Morocco (February 2020): (1/3) Ouarzazate, Tagounite, Tiraf, and Day 1 of trek

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Maps:

Ouarzazate:

Ouarzazate (pop. 71,000) is a city located about 200km southeast of Marrakesh, on the southern side of the Atlas mountain range. It is home to one of the largest movie studios in the world. Several famous movies were shot here and around, including Lawrence of Arabia, the Man Who Would be King, The Mummy, Gladiator, Babel, Prince of Persia, Body of Lies, Black Hawk Down, and Queen of the Desert, to only cite a few. Taourirt Kasbah at the southeastern edge of the city is one of the few remaining Glaoui kasbahs. Thanks to the fact that it is often used as a backdrop stage by the movie industry, part of it is relatively well maintained.

Southern wall of Kasbah Taourirt, seen just before sunset.

Another photo of a portion of the Kasbah taken in the morning.

Former palace of the Glaoui in the kasbah.

Streets, houses, and buildings of the village inside the walls of the kasbah.

Old photos from around Ouarzazate and the Draa valley between Ouarzazate and Zagora:

I visited the region of Morocco around Ouarzazate in 1968 and a few times during the 1970′s and early 2000′s. Unfortunately, I took few photos during those visits, and most were of poor quality. Below are some of them.

Ksar of Ait Benhaddou (1968).

Oasis of Finnt, south of Ouarzazate (2004).

Left: Ait Benhaddou, north-west of Ouarzazate (2004). Right: Outdoor movie set in a Ouarzazate′s studio (2004).

Draa valley between Ouarzazate and Zagora (2003).

Kasbahs and granaries in the Draa valley (2003).

Tagounite:

It is the last small town that we traversed before reaching the start of the trek at Magag. We only briefly stopped there.

[A more interesting town north of Tagounite is Tamegroute, which used to be a major starting point for caravans headed to Timbuktu on the other side of the Sahara desert. Somewhat like Timbuktu, Tamegroute also served as a center of religious learning and its 17th-century shrine (zawiya) still includes a Koranic library with 4,000 ancient religious books. We stopped in Tamegroute to visit this library both on our way to Magag and on our return. Unfortunately, the library seems to have hectic opening hours and we found it closed twice.]

Tiraf:

Tiraf is the last village southeast of Tagounite before the empty desert. It is set in a scenic palm grove (also the last one before the desert) on the left bank of Oued Draa. Despite this location, the palm drive suffers from lack of rain, as most of the year this part of Oued Draa is dry. Water is occasionally released from the El Mansour Eddahbi dam (located near Ouarzazate), but only a few times a year. The village is populated by both Berber and Arab people. The later are descendants of migrants who came as traders through the Sahara desert.

Aerial view of the village of Tiraf, with Oued Draa visible on the left of the photo.

View over Tiraf, with its minaret on the left.

Inside a house of Tiraf. The man (in his 80′s) was a soldier in the French army in the late 1950′s and early 1960′s. He invited Oumar and me to drink tea in his home. In this photo he is sitting with the youngest of his three wives.

Palm grove surrounding the village of Tiraf. Minarets of Tagounite are visible in the far background on the left side of the photo.

Ksar Tiraf, located a short distance from the village, just north of Jbel Magag (see the aerial view above). It used to be a kind of fort with a granary. It is also the site of the grave of Sid El Madani, a saint man who was well-known as a healer. Every month of August a local moussem (festival) takes place here in his honor.

Tiraf village seen from Ksar Tiraf.

Northern slope of Jbel Magag (that we will ascend on the next morning) seen from the edge of the Tiraf palm grove.

Hamlet of Magag:

The bleak hamlet of Magag, the start of the trek, is located 1.2km south of the village of Tiraf. It consists of a few adobe houses aligned below the western escarpment of Jbel Magag, which culminates some 150m above the hamlet.

Aerial view of the hamlet. We spent the night prior to the trek in the house marked with the waypoint 001. The aerial view also shows the western escarpment of Jbel Magag and a portion of the flat top of this mountain.

The adobe houses in the hamlet stand at a close distance from rocks fallen from the Jbel Magag′s escarpment.

View of the escarpment from the hamlet.

Bada (left) and one of our hosts in Magag.

Window of a house. Most windows are quite small to protect house interiors against heat and sand.

Left: traditional oven to cook bread. Right: water reserve. This reserve consists of an underground tank (whose access is visible on the right of the photo) and large plastic jerrycans that are protected by a curtain of cane stems. A truck delivers water about once a month.

Day 1 of trek (from waypoint 001 to waypoint 013, plus side-trip via waypoints 014 to 019, 15km):

Path followed on Day 1 (red line for the main path between the start of the trek and camp 1, light blue line for the side-trip north of camp 1).

