Crazy Oyibo 306u5o

Ana Hogas and Ionut Florea are open-hearted, white-knuckle travellers with a ion for people and an uncanny nose for adventure. Their 55,000-kilometer journey took them off the grid and into the beating heart of Africa.

Nick Thorpe, author of "Urban Worrier" and "Eight Men and a Duck" www.nickthorpe.co.uk

Crazy Oyibo

2 People, 1 Motorcycle, 55.000 km, 14 months in Africa

Book 1 of 2

Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ Florea

Copyright © 2013 by Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea

Published by Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for ing this free ebook. Although this is a free book, it remains the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied and distributed for commercial or non-commercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your .

We are Ana Hogaş and Ionuţ (John) Florea, Romanian architects. From June 2011 to August 2012 we traveled by motorcycle around Africa. The 14 months 55,000 km adventure is part of an on-going journey we like to call “Into The World”.

In an expedition of extremes, we worked as volunteers in the rainforest of Nigeria, crossed the Sahara in suffocating heat of over 54°C, climbed Mt. Cameroon, and explored the Okavango Delta in flood and the Congo basin during the rainy season.

Some of the expedition setbacks were: being stranded with minimal supplies in a remote Cameroonian community, towing the broken bike, malaria, attacks by a hippo, a scorpion and many Tsetse flies, riding 3000 km off-road in the Congo through torrential rain and mudslides, tackling bureaucratic and military interference and buying tea in Egypt.

Countries visited: Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italy, Morocco (+ Western Sahara province), Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroon, Gabon, Republic of Congo, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zambia, Namibia, South Africa, Lesotho, Botswana, Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt, Turkey.

We document our adventures at: www.intotheworld.eu

Copyright © 2013 by Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea, All Rights Reserved

Photography, layout & book design: Ana Hogaş & Ionuţ (John) Florea

Orders: www,intotheworld.eu

Oyibo, noun

Nigerian word originating from Igbo Language and later adopted by Yoruba and other western Nigerian and Southern Nigerian tribes as the standard slang name for “white person”. It is not a derogatory term.

Contents

Acknowledgments

The “Why”

Book 1: Romania To Morocco

Chapter One |A Kick In The Arse The Garage Of All Possibilities

A Motorbike On The Danube

Beckham’s Heel

Chapter Two |The Making Of An Expedition Two Are Better Than Four

My Kingdom For A... Metal Horse

The Last Night of Love

Chapter Three |Cheese and Tomatoes Cheese

Tomatoes

Chapter Four |A Dog Sleeping In The Sun Silver Lining

Alea iacta est

Chapter Five |First Victim Paper Laundering

Death On The Highway

Mediterranean Cruise

Chapter Six |Friend Or Foe? The First Night of War

Indecent Proposals

Workingman’s Death

Chapter Seven |Off The Road A Gift Of Milk

Raja

Plastic Sandals vs. Enduro Boots

Chapter Eight |Across The Desert A Pink World

The Weakest Link

Chapter Nine |Face First Brain Of Lamb, Voice Of Nightingale

Chapter Ten |Smooth Criminal Ingredients

Method

Aftertaste

Chapter Eleven |Sand, Sky And Everything In Between Office Tan

Rahim

Portret d'état civil

Chapter Twelve |Butt Out Baby You’ve Got A Stew Going

Photo Finish

In Numbers What It Took What Is Next

Dedicated to all the Africans who invited, welcomed, fed and helped us, and who revealed the continent's great wealth and humanity; without them our journey would have no meaning.

Acknowledgments

We owe a great deal to the people who made this adventure possible and to those who do or will help and our quest in other ways: our families (Mana, Viorica, Gheorghe and our siblings); friends (Ştefan, Alex, Andreea, Mihai, Laura, Andrei, Andreea, Iulian, Radu & Betty); Kala, Carmen and Ionuţ; Alin; Louis & Marine; Karen, Wenike, Makszi and Aneesha; Laura; Rotila & Mircea; Harry; CJ, Asuko, Majeed and Peter Jenkins; Jacques and Delphine; Chioru’ & Frederik; John & Shams; Jacob, Jessie, Laura and Pete; Vital and Melissa; Iulia; Charl & Lynda; Charl & Carla; Silviu; JJ; metaljockey; Bernard; Cami & Martin; David, Sam and Layla; Neyfuu; Antonio & Francisca; Gadiel & Beatrice; Cristian and Antonia and Mr. Parov.

