Arriving in the Sahara

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The sun is setting on our first day in Morocco.

The Mu'addhin has just recited the Adhan, the call for prayer, from the pink minaret of the village mosque about two hundred yards away.

- La ilaha, ill llah, muhammadun rasulu llah. There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.

The almost wailing voice marks that the day is about to end.

We now live in Tizfrite, a small Berber village on the vast Saharan desert plain that stretches towards the High Atlas Mountains.

Here, we're planning to stay for the next month, but this year has taught us that plans can change!

We should actually have started 2018 with three months in Hong Kong.

Everything was planned, the air tickets bought, the flat in Hong Kong rented, our flat in Copenhagen sublet.

And then  I had a nasty fall, which almost destroyed my knee.

Instead of strolling through Chinese alleys and markets, we went to our house in the south of France, where I could rehabilitate after my surgery.


The following months turned out to be quite miserable.

It was the coldest, rainiest spring anyone in our village could remember, but the daily walks in the local mountains helped me recuperate. My knee is now working and we're ready to once more take on the world.


Our travels this year will lead us through Morocco, Paris, Marseilles, and - in the fall - to the postponed stay in Hong Kong

But right now, we've arrived at our riad - a traditional Moroccan house with a large garden surrounded by exterior walls of mud brick.

Fatima, our cook, has served a wonderful chicken tagine and a pot of mint tea.


 

The landscape, outside the gate, is dusty, sun-bleached, and almost arid and we have absolutely no idea about how it will be to live in the furnace of the Saharan desert.

Just now it's actually just wonderful to sit and feel the intense heat after an almost endless winter.



 

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