High in the Atlas mountains my sister Caroline and I sat by the side of a gravelly road in the ramshackle village of Imlil. We had spent just one night there, watching the sun drift behind the peak of Mount Toubkal from the roof of our Berber guesthouse, Douar Samra, eating supper cross-legged around a big table, and retiring to our tiny stone room to find a fire in the grate.
One sunset, one dinner, one quick stroll around the village, and now we had to leave. Neither of us wanted to. I watched as a small boy ambled past, a few steps behind an elderly man, a gaggle of raggedy goats between them. I still wanted to be sitting on the road when they came back that afternoon, simply to watch the comings and goings of the village for a few hours. But the road was calling, just as it had done yesterday, when neither of us had wanted to leave Dar Ayniwen, a beautiful house in Marrakech’s Palmeraie suburb, where we had lazed on the terrace and sipped gin and tonics as the call to prayer echoed through the dusk.
Funny things, road trips. In some ways they’re the opposite of everything a holiday should be: abrupt entries and exits, one journey, then another, then another. Yet they can also be the best way to get under the skin of a country: a gradual collection of disparate experiences and locations that meld together to create a real sense of place. Our few days on the road offered exactly that: a night in Marrakech, some time in the mountains and a day’s journey to the walled city of Taroudant on the southern side of the Atlas mountains. The trip was made easier by the motorway linking Marrakech to Agadir that opened in 2011, which knocked several hours off the journey time back from Taroudant.
On the recommendation of our tour operator, we had booked a driver rather than navigating ourselves. Normally I’m happy to get behind the wheel, but since a driver only costs an extra £20 a day – and offered the chance for me to take in the scenery – it seemed an attractive proposition. Added to that our route, over the 2,092m-high Tizi n’Test pass, is one of Morocco’s most challenging roads, and best driven, I was advised, by someone who has done it before.
And so the three of us drove, regretfully, away from Imlil – Caroline in the back and me in the front with Moha, who regaled us with stories and history and answers to the endless questions we fired at him as the mountains rolled by. We headed south-west through the village of Ouirgane, where the tourist trail begins to melt away. I don’t know what I’d expected of the Atlas, but it wasn’t the pretty blossom-strewn villages that scattered the hillsides, the rusty-hued cubist cottages softened by haze, like something from an impressionist painting.
After a couple of hours we arrived in Tinmal, an unremarkable-looking village that is home to one of Morocco’s most important historic sites. It’s hard to believe now, but Tinmal was once the cradle of the Almohad empire, which ruled much of north-west Africa until the 13th century.
Its grand, 12th-century mosque has been subject to extensive (and quite blunt) restoration, yet an atmosphere still clings to the ancient brickwork. Inside, neat lines of stone pillars rise to soft Moorish arches, creating beautiful walkways. Most of the intricate stucco has been lost, but the small areas that remain give an idea of how beautiful the building must once have been.
There was no one at the mosque but us. No ticket booth or souvenir stalls. At the one (rickety-looking) shop and cafe a short walk away, the owner, Ahmed, invited us to browse the antique jewellery, while he disappeared behind a curtain to make us an omelette, stuffed with sweet peppers, onions and tomatoes. I could have happily sat on Ahmed’s terrace for the rest of the afternoon, watching as the villagers returned from the market, clambered down from the roofs of vans, hefted sacks of wheat and flour. Groups of people slowly melted away into the lattice of alleyways that ran between the cottages.
But the road was calling again, Moha told us; the Tizi n’Test had to be driven in daylight – and not just to make the best of the views. It was not a road to be attempted in the dark. He wasn’t overstating his case: I have never been on a road as spectacular. The map describes it as “dangerous and difficult”, which is a fair description, but it’s also one of the most exhilarating, overwhelmingly beautiful drives you will ever take.
Place in the sun … Caroline on the terrace of Douar Samra, Imlil
From the moment we tipped over the peak and began our descent, the views were astonishing. The road followed the lines of the mountain with short, straight sections, then hairpin bends. And after every hairpin, a new view revealed itself: vast, cocoa-coloured mountains fading to a hazy blue, bisected by a thin grey road.
When we finally arrived on the plain and looked back, it seemed impossible we had actually crossed such gargantuan peaks.
Despite a long lunch at Tinmal, we had somehow timed our arrival at Taroudant perfectly. The sun was beginning to set, flooding the citrus orchards and olive groves with a flaming, gold light. I had expected desert and scrub, but instead hibiscus and bougainvillea billowed across rooftops, and orange trees dripping fruit lined the busy roads. Our first glimpse of Taroudant – its spectacular, 15th-century ramparts – didn’t disappoint. It was supposedly the new Marrakech, I told Caroline, as we finally, gladly, climbed out of the car.
Next morning, it soon became clear why Taroudant could never rival Marrakech. There was no medina, no souks, no picturesque chaos. Inside the walls it’s just a humdrum town, going about its business. Only in the evening, when we ventured out again, clipping through the busy streets on a horse-drawn calèche – which are still used by residents as well as tourists – did we begin to get more of a feel for the place. We bartered for almonds and olives in the market, where there wasn’t another tourist to be seen, and sat on the ramparts, watching the sun fall away beyond the horizon. I looked down at the street, at the mopeds and horses and girls in brightly coloured jellabas, and thought back to sunset in Imlil, watching the boy and his goats, and before that to Dar Ayniwen, where the call to prayer had echoed through the half-light.
The ancient city walls of Taroudannt. Photograph: Alistair Laming/Alamy
Two days later we headed back to Marrakech on the shiny new motorway. This was the opposite of the Tizi n’Test – quick, easy and bereft of any views, local colour or sights of interest. It got us where we were going – back to the frenetic streets of Marrakech – but after such as trip, that was hardly the point. The journey up through the Atlas had taken us past impromptu festivals, weekly markets, flocks of goats and a millennium of history. And it taught me something else. Sometimes, if you’re lucky, the trip is the road itself.