The “Why”

With a complicated history, ever-growing population, astonishingly diverse ethnicities and stunning but dwindling natural resources, Africa offers a traveler an experience like no other. Much like our own country, the continent’s rapid transformation is affecting the lives of its people and wildlife, constantly pressured to adapt, and even to disappear. This is the story of the 420 days we spent traveling by motorbike around the continent, on a nomadic adventure that inspired us to document what we’ve seen and experienced along the way. You might find here your own childhood fantasy, maybe even a little inspiration. Thank you for taking this journey with us.

Ana & John

From Romania To Morocco

Book 1

“Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

John Lennon

A Kick In The Arse

Chapter One

“You came from Europe on this one?” he says in pidjin (Nigerian slang; broken English). “Eh!” The Nigerian police officer shakes his head in disbelief and touches my motorbike, as if to make sure that he’s not imagining it. “Crazy oyibo,” he whispers. It’s not the first time that they say this in Africa. And frankly, not too long before this journey began, I was just as doubtful about it myself.

The Garage Of All Possibilities

The first clue that I was primed for adventure was finding out where I was born. “In your grandfather’s car!” my mother told me. That ’67 Ford Taunus was already centric to most stories from my childhood. Each summer, my grandparents loaded it with supplies and left on mysterious overland journeys for weeks. I, being six years younger than my brother, was never taken along.

“They’re back from Zakopané!” mum would suddenly announce at dinner, which meant the wait was over. I was anxious to hear over desert about my grandparents’ adventures to places that made my head spin. I had no idea where Zakopané was; it sounded like the end of the world to me, “but one day” - I used to say to myself -“I’ll go there”. Shortly after the trips ended, my grandfather was feeling restless again. His way of coping was to drive alone to the seaside, and just linger. Nomadism, I began to learn, was woven into my destiny.

Sandwiched between Europe and Asia, at a former crossroad of migrant tribes

and commercial routes, my country is a peculiar place. The largest population of wolves and bears in Europe roam our forests. We entertain our children with stories of werewolves, vampires, goblins, ghosts and other of the undead. Even the Dacians, our mythologized ancestors, were believed lycanthropes, their warriors said to ride into battle under the standard of a snarling wolf-head, which trailed a tube of fabric that roared an unearthly howl as they charged. Not few are the people clinging still to a deeper consciousness of the wild. My family history is full of them: pilgrims, beachcombers, accidental drifters, sheep herders stuck in the city between transhumance runs, and now this temporary nomad – my grandfather, a mechanic.

As a kid I spent most of my time lurking around him and in his garage, which during the communist era became an extension of my grandfather’s workplace. People used to bring their broken Dacia cars here to be fixed, and what couldn’t be bought, was fabricated from scrap. Even today it’s every bit the space of a consumed petrol-head, the perfect place to prepare for my motorbike trip to Africa.

A Motorbike On The Danube

I caught the travel bug at young age. There's a picture of us somewhere: my mother in her sultry summer dress, my older sister and I in painfully cute fluff, sitting on my uncle’s Mobra, all of us excited about our first motorcycle voyage. We were just pretending, of course - I was barely five months old - but it was by motorbike how I eventually traveled with John around Africa.

Long before our journey began, I was just a girl living in a quiet industrial town in eastern Romania. To me it was the most boring place in the world. All provincial towns are dull in their own way; in Galaţi there was an elemental boredom, which depleted the imagination. My mother used to tell

mouthwatering stories from her childhood, when Jewish and Turkish vendors pushed their carts with fruit and sweets along cobbled streets. It sounded nothing like the Cartesian urbanism of the town that I knew, where the streetscape consisted in a variation of brown or grey. Only the weekend shacks were left, selling sesame bagels, balls of puffed rice smothered in multicolor sugar syrup and braga. The place to go for these ephemeral treats was the Danube falaise. This long strip of manicured paradise was our chance to escape boredom. The entire town would congregate along: to walk, jog, play, fish, and eat.

