You can fly into Marrakesh, get the bus up the valley, and climb Toubkal on a well worn path. Plenty of people do exactly that. I’d be delighted to!
We didn’t.
Jason’s local team, led by Mohammed and Hassan, took us a different way to the same peak, and six more. Once they saw what we could handle, they changed their own plan.
We only found out what our day involved in the morning, or maybe the night before. Part of the experience was being kept on our toes, accepting what unfolded rather than seeking to control what we might.
Seven summits in four days instead of the original schedule. And more technical climbing included, not just hiking.
That left us a day spare. We spent it in their town as their guests. Not as tourists.
We made our own tajine that day. Watched what actually goes into it, the slow build of it, after a week of eating food that had already impressed us plenty.
Then Mohammed brought us to his family home. His father, Hassan Bashir, is one of the elders there. We sat with him for hours.
Tea, and what it means to them. The ceremony of it. Why it matters.
Their faith. Marriage. The respect shown to the women and matriarchs in their lives.
At one point the conversation moved into how close Islam and Christianity actually are at the root. Different scholars, centuries back, took different views on certain prophets and figures. Small branches at the time. Those small branches got hardened over centuries into the divisions we live with now.
Sitting there with Hassan, Mohammed and Jason, all of it felt unnecessary. Three men from different worlds, no friction anywhere in the room. Just respect. Curiosity.
We hardly saw any tourists during our time in the mountains, thanks to Mohammed and Hassan.
Whilst the tagine, tea and conversations were magical, the hammam was not!
A proper local one, no frills. Nine of us lying on a tiled floor that looked like a grim men’s changing/shower room from the 1980’s, the kind you’d cross the road to avoid. Tiles stained, grim, worn out, grubby.
Then a fella comes round and scrubs you down, you in your boxer shorts and him in his. It was like he was trying to scrape bark off a tree. He bends you into wrestling holds you did not agree to. The odd slap, for reasons that were never explained.
I lay there trying to keep a straight face. Failed completely the second I looked over and saw the look of terror on one of the other lads’ faces! That was the bit that made it. Nine grown men reduced to that, and all of us catching each other’s eye mid scrub unable to keep the nervous laughter inside.
Would I do it again? Almost certainly not. Glad it happened. Already one of the stories that’ll get told for years, probably with more slapping added each time.
I keep coming back to the same question from that day.
How much of what made it special was the place itself, and how much was simply that nobody around us was performing for an audience, including us.
