MOROCCO - ZAGORA
PART 5 of 8
Our next destination is the desert Erg-Chigaga near Zagora city. After passing the Atlas Mountains the landscape changes drastically. Huge open areas, dry soil in terracotta tones with little vegetation and rare oases. I have never been to a desert before, so I was exited to see one for the very first time.
Oasis on the road from Hay Almansour Adahbi to Zagora
Abdo on the roof of Kasbah Oulad Othmane.
Abdo is a young man, who is curious about politics and geography. In his free time he loves to write texts for his hip-hop compositions. Abdo would love to travel around the world. For many Moroccan it is not easy to get a visa and not many people in Morocco have the financial possibilities to travel abroad. For some people, even if they have a job in a large city, it is financially tough to visit their parents who live 300km away.
Foum Anagame Pass, Zagora
In Marrakesh we met a man called Moohaa, a berber who has his small tourist office in the old medina. Moohaa immediately connected us with his relative Said, who has a camp in the Erg-Chigaga desert near Zagora town. Erg-Chigaga is a huge deserted area with a few sand dunes and is a part of Sahara Desert. Erg-Chigaga is less known among tourists and usually has much less visitors than the Erg-Chebbi in Merzouga, especially in the winter time.
Said is a hospitable man. He doesn’t talk much and doesn’t try to entertain his visitors as other hosts usually do in touristic hot spots. In his presence you start to feel relaxed and calm too. Emre and I had a feeling that being in Said’s camp was, probably, one of the most authentic cultural experience on our trip. Unfortunately on this journey we didn’t have many opportunities to really get in touch with culture and to know people as it was on our trip to Siberia, where we were living one months with different Shamans. That’s why we are thinking about making another trip to Maghreb in the future to learn more about berber’s culture.
After meeting us in a small village near Zagora, Said guided us the way to his camp driving his old Renault 4 through the desert.
This image was made by me sitting in the drivers seat, pushing the gas pedal and simultaneously holding the camera in front of my eye while Emre was holding the steering wheel.
Odin (on the photo) works in Said’s camp. He was open to us and curious about our stories. After the talking and playing music we all enjoyed the silence of the desert’s night and crackle of the camp fire. From time to time each of us went away from the camp fire into the darkness to enjoy solitude. The night sky was completely free of any artificial light pollution. It was my first long trip without a tripod, so I haven’t done any proper image of the night sky. Instead I simply enjoyed starring into the black infinity. During the winter in the desert the temperature can drop from +18℃ in the daytime to +3℃ in the night. Said had many blankets made of the camel wool. That night was cold. Each of us needed four to five blankets to get warm.
Moroccan’s cuisine is tasty, but the variety is limited. It was an overload of Tajine for us. Almost everywhere we went we had Tajine or couscous. At one point we had a new name for this country - Tajinestan.
Zagora, Erg-Chigaga.
When I was studying design at the FH Düsseldorf I had a professor in the film class Dieter Fuder. Once he told a story about his first experience in the desert and how much he was overwhelmed by the silence that prevailed there. Since then that story never left my mind each time I thought about the desert. Erg-Chigaga was my first experience in the desert. Now I understand what professor Fuder meant. The silence of the desert is beyond the words, its is magical, it is endless and wise.
Zagora, Erg-Chigaga
After Erg-Chigaga we went to explore M'Hamid El Ghizlane and it’s surroundings. M'Hamid El Ghizlane is a small town with 7500 inhabitants and is situated about 100km from Zagora.
With M'Hamid El Ghizlane ends the national highway N9. After M'Hamid El Ghizlane there are no significant settlements only huge deserted sand area that extends to the domain of Algeria.
Our next destination is Tinghir and Erg-Chebbi in Merzouga…
© Yuriy Ogarkov
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