Danube’s windswept banks and wide, murky waters flowing silently towards the Black Sea have always had a soothing effect on me. Our family would often spend weekends to the wetlands and beaches across. I used to bring along a favorite book, and kept it shut while I stared vacantly at the Danube, daydreaming. There was Jules Verne’s round-the-world in 80 days saga, or Ulysses ‘quest, or Joshua Slocum’s old-fashioned voyage, or even the catcher in the rye. There were those bigger, untamed rivers that flowed along bigger, uncharted banks, where wild animals roamed and where nobody had blue eyes or blond hair like me. Would I ever go there?

In time I grew to believe that moving to the capital city of Bucharest was of theological importance. To travel there from Galaţi – which we did every couple of months for a theatre play or to visit relatives - was to move from lukewarm stasis to sudden consciousness. Exiting the train in the Central Station always jolted me into another dimension. The art-deco building curved a slender steel skeleton above a crowd that felt like the entire population of Galaţi. Faces and bodies mingled and jostled, each fighting to hastily carve their way to some mysterious meeting that appeared to suffer no postponement. I couldn’t wait to escape the conservative left-winged safety of my hometown, and because I liked drawing and geometry, I enrolled in Architecture school. But I spent all my bursaries on backpacking, which reduced the furniture in my room to cardboard boxes and a mattress. Luckily I met John, who shared my interests, so after we hooked up our travels became more daring. Then Romania ed the EU, friends became emigrants and university gang scattered. Eventually the real estate bubble popped, taking down the development industry along with our independence.

We are now living in his late grandfather’s house, sort of a temporary arrangement we think. We cannot find our place. We’ve been simmering in this state of procrastination since too long, disillusioned with the idea of a career, of becoming a statistic. Something has to give.

We’re both in need of a change, of a kick in the arse. And out of all things, it finally comes from football.

Beckham’s Heel

In 1986, at the prude age that allows the regular American lad their first legal pint and long before Romanian grandmothers would carry groceries in plastic bags branded with his face, Hagi was scoring in the finals of the UEFA Super Cup the only goal of the match and arguably the most important in Romanian football. The win of the coveted trophy led to a shift in the national psyche. Denied of their freedom by the Communists and forced to content with impotent humor scolding their political status quo, Romanians had finally something to believe in. They called Hagi “The King”, and football became Romania’s underground religion.

It was not by accident that my aunt’s wedding was booked during Romania’s group stage match against Colombia at the 1994 World Cup. Nor the bride or the groom was the leading act of the night. The guests had a far more serious reason to stampede in the lobby, where cloudscapes of cigarette smoke hovered around a color TV-set like burned incense around a painting of the Holy Trinity in church.

The 40-yard curling lobs of Hagi made everybody’s heart throb. During football’s wondrously accommodating installment it was not unusual to see furniture and even TVs flying off windows either after a score or a fail. In Bucharest fans of rival football clubs hated each other ionately, and had specialist shops with branded merchandise that helped express that feeling.

Today it looks like the dream of fame has already peaked, yielding little more than depressing beer sales, while some audiences keep hitting the snooze button of hope. I can't say that either John or I are scoffing the game. We just ignore it as we ignore its power to shift destinies. Our due time to settle this score comes on a Saturday.

What is especially ironic about all this, as I recall the events that lead to such a dramatic change in our lives, is that the weekend was shaping as ordinary as they get. The most thrilling thing was that we had plans to buy our tickets for a trip to India’s Holi festival. While emailing back and forth to Jet Airways staff, I was surfing the web and John was playing Counter Strike with a teenage cousin. Then the kid called. “Some mates rented a football field,” he said, “you wanna come?”

Why not? So John hits pause and abandons his spawning shifts for a quick game of foot. It was a brief outing. Later in the afternoon he returns home with a curious limp in his right leg and a swollen ankle. “I sprinted,” he says, “and suddenly felt a burning pain in my foot, above the ankle. I turned around to see the motherfucker who had killed me and the closest player was at least ten meters away.” This cannot be a good thing.

On Monday we visit the orthopedist. After a few minutes I am also invited inside the doctor’s office, where John is sitting with his jeans rolled above the knee as the doctor points at vividly colorful representations of human guts. John looks at me and flashes discretely a scissor sign with his fingers. That’s how I find out that he has an Achilles tendon rupture.

