé de menthe, s.v.p." which isn't saying much because it's Morocco's standard beverage anyway.

The team was lead by Vik, an MA in French and German, 5'4" of muscle, the product of a Vietnamese mother and an Indian father who is himself a professor of English at London University. Vik spent four months cycling from Pakistan to China via Tibet last year. This was his first time on this tour but fortunately Muhammed, the laconic Moroccan driver of our support Land Rover, knew it like the back of his hand.

Our general aim was to cross the High Atlas in ten days the hard way, ie via donkey paths, goat trails and 4WD tracks that rarely see an ordinary tourist, ending up in Ouarzazarte (pron. Wazzz-a-zzarrrt!), the fabled city on the north western edge of the Sahara. Some days we were picked up by the L'Rover from one point and deposited at another in order to experience a particularly sensational trail or bypass a rare boring bit. One day we were even stymied by a landslide - not that we couldn't get past on our mountain bikes (Diamond Backs with RokShox front suspension), just that the L'Rover would have had to do a 100 mile detour to support us beyond it.

If an overview of our route interests you, get out your atlas and a draw line, within the coloured high areas, from Azilal north towards Beni Mellal and south towards Ouazazarte (most atlases show those points). Our journey roamed either side of that line, often in deep valleys alongside swift mountain rivers and streams, and sometimes grinding over spectacular high passes amongst mighty snowdrifts. Altitude ranged from 1,500m all the way up to 3,000m where the air is crisp and sweet, particularly above the snowline at 2,500m. Total distance? I honestly don't know, but say 500km. Not much by normal road bike standards but High Atlas cycling is far from normal.

Each day was different. The first was relatively easy, mostly downhill to camp at the Cascades d'Ouzoud - ribbons of water in mighty freefall - to which Marcus and I added another 20km for good measure, uphill, in search of scenic gorges. We turned back, less because of the 5km corniche descent to their base, but more because the formidable climb back up would have seen us picking our way back to camp well after dark. Other days were tougher. Bleak headwinds fought us all the way to our camp at Lac Tislit, a tarn on the high plateau. The evening silence there, however, and the night-into-day moon which silvered the lake's surface was compensation enough.

Weather varied - mountains make their own climate. The occasional rainstorm left mud holes so big you either walked the bike around or rode straight through the middle and hoped for the best. At day's end, we were usually caked in mud. And no, there are no hot showers in the High Atlas wilderness. The last riding day took us on a twisting 50km descent - the roughest stoniest track of all - down the Dades Gorge, great vertical faces of deep brown rock either side of the fast flowing river that carved them. The small hotel at the bottom gave us our first restaurant meal for nearly two weeks, served under a woven black nomadic tent - very exotic.

Moroccan food rates high with my taste buds. Try this salad recipe: Grill 3 de-seeded halved capsicums cut side down until skin blisters & blackens; cut the capsicums and 3 peeled de-seeded tomatoes into 2cm pieces and mix with a vinaigrette of 1 tblspn vinegar, ground pepper, 1/2 tspn caster sugar, crushed garlic clove, and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Delicious!

Three headings will summarise my impressions of this adventure - People, Terrain and Ambience.

Anecdote: The setting was hardly what you'd call erotic but the humour decidedly was. At a remote lunch stop I wandered down a grassy slope through trees to the stony bank of a quick-flowing stream. On the opposite bank, about 20m away, squatted two Berber women washing clothes; mother and daughter I judged. We admired each other for a minute or two, they barefoot and clad in long woven skirts of blue, crimson and green, and even brighter headscarves; I in my usual fluorescent yellow bike shirt, black lycra knicks and (muddy) hairy knees. All parties were clearly fascinated by what they saw. "Bonjour, mesdames. ça va?" I shouted over the noise of the water, making a sign that indicated my approval of their dress. French clearly wasn't lingua franca in this isolated region. The older woman replied in local dialect, her broad grin exposing perfect teeth against a dark complexion. When she reached over and patted the expanding belly of her companion, I noted that Daughter was indeed in the family way. Mother continued the conversation with gestures. The meaning was unmistakable: "Did you do this?" Mock concern. "Non, pas moi. I just got here," I shrugged. "Well, anyway, do you want to come over here and have another go?" Daughter consumed in fits of embarrassed giggles, Mother enjoying enormously the discomfort of both of us. And so it went on; me protesting my inability to swim raging torrents, even for such a prize; Mother, amid the laughter, making it obvious what she thought of both my masculinity and weirdly dressed foreigners in general.

