Robert's Ramblings

Castanets

In Marrakech I noticed castanets in many market stalls and alleyway shops. I even got the chance to see them being made in the local metalworking workshops.

It was not until well into central Morocco I finally got to hear them in traditional music.

I thought about bringing home a set to learn but decided on just memories instead.


#Morocco #music #musicians #castanets #traditionalmusic #instruments

The hijab need not be be the symbol of modesty many people automatically think.
When the eyes are all there is to see there is so much more imagination, curiosity, mystery and of paying attention to that beautiful human behind those eyes.


#Morocco #travel #woman #hijab #mystery

A nomad father lifts his son to high five visitors to his campsite.

Despite regular contact with travellers and their obvious wealth, the nomadic tradition is alive and well in central Morocco. Still, the telltales of change are obvious. Solar panels on the tent roofs, mobile phones and Chinese sneakers were signs of little cracks in tradition.

What the children will do is really the big question. Will they keep alive the nomadic ways of their forbears or will the lure of a bigger world out there be too much to resist.

Will there be any high fives here a hundred years from now? Time will tell.


#Morocco #travel #ergchebbi #nomads #travel #family #silhouette

The riads of Marrakech, the mountain guest houses and the nomadic desert camps all shared the same Moroccan tradition, they greeted us with a tea ceremony on our arrival.

Sugar sweetened mint tea is most common but during our stay in Morocco we were offered brews of green and black blends, mint leaf tea blends and various combinations with and without sugar.

It’s quite special watching the tea being poured into tiny cups from a half meter above without a drop being spilled.

Here Adnane deftly demonstrates his skill dealing with a heavy teapot, sloping ground and a fresh crosswind, all while maintaining his boyish smile. A most hospitable teatime welcome in the desert.


#Morocco #travel #mint #tea #tradition #desert #nomad #ceremony

Somewhere in the heart of Morocco we watched a band of bikers emerge from the distance, turn into the place where we were and pull up as a group. Should we be concerned?

The moment helmets came off and they shared their beaming faces with each other I felt the same joy and elation of travelling with friends, exploring far away places and sharing extraordinary experiences.

Perhaps they started their travel as strangers and became friends on the road, perhaps they were life long friends. What matters, like us, they were sharing the time of their lives.


#Morocco #travel #bikers #motobikes #comrades #mates #friends #blackandwhite

In this quiet moment I watch a camel handler appear from the dunes to the east, make their way unhurriedly past me, and finally disappear among the dunes to my west. This scene could be from a month or a year ago. It could be one hundred years old, even one thousand.

But the form of these dunes is not the same as the dunes of a thousand years ago. These are not the dunes of one hundred years ago, or even a year. This landscape is ever changing, always reshaping itself.


#Morocco #travel #sand #dunes #camels #desert #landscape #nomads

Moving through the dark and sunlit alleys of El Khorbat, both eyes and cameras struggled to adjust to the dramatic changes in light.

This image of young boys hanging out would have turned out very different if my camera was on fully automatic. Instead, this chance shot captures laughter, movement and fun in away I could never have planned.


#Morocco #elkhorbat #desert #travel #ksar #people #alleyways #motion #blur #desertlife #boys

El Khorbat was one of the most amazing places I experienced in Morocco. It is a 150 year old fortified village, otherwise known as a ksar, built entirely of rammed earth. A fortress in the desert.

Its internal grid of alleys and side alleys, mostly hidden within the greater ksar structure, creates an undercover labyrinth providing protection from the wind and the desert heat outside.

As we moved through the village we caught glimpses of people far off down side alleys going about their business under shafts of sunlight piercing the darkness.


#Morocco #elkhorbat #desert #travel #ksar #structure #people #alleyways #labyrinth

Wild places, and especially desolate ones, stir things deep and unspoken within us. They bring us thoughts and feelings and ideas that delight, enthral, confuse and sometime even scare.

I wonder how many lives have changed in profound ways simply from the experience of some wild and desolate place giving them some new vision.

I wonder if these people will ever be the same again.


#Morocco #ergchebbi #sand #dunes #blackandwhite #travel #sahara #desert #moody #silhouette

This unlikely juxtaposition of Saharan desert, campfire and ghostly lithium-driven illumination tells much about modern travel and exotic remote places.

Wherever we go we almost expect the ether will be filled with those precious radio waves that bring an intrusive internet into places where perhaps it should not be.

Danny and Silvi, lit by their devices, exemplify being present and being elsewhere in the same moment.


#Morocco #ergchebbi #travel #sahara #desert #dunes #night #blackandwhite #moody

The wind dropped, the whipping sand abated, and the chance for a firelight session presented itself.

As the fire banished desert darkness, haunting African voices, Moroccan djembe double drums and rattly castanets filled the empty soundscape with synesthetic colour.

We listened, we sang along, we celebrated the ineffable experience of a Saharan desert night hundreds of thousands miles from home.


#Morocco #sahara #desert #travel #sanddunes #sand #dunes #night #music #ergchebbie #jamming