“It’s an atypical injury, so there will be an atypical rehabilitation,” the doctor starts to outline what is in store for John.

“Of course, you’ll have to stay in bed for about one month after the surgery. Then we’ll take the cast off and you’ll start walking with a crutch. We can’t predict how long it will take, but eventually, you’d be able to walk normally again.”

John keeps quiet, looking like he is already familiar with this information.

“I beg your pardon?” I say, peering at the gory poster for the first time.

“It may take anywhere from twelve weeks to a year,” the doctor says unfazed. “Oh, and you’re in great company by the way,” he waves his hand joyfully. “David Beckham has just suffered an Achilles tendon rupture as well.”

Up: John’s ion for horse power runs deep. Below: Ana on her first motorbike ride.

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.”

Andre Gide

The Making Of An Expedition

Chapter Two

Two Are Better Than Four

Romanian winters don’t last long. The snow rarely lingers into early March, when the sky, cloudless again, cracks open to allow the sun a shy peek. As the warm days settle in, the landscape overflows with color. Green buds unfold, sleek stems of snowdrops and fuzzy nettles thrust through the mold, trees put out an explosion of pink and white blossoms and a dense hue of blue conquers the sky. Water surges across the land – in swollen rivers and thawing mountain falls; in icicle drops, drizzles and soft rains that echo the sexy summer storms to come.

But my 2010 winter has been the longest that I can . Motionless days dispersing into sleepless nights: the grip of boredom, the tease of hope, interrupted only by Ana’s gentle torture with anticoagulant injections. Keeping up with David Beckham’s progress would seem rather impractical, but as I am restricted to staying in bed and I’m spending most of my time online, news of his recovery is pretty much unavoidable. I become all too familiar with the size and shape of his scar; I know what type of orthosis he has and when he’ll be back in the field. I also know I’m not going there. My stint in football is over. On the contrary, I cannot wait to get back on my motorbike. With my legs taking an unwanted leave of absence, I have a lot of time on my hands, so I come up with a plan.

“Let’s do it,” Ana says to my idea, and frankly, I don’t know if that makes me relieved or scared shitless.

“You do the Top Gear Africa special, don’t you?” I have asked her a minute ago.

“Yeah, so?”

“Well, we said we’d do by car and then give it to a school, right?”

“Yes,” she says, “but I also we can’t afford a Carnet de age.”

“Listen, forget about the car. Let’s go by motorbike. Two wheels are better than four.”

My Kingdom For A... Metal Horse

Alright, given the fact that I’m still unable to walk, the idea to ride across Africa sounds insane. And we know that it is not going to be an easy task to convince our families and friends that it’s not a death wish. But once the decision to unplug is made, things start falling into place: as I’m recovering my fitness, we are both becoming mentally stronger. We feel experienced enough to undertake this journey, and at the same time we are free of family commitments. The rules are loose, our future less bound - it is the right moment to do it.

While Ana starts packing our previous life in cardboard boxes, I am most looking forward to the addictive freedom of uninterrupted horizon. Africa is calling. It’s where our roots are, it’s the place where humanity success story

began, with Lucy, Livingstone and Stanley, and even with a certain Colonel Ewart S. Grogan who around the year 1900 walked from Cape to Cairo to prove that he was man enough to marry his beloved. With the map of the continent laid out before us, everything seems possible. We sketch a route and already we are facing our first decisions and compromises. The snowball has started rolling!

The first thing to pin down is the vehicle. My Hornet is out of the question. So I sell it. I watch again “Mondo Enduro”, “Long Way Down” and “Long Way Round”. Then I start reading dozens of ride reports written by Polish or Estonians riders and even French families vagabonding with up to five kids on tow. I know that we will take some tumbles and have to push across many miles of sand and mud. At the same time a nomadic journey means we will need to carry everything, from spare parts, to tools and water. So I am shopping for a sturdy mule that can carry both our luggage and us for a long time - a dual sport motorcycle. The Yamaha XT 660 Z Ténéré is not the lightest, nor the most powerful machine out there, but I like it at first sight. On the contrary, both of the Romanian owners we visit are determined not to sell us their bikes.

