16. Location location location.........

and what better location is there for a hotel in Paris than on the Pont Neuf, on the Isle de la cite.  Its like being right on the prow of a great ship sailing majestically up the Seine, with all the glory of Paris laid out before me. 

So - happiness is a hot shower with lashings of creamy, smooth hotel soap and a plug hole that actually lets the water out instead of leaving it swirling round my feet.  Happiness is pain chocolat, and the autumn colours on the trees along the Seine, happiness is being solvent enough to be able to afford taxi rides instead of battling with the metro because I've done something to my ribcage and can no longer carry my rucksack and now, on the very last leg of the journey happiness is wonderful neighbours I can ring and say help - I'm weak and feeble - please can someone meet me at the station?

Homecoming is.........a newspaper to read on the train to Ludlow............have I missed anything while I've been away?  Has the world changed in my absence?

15. Homeward bound

I really could have done with more time in Morocco............................I love it there.  But now that I am homeward bound my thoughts are turning towards a hot bath and a cup of hot chocolate made just the way I like it.  And happiness here in Madrid is a european computer keyboard!!  I was almost tempted to access my "home" emails but have easily resisted - time enough for that when I get home.
Spain is grey and inclined to rain. 
Big city culture today and tomorrow.................................

14. Turning my head for home

Just had a lovely, chilled 2 days recharging my batteries in Fez before heading back to Tangier today.  Back to trains and real life, I really could do with a bit longer....................

I've loved Fez, ambling round the medina.  My way of dealing with it is to walk very slowly, never panic and keep the compass handy.  If I find what I am looking for it may turn out to be what I want.  Or not.  And it may be open.  Or not.  I may feel welcome.  Or not.  And I'll see things I wasn't looking for and miss things I was.  I'll rub shoulders with every imaginable sort of person, donkey and mule and see buildings shored up with wood to stop them falling down and unbelievably gorgeous things in shops and loads of absolute tat.

I'll peep inside the most lovely, tranquil, cool, spaceous buildings which just exude peace and beauty.  I'll finger the most wonderful, centuries old, enormous, intricately carved wooden doors and walk on exquisite mosaic floors, and pause awhile in a square or courtyard filled with trees and sunshine and chattering birds.  And I'll watch the people who live with such beauty and who make these things - and I watch them greet each other with such warmth and affection and kisses, grasping arms, shoulders, faces - especially the children.

And they accept us infidels invading their lives, poking and prying with our questions and cameras and our brazen ways as they have always accepted travellers, because we replace the old trading caravans that all paused here on their long journeys.  There are plenty of old caravanserais in Fez - reminding me of reading Kim.

I visited a cafe run by an english bloke whose (perfectly normal in england) energy and drive came as a minor culture shock.   The place was full of very white travellers looking completely zonked out in the delightful, tasteful morrocan-but-european ambience.  BUT he had that most wanted thing - a book exchange!  Hooray!  I have exchanged the disappointing Paul Bowles for Elizabeth Gaskell - double hooray!  I've read Tolstoy twice and am extremely pleased I dont have to resort to reading PB twice!!

And supper on a rooftop terrace gazing across Fez in the starlight, spread out below, surrounded by mountains, the only sounds the human voices and occasional footsteps floating up, just as it would have been 3 or 4 or many more hundred years ago.

13. On the road again

2 days takes me from waking up in the sand dunes to arriving in Fez - and what a journey!  I have crossed the flat plains of the black desert, seen the snowcapped peaks of the high Atlas and come right through the middle Atlas mountains.  I've crossed enormous plains with mountain ranges in the distance as far as the eye can see on every side and seen fantastic cliffs and gorges rising out of the dry, rocky, honey coloured desert.  And all the way there wasn't a fence in sight - the land is completely open and the roads are empty.

There were a few arab towns and villages on the way and then we came down through wonderful ceder forests to Azrou and Ifraine which were built by the French as holiday resorts reminiscent of the Swiss alps, so its all swiss style chalets with red tiled sloping roofs - what a contrast!

Travelling in Morocco, once you sort out how it all works, is cheap and efficent.  On the way out a week or so ago I went from Meknes to Merzouga (nearly 400km) on an overnight CTM bus for Dh 140 (about 12 pounds) which has to be brilliant.  Except that I didnt see a thing because it was dark all the way!  Hence my slow return journey, taking a couple of days to revel in the amazing landscape and really get a sense of where I am.  As the faster CTM buses only do this run at night I am using local buses and grand taxis for my return journey.

Grand taxis are quite extraordinary!  You go to the taxi rank and ask around and are pointed in the direction of a taxi going where you want.  These taxis are all identical grey, or usually fawn, coloured mercedes cars,  pretty battered inside and out.  Not a seatbelt in sight.  They wait til they have 6 passengers all for the same destination and off they go.  You pay for your seat and sit squashed like sardines with total strangers (2 in the front and 4 in the back - and although the majority of moroccans are slim, the ones who use the grand taxis seem to be the larger ones!)  and are carried for little more than the bus fare to where you want to go.  On the way people chat and if you are lucky (!) you get arab music to entertain you on the way..........

