My overnight bus ride to Merzouga, a town on the edge of the Sahara, was one of the most uncomfortable overnight bus rides I’ve ever taken. I’d taken some dramamine to get through the ride without too much motion sickness, but the ride still had so many twists and turns that it didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. Additionally, my seat was right near the driver who was blasting music the whole way to keep himself awake (concerning in itself), and I hadn’t packed earplugs to block out the noise. It was also shockingly cold on the bus. We made a few stops for eating and bathroom breaks on the way there every few hours.
By the time I arrived in Merzouga I was exhausted and just wanted to get some sleep. When I got off the bus there were a lot of people waiting to guide people to hotels, and it took me a few minutes to figure out who the person from the tour company was that I was supposed to be meeting. After I found him and determined that he wasn’t just a random person who was trying to trick me into going to the wrong hotel, I got in his van and was driven to a nearby hotel on the edge of the desert. I checked in and immediately went to sleep.
I woke up a few hours later to a hot room and had to spend several minutes trying to locate the air conditioner so I could get it turned on. After a bit more sleep, I left my room and got some couscous from the hotel for lunch. There was one woman who ran the hotel, and two young guys who were groundskeeper type people. They spoke a little English and tried talking to me for a while, asking where I was from, how I liked Morocco, welcoming me to the country (“you’re so welcome here!” they kept saying), and asking me if I liked Celine Dion and Enrique Iglesias (they were big fans of both and kept playing their music all day long, blissfully unaware that the rest of us stopped listening to them about 15 years ago).
01 | Riad Ali in Merzouga
After spending the day swimming in the pool and hanging out in the hotel, I was picked up from hotel by the same guy from Rough Tours that had collected me from the bus station earlier that morning. We went next door where the company was based (apparently I’d been put in a different hotel because they’d been full the night before), and waited for a few other travellers to arrive so we could begin the tour.
02 | The camels we rode
The tour operators put turbans on us to protect our faces from the sand, and around sunset we got on the camels and began the ride through the desert. I’d been warned by several people who had ridden on camels before that they smell awful and that I should plan to just throw away any clothing that I wore while riding them, so I was pleasantly surprised to discover that our camels actually didn’t smell at all. I was on the first camel out in front, which was great for taking photos. It also meant that I was on the camel that was carrying most of the gear, so the large bags on the side required that my legs be positioned on top of them pointing forward, a bit like sitting on a chair, which was much more comfortable than riding with your legs to the sides of the camel. Despite how difficult it was to take photos on the back of the camel as it was moving, I managed to get some really great shots.
03 | One of our guides stopping to pray in the desert
04 | Our guide leading us through the dunes
05 | Our guide
06 | Other travelers in front of us
07 | The dunes
08 | The dunes
09 | Our shadows on the dunes
10 | The sand dunes in the Sahara Desert near Merzouga Morocco
11 | My camel was the best of them all (at least I like to think so)
After about a half hour or so ride, with several stops for photos, we got to the camp on the other side of the dunes. The camp was pretty basic, with some tables and benches to sit on, and tents draped in fabric with mattress inside that laid directly on the ground. There are other companies that have luxury tents that are basically hotel rooms decorated as tents, but I really lied the more authentic low-brow version we got. We dropped our bags inside our tents and then gathered for group dinner that was made by the tour operators. The other people in the group included a couple who were also from New York, a couple from London, and a Turkish couple who lived in Denmark. We compared notes on where we’d been and where we were going in the country, and what we thought about it so far.
12 | Sitting around the table for dinner. Click below to play audio.
The tour operators played some music for a while and we asked them about life in the desert and how they’d become tour operators. Most of them were Berbers whose parents and grandparents had been nomads before eventually settling in towns. One of the New Yorkers asked if any of the kids from the younger generation were interested in staying in the desert towns and doing the same thing, to which one of the Berbers replied “no, they all leave for the city because they all want iPhones.” Eventually things wound down and most of us wandered away from the fire to look at the stars. Because there’s no light pollution nearby, you could see every star in the sky, which was an amazing site. I grew up out in the country, so I’d seen plenty of star-filled skies before, but this was in a league of it’s own. After a while of star gazing I went back to my tent and went to sleep. I woke up several times in the night a little freaked out by how pitch black it was without any light, but other than that it was pretty comfortable.
The next day I woke up early and took some photos of the sunrise and listened to the call to prayer which could be heard even out in the desert. Click below to hear it.
15 | Sunrise in the Sahara
We all ate breakfast at the camp and then got back on the camels for the ride back before it became too hot. This time I was on the camel in the back which wasn’t as comfortable, but it wasn’t anything too bad.
16 | My camel for the ride back
17 | Footprints in the sand dunes
18 | Me on the back of my camel
19 | Sand dunes
20 | Other travellers on camels in front of us
21 | Sand dunes
22 | Shadows of us on our camels
After getting back to the hotel, everyone else left to go to other cities since they’d all rented cars, and I was given a room at the hotel to hang out in until it was time to take the overnight bus back to Fes. I took a nap and a shower and then went next door to the hotel I’d stayed at the day before to go for a swim. Around dinner time, I ate with the tour operators who were hanging out at the hotel. There was a lot of mint tea with plenty of sugar, and a delicious salad of rice, tomatoes, cucumbers, and some spices. I’d noticed that all of the buildings in Merzouga were red like the desert sand, and when I asked them about it, they explained that it was actually a law that all houses be painted this way to preserve the atmosphere of the town.
23 | Sunset over Merzouga
Around 8pm they took me to the bus station, but warned that it might leave several hours late since the king was in town and security was higher as a result. The bus eventually arrived and we left for Fes. The ride back was much better than the ride there. The only problem was that we arrived over an hour ahead of schedule, before the sun was even up, so I was stuck waiting at the train station for several hours until I could leave.
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