09 April Kasbah du Sud Erg Chebbi

If I glance over my shoulder I can see the dunes of Erg Chebbi, slowly blending into the dusk. Slightly to my left is a herd of camels, I think they have been bedded down for the night. To my right is a collection of Berber tents. They do actually belong to the 'hotel' we have checked into. I think there is a group of people doing the desert thing, I expect they will light a fire later on. Erg Chebbi is Morocco's big Sahara experience area. It all seems quite organised. I think the camping trip we made into the Eastern Sahara from Bahariya Oasis, just us and Khaled our Bedouin guide and later the wonderful experiences in Siwa and the Great Sand Sea couldn't be duplicated here, these dunes are only 7 x 28 kms. Never the less they are impressive, turning quite an ochre colour, getting nearer to the apricot dunes of Sossovlei.
The hotel last night at the Todra Gorge was not so bad. It also served to remind us why we don't do organised trips. The meal last night was really mass catering stuff. The soup wasn't too bad, but the so-called tagine was some stewed chicken plonked into a tagine dish, some sliced potato put around it and a tagine lid put on top. Breakfast this morning was instant coffee, even in the most out of the way places, small with only half a dozen rooms, we have always had real coffee. However I slept well and was warm enough.
We hit the road quite early this morning. Once out out of the Todra Gorge we were back on the N10. We then switched to the R702 and continued on to Erfoud and then Rissani. A lot of the journey was through scrub desert or hammada, occasionally broken by lush oasis, towering palms and irrigated crops. Coming out of the Gorge we saw quite a few women with a large piece of white cloth knotted over one shoulder, a bit like a sari, we haven't seen that before. The highlight of the trip was as we neared Erfoud. Before we left England we watched a programme in The Lost Kingdoms of Africa series, about the ancient Berber kingdom of Sijilmassa in this area. It featured an incredible system of moving water underground to where it was needed. We saw the lines of volcano shaped mounds which mark the spoil where the shafts were dug. We stopped and had a good look at them and actually went down into part of the workings. We are now in the area where much of that programme was filmed and we are so pleased that we recorded and saved it and really look forward to watching it again when we get home.
John once again did a marvellous job navigating us here, we went for a long tome after leaving Rissani without any confirmation that we were on the right road, it was further than we thought before signs started to appear. Finally we saw a sign pointing to the hotel we were headed for and turned off the road onto a piste. It was rough and corrugated, ( we won't tell Europcar! ) and we travelled for about 8 kms on it before we caught sight of the mud, kasbah type walls. Inside it is luxury in the desert, we have a large, large room with a lovely bathroom. We are sitting around a swimming pool with a bottle of red wine ( we brought it in with us) waiting for our supper, which smells delicious. We are both in short sleeved tops, a light warm wind is blowing through the arches in the kasbah wall, and the desert is touching distance away. It smells warm. I am very contented, it reminds me so much of the 'Africa' I love and remember, even though the setting and circumstances are so different.
There isn't any internet here, I haven't even worked out how the electricity gets here, there isn't a generator or any sign of cables above ground.