All this in a Morocco whose population universally embraces Islam - more or less. No other incident highlighted so directly to me how the proud Berber tribes still preserve a degree of independence from stricter cultures imposed 12 centuries ago by Arabs further east. Indeed, nowhere in Morocco was I even served at table by a woman. And yet, in the high country, colourfully dressed women - no veils here - tilled fields, herded goats, fetched water and carried firewood. Men on the other hand, in their hooded tan cloaks of horsehair, seemed more often to be found chatting in tea houses, sipping thé de menthe, and generally watching the world go by. Nor did I witness even minimal displays of affection between the sexes. Encounters aplenty took place, no doubt, judging by the number of children that appeared out of thin air every time we stopped, no matter how briefly, but I took to wondering whether Western notions of love and esteem in marriage had any Moorish equivalence.

The High Atlas were formed under the same geological conditions as the Himalayas and the Rockies - the clash of Earth's tectonic plates about 200 million years ago. In the Atlas' case, the upthrust took place when the American and African continents met in collision. The result however, is vastly more spectacular and more varied than the other two. The violence of impact reflects in tortured twisted layers of sedimentary rock, interspersed with mighty injections of metamorphic shales, schists and quartzites. So you get valley walls exposing great wave-like strata, capped in places with five hundred metres of sheer cliff face; towering copper-coloured weather-worn domes in serried ranks like giants' dentures; and elsewhere, mountain profiles like perfect cones topped with symmetrical pediments; along every valley floor, some more than a thousand metres below your vantage point, turbid pale green streams flanked by plots of rice, corn and citrus orchards. Once, we came across a spring whose substantial waters were so clear and sweet that their source was venerated by the nearest equivalent to a temple you'll ever see in Islamic Morocco. And everywhere such vivid colours; not menacing grey as many of their foreign counterparts, but all the hues from pale gold through rich reds to deep browns and black, often in contrasting curved layers like rocky rainbows. Biking gives you 360 degree panoramas of it all - that is, if you dare take your eyes off the ledge you're negotiating, below which awaits oblivion in some dark abyss.

The moods of Morocco's remote and beautiful high country impact subtly on your consciousness. Partly it's to do with the grandeur of sparse land forms, but more than that, it's the harmony between physical environment and the people who thrive in it. Riding along, focussing on a lumpy track and constant encounters with rock outcrops, you would suddenly become aware of a village a kilometre away on the opposite valley slope that you hadn't noticed before - a collection of low flat-roofed dwellings huddled around a bulkier structure. You failed to notice them, you realise, because they are all formed of dried mud and blend squarely with the soil from which they arise. The taller building in their midst, or sometimes on a hilltop nearby, is the ksar or Kasbah. Standing within walls once used for the protection of its Berber villagers, it is a crenellated fortification, intricately decorated. We watched a group of local artisans constructing a one room addition to a house, and were struck by the simplicity of the task - the walls of moistened soil about half a metre thick, manually compacted, and the roof of straw thatch mixed with mud. The straw formed eaves so as to keep rain or melting snow runoff clear of the walls. With slits for windows, only the door was of non-local materials - a weighty metal slab decorated in wrought iron and colourfully painted, the owner's one concession to individuality.

One evening we set up camp within a huge open cave near a river, our tents looking minute under the limestone overhang a hundred metres above. As sunset transformed the rock face into rich gold, a myriad of birds - swallows, martens, rock thrushes, and on the topmost ledge, a pair of tawny eagles - prepared for night. Not a sign of human habitation anywhere, and yet, within a few minutes, five urchins arrived to stare from a safe distance, as if we were straight from Mars. We became used to this. Our bikes and gear were a constant source of fascination to young Berbers. As Rick explained it, if in your home town a troupe of Touareg in bright blue turbans and wielding ceremonial lances arrived on horseback, you'd gawk too.

In that valley, night replaced day almost on the instant the sun slipped below the ridge, the air became chill and the intensity of star-shine lit our surroundings. Much later, at around three a.m., wakened by the sound of padding hooves and muffled chatter, I opened our tent flap to see four ghostly figures, mounted on donkeys, gliding by. Only as we prepared our breakfast was the mystery solved - stocky Berber women returning, cloaked head to foot against the cold, now walking beside their animals laden with firewood for the day's cooking. The scene was straight from the Bible - nothing had changed in two thousand years. The theme was repeated daily in so many similar images. For example, the methods of agriculture. Most tilling of fields along the river flats was by hand implements, but occasionally by single furrow plough drawn by a pair of mules or less often, oxen. No tractors here.

It may not last long though. In any sizeable village, at least one mud roof sprouted a satellite TV dish. Presumably it was powered by a generator for there's no other electricity in the mountains. Nor telephones, come to think of it. But how're ya gonna keep 'em down on the farm .... ?

My MTB adventure ended back in Marrakech. I spent a few more happy days in Morocco, hosted by an old university mate, exploring its other fascinating cities. Then I moved on to America for a class reunion at Harvard and foregatherings with business friends in New York. I'm still coming to terms with the contrasts of that journey. High Atlas to Fifth Avenue! Ridiculous.