TRAVEL | Into Africa
Thirty-seven years ago, I nearly drove off a cliff when crossing the ancient tectonic folds of the High Atlas Mountains from Marrakech to the Sahara Desert (Desert Desert, as sahārā means desert in Arabic).
This time, I'm relaxed in the back seat of a Toyota Land Cruiser Prado, with charismatic Berber driver Younes at the wheel and my friend Monique in the passenger seat, staring at Younes in wide-eyed amazement as he expertly handles hairpin turns. It's late February and snowing. The High Atlas is bleached white at the 2 205 m summit of the Tizi n'Tichka Pass. We stop for ubiquitous mint tea, poured into glasses from an impressive height. Then head for the Valley of the Kasbahs, a camel trek and desert camp sleepover, 10-day artists' retreat in a Berber village near Algeria and return to Marrakech — the captivating red city where we spent two days - via the Draa Valley to the south.
The Kingdom has already seduced me through Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky, set in Morocco, shot here in its film version, and Lawrence of Arabia, also mostly shot here.
With desert blues playing on Younes' phone, we descend towards our first attraction: 19th-century Kasbah Telouet, the former home and fortress of infamous Pasha Thami el Glaoui, 'Lord of the Atlas'. In 1953, Glaoui collaborated
