High Atlas | G. S. Kenney Author

Our next stop was a crafts shop. Dan, shopophobe that he is, took one look around, assessed the situation (they were going to try to sell us something), and decided to wait in the car. I went in–and I’m glad I did. A loom dominated the front of the store.

A small number of men were displaying their beautiful wares to a busload of tourists from, I think it was Korea.

A small number of Moroccan women, while not actually stopping their work, sat and watched the process. The women were beautiful.

And the wares were beautiful, too.

The one Korean man in the store and I shared a secret enjoyment at how the Korean women oohed and ahhed every time a fabric was spread out before them. We were immune to temptation, that man and I. I, because my disapproving husband was waiting in the car and I’d never be able to face him if I bought one of these beautiful things we didn’t need and would never use. The tourist gentleman because he knew his wife was already going to buy enough for both of them.

But we had a lot to do that day, and I didn’t want to keep Dan and Hicham waiting. Time to head on to Ait Ben Haddou. Ait Ben Haddou is a ksar, a fortified town of the high desert. It is so well preserved and restored that it has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage site.

We parked in the village, which was dominated by shops selling postcards, souvenirs, and other tourist essentials, and walked down the trail toward the ksar.

On our way, we passed this modest dwelling…

…perhaps the home of this man and little boy, selling their wares to the tourists.

And then the ksar came into sight. Indeed, it was beautiful.

Ait Ben Haddou, originally an eleventh century caravan layover, is literally picture perfect. You may recognize it from Lawrence of Arabia, Jesus of Nazareth, Gladiator, and other films.

It was still fairly early in the morning, but the place was already crawling with tourists. Well, but what were we, after all, if not tourists? We should have gone in. But poor Dan had reached his limit of old kasbahs and medinas and ksars. After all, is not this region of the high desert the “Land of a Thousand Kasbahs”? And had we not already seen nine hundred of them? So this is the moment of confession: We decided not to go in. I regret this. But, hey, gotta save something for the next trip.

So, after a few moments, we headed off. Our destination: Marrakech. Our route: the serpentine Tizi n’Tichka pass. Luckily for us, the pass was not made impassable by snow, as it well might have been in December. As we drove north, the villages became fewer and the landscape more extraordinary.