[Reminder: To access the GPS-recorded waypoints first click here to download the morocco-2020.kmz file and then open this file in Google Earth.]

Bada and Hada loading the dromedaries in Magag.

[On that day, Bada, Hada, Mohamed, and the two dromedaries took a more direct route to camp 1 than Oumar and me in order to avoid the rocky mountains.]

View over the Tiraf palm grove and village while ascending the northern slope of Jbel Magag.

Oumar reaching the northern top of Jbel Magag.

View toward the north from Jbel Magag, with Tiraf on the left of the photo and Tagounite further behind.

Flat top of Jbel Magag (view toward the south).

Aerial view of ruins on top of Jbel Magag between waypoints 003 and 004.

Views of the ruins from the ground. Bada and other locals say that those ruins date from Roman time, which is highly unlikely. Most of the site consists of adjacent, almost circular walled parcels. These parcels are too close to each other to be old sheep/goat pens. Their layout is more reminiscent of a former hut village.

Remain of a thick wall at waypoint 004, which looks like a former watchtower set above the plain on the western side of Jbel Magag.

Views from the edge of Jbel Magag near the thick wall.

Long walls south of the walled parcels.

Landscape and goat herder between waypoints 005 and 006.

Gilb Sebt well and its acacia tree at waypoint 008. In Tamazight (Berber language) ″Gilb Sebt″ means ″Heart of a Plant″.

Jbel Magag seen from a location close to waypoint 009.

View toward the east from the same location. The Gilb Sebt well is barely visible in the background next to the leftmost tree.

View during the ascent to the ruins of a fortification wall at waypoint 009. The wall is visible in each one of the three photos below.

Aerial view of the ruins at waypoint 009.

Turret and wall on the western side of the ruins. According to Bada the name of these ruins is Timgagin.

Southern wall (first photo below) and western wall (second photo) seen from inside the ruins.

View of Jbel Magag from the ruins, with Tindaf′s palm grove visible on its left. The larger Tagounite′s palm grove is visible further in the background on the left side of the photo.

Oval shaped summit west of waypoint 009 and north of waypoint 010. Aerial views in Google Earth show that there are additional ruins behind this mountain.

View of the desert (toward the west) from a location between waypoints 009 and 010.

Tumuli (burial stone mounds) below us.

View toward the south from a ridge.

Closer views of tumuli. Each one, typically 1.5m high, may be the burial place of several dead from different families and of different rank or wealth status. A dead person used to be buried quickly after his/her death. The body was laid down on top of an existing tumulus (or a new tumulus was created) and covered with new stones. In the desert the graves must be covered with stones to resist wind and occasional heavy rains.

Sand dune area around waypoint 012. Due to the proximity of Oued Draa there is some underground water that allows small tamarind trees to grow and survive.

Stagnant water (with high salt content) in the riverbed of the Oued Draa, crossed before reaching our camp 1 at waypoint 013, close to the ″elbow″ of Oued Draa.]

[Oued Draa is the longest Moroccan river (~1,100km). It flows from the El Mansour Eddahbi reservoir near Ouarzazate, which is fed by rivers descending from the High Atlas. From the reservoir′s dam it first goes south-eastward to Tagounite, then southward from Tagounite to the ″elbow″ south of Tiraf, finally westward to the Atlantic ocean. Over most of its length it is dry most of the year, but its riverbed and the surrounding areas are subject to floods during major rainstorms in the mountains.]

Later in the afternoon, Oumar and I ascended the small mountain south of our camp 1 (waypoints 014 through 019). We had heard that there were petroglyphs near the ″elbow″ of Oued Draa and our initial goal had been to find them. We only found a few damaged ones, but we saw several places were rock slabs had been cut, probably by petroglyph looters. So, we decided to continue our hike up to the northern edge of the mountain, where we found yet another set of mysterious ruins.

[This mountain is the southeastern tip of Jbel Bani, which Oumar and I will visit on the last day of trek. The ruins seem to be the Irherm n′Irhir n′Tidri mentioned in https://www.prehistoire-du-maroc.com/foum-errjam.html, where the mountain is called Jbel Beni Salmane. See the main Morocco 2020 webpage for a note about the name ″Jbel Bani″.]

Damaged petroglyph, which may depict an animal.

Aerial view of the ruins located between waypoints 016 and 017, overlooking the Oued Draa on their northern and western edges.

The ruins seen from inside the ground.

Northern wall. (The valley of Oued Draa is visible on the left of the second photo below.)

View toward the south from the ruins. Our camp 1 is located at the tip of the yellow arrow.

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