A couple of pit stops on the way (Midelt and Azrou) brought home the mysterious discrepancies in what your Dirham will buy.  In both places I ate and slept for less than Dh100 - under 8 pounds.  And cheap hotels are often no worse and can be very much better than the more expensive.  For example, for Dh75 in Azrou I had a pleasant room, with a sink and a delightful balcony from which I could look down on the square below and watch the world go by.  Loo just across the corridor - a good location, moroccan loos not being something I usually want to share a room with!!!  And a more expensive hotel is no guarantee of a nice bathroom - quite the opposite as happened with my first "expensive" hotel in Tangier.  My best deal was in Merzouga - a delightful room in a delightful small home-from-home hotel with a squeaky clean private bathroom, breakfast and 3 course dinner for Dh170 - less than 15 pounds.   You have to spend a lot more to get up to european standards, but even if my budget could run to it, I dont like big hotels and would rather take my chances with the smaller ones which on the whole are friendly, clean enough and extremely good value.  Well, if it wasnt for such cheap accommodation I couldnt possibly do a trip like this.

Its my last week.  I wish I had longer..............there is so much still to do and see..................I am very far from home in every sense and, yes, I am content, there is nowhere else in the world I want to be.

12.moonlight flit

My wanderings with bob marley aka gollum took us right across the dunes and out into the "black desert" - a huge flat sandy, slightly gravelly plain with slightly shiny black stones which give it its name.  We stayed the 2nd night in a nomad village - a few tiny, squat buildings, each with a berber tent, spaced out on the edge of the black desert near the dunes.  Across the plain you can see a long line of sombre dark cliffs - the disputed border with algeria.  There is a huge sense of space and sky, and silence, the gold of the dunes, the occasional tuft of green grass and the gorgeous blue of the berber robes contrasting with the great black plain, the squat buildings provide the only shelter.  It is stunningly beautiful.

The downside was the arrival of an enormous party of french prople towards evening - noisy, chattering, shouting across to each other, foraging about.  What they saw of the desert or gained from the experience I have no idea as they were totally preoccupied with thenselvrs.

This was the night of the full moon, hazier tonight making huge haze rings around the moon - a different kind of beauty.

We spent the next day in another village.  The family here have several children in their late teens to early 20s and I sat with mother and daughter in the tent working on the knotted wool carpet they were making.  Every knot was done with the greatest care and attention to detail using lovely natural wool and fibre, and every knot had to be just right - several of Hassan's efforts were laughingly tutted over and removed.  It will take 3 weeks to finish and will be about 6' x 4', its quite a rough, loose thick finish and I am very sorry to say that this labour of love, by this beautiful, clever, skilled girl wearing a stylish outfit that would look good anywhere in the world was hideous - a cacophany of gaudy and garish colours and shapes.

We were joined by 2 spaniards (pleasant) and 4 japanese (inscrutable and aloof) one of whom was dressed in a skirt, a longish cotton tunic with a stand up collar and a sort of soft tall hat with a round flat top.  He had a wispy beard; smoked funny cigarettes and was carrying - and playing - a didgery doo.

We all went to bring back the goats in the evening, 2 of the boys chasing off after an errant camel making a determined bid for freedom in the direction of Algeria.

This family is happy, healthy, clever and on the ball.  The boys speak spanish, french, english and arabic as well as their native berber.  They have never been to school.  There isn't one.  They  don't have cars and televisions and washing machines or even chairs or beds or a radio.  Are they desperately poor and in urgent need of aid, education and rehabilitation, or are they proudly and happily living a traditional and honourable life with their strong culture, social structure, family bonds and religion?  I certainly do not know the answer.

Unlike in other remote places I have been, the people here seem to treat us as a commodity to be serviced, a source of income, but they keep their distance and do not seem to want our trappings of civilisation.

After supper we saddled our camels and set off in the hazy moonlight, padding back through the silent dunes for a last sleep under the sky.

11. Shooting stars

It is one of life's enormous pleasures to sleep out under the sky and never more so than in the sand dunes on the edge of the saraha under a moon so bright you can see the colour of the sand, the sky an amazing blue - lying back and watching shooting stars.

Shooting stars are guaranteed to keep you awake because you seldom see one in your direct line of vision.  When you do see one out of the corner of your eye, by the time you've turned your head its gone.  So I lie flat on my back trying to keep the whole sky in my line of view at once and every so often - bingo!  Awesome!  And wide awake I just lie waiting for another - and another..............

My departure on this desert trip (3  nights) was delayed 24 hours by that old travellers' friend - a dose of the runs - oh forgotten joy!!  (I have been lucky for the last three trips and kept clear and was getting complacent!).  But again, I can revel in my good health and ability to shake it off and be ready to go the next day.    I couldn't have done that 6 months ago.   Thank you NHS. 

My camel is called Bob Marley, I kid you not - because he has a dark coat which, yes, is just like Bob Marley's hair.  I have to cofess that privately I call him  Gollum.  He's quite a small, spindley camel and from a distance as he slopes about grazing in the twilight, peering from side to side there is something slithery and Gollumesque about him.

His master, my guide is Hassan, 22 years old, a Tuareg nomad, resplendant in his gorgeous berber blue robe and cotton turban.  The robes are calf length, loose and flowing with yellowy-ochre embroidery on the front chest, and worn over jeans and t-shirt if you are a young man about town, or more traditinal loose trousers if you are a more traditional person.  The embroidered bit incorporates a perfect mobile phone pocket, in constant use of course.   There is no electricity in a tuareg nomad house but they charge their phones with ingenious little solar panel chargers.

I'd love to say that for 3 days I left all trappings of civilisation behind but was shocked to realise that the in thing to do is drive here in your 4X4, or hire one locally, and race around the dunes and all over the miles of open "black desert".  Oh I can see why its fun but, well, I won't start on the "buts" or this will turn into a rant.  I was heartily grateful that I only saw the many tyre tracks and no actual vehicles in the dunes themselves.

The desert was absolutely awesome - part 2 tomorrow..............

10. Merzouga

The desert has me spellbound, as ever.
Off on a camel tomorrow.  See you sometime...................................