“You’ll never make it to Italy on this thing,” the second guy says. “The bike’s too vibey, it’ll wear you off within days. For a trip like that you wanna get one of these,” he winks, pointing to a brand new BMW 1200 GS. Later he confesses that his consultancy in adventure riding is founded on a two weeks trip to , with such cliffhangers like doing high mileage on the highway and dining on sausage and mash at gas stations. This set-up isn't at all what I have in mind. By way of homework and my experience on other machines, I am convinced that even if any bike could take us there – if within our budget, which the GS is definitely not - the lighter I go, the happier I’ll be.

I find another Ténéré with a British hippy who has retired to 's Mosel Valley, and I fly there after a dozen of emails that have us mutually agreeing that for some mysterious reason, he is also reluctant to sell his bike to me. The Mosel Valley is what some visitors imagine the bustling, industrious Rhine beyond the border would be: peaceful, sleepy, and quaint. Cobbled villages are aligned

between steep vineyards, a few storybook castles and the river. It’s a good place for friendly negotiations, and I leave on my new bike, feeling confident about the expedition into Africa.

But May is a transitional month in central Europe, and the gods of travel decide I must be thoroughly tested. The three days of riding and the 1700 kilometers of highway from to Romania have me gritting my teeth and pitting myself against wind, gale and rain. What the hell am I doing? I am either naïve, or insane to believe that I could ever do this for many months in a row.

The Last Night of Love

We decide to spare our families from worrying until it’s inevitable. The operation of buying the bike, fabrication of parts and deg a blog is kept secret. We become recluses, and our living room fills up with gear and packaging, so we can’t invite anyone over anymore. Then the tent arrives: it is our first real “house” together, and the first that has us debate not about foundation, steel rods and regulations, but about weight, color and breathability. We start going for test rides long before all the gear is there, so we often carry an enormous amount of random stuff from around the house, mimicking the expedition load. Nothing is yet streamlined, everything’s improvised, and we couldn’t be happier.

The white Ténéré is wild. From the first rides I feel it wants to get into trouble, I just can't imagine how big… 50 kilometers south of Bucharest, the forest hides a surprising opportunity for fun: the Comana wetlands. An untamed maze of dirt trails leads to the threshold of a hidden universe, from where a choir of critters broadcasts their whereabouts and mating cycles. With a little effort and a canoe, one can navigate along the shallow water channels choked between walls of lush vegetation that barely allow the sun. Spring is always a wonderful season in such

setting, so that's where I haul my Ténéré and my Ana for a mud spin. That's also where we take our first fall, in a ditch that Ana joyfully discovers to be dappled with celandine. She forages a handful for dinner. It is the beginning of a transformation.

Do we doubt our decision? Of course we do: we worry about everything, from being forgotten, to forgetting our friends, from blowing our professional career, to the petty details of living like: how will we wash? How will Ana do our laundry? What if she suffers from really nasty PMS? What if we run out of money? The kind of things we say to excuse ourselves from achieving our dreams, to escape the guilt. Our anxiety is burden enough, but we also feel vulnerable to what others say. “You are so lucky,” they say, too polite to call us blatantly selfish. “You are brave,” they say, meaning downright foolish. “We could never afford to spend so much money,” they say, fiddling with the latest iPhone model.

Is it selfish to let go of everything that brings conventional happiness, to risk what we already have in the hope that we can find better? Perhaps it is. We risk not finding happiness or finding it, only to never be able to feel satisfied again. We will have no home, no shiny belongings, and no bills; no car and no career to speak of; we will have instead everything else that we want. But true adventure is dangerous, as testing and discovery builds new character. And going at it with a partner makes it double scary. We are not naïve to believe that by the end of our journey we will be the same people who left and we cannot predict what that will do to our relationship. But because nothing can possibly prepare us for the outcome, we decide that this journey represents the inevitable change within and between us is, so we’d better embrace it.

Then, being a total newbie on Facebook, Ana accidentally leaks the news of our expedition. My mum calls immediately.

“Where are you?”

“What is it?” “Are you coming over? “ “Why would I come over? You know I’m busy.” “Well, I baked some pie, there’s some for you. “ Where are those damn screws? “John?” “Huh?” “So are you coming or not?“ “What? No, mum, I’m afraid I can’t.” “Um... I need to talk to you, y’know, about your plans.“ “What plans d’you mean?” “I don’t know…about Africa.” “Um... Let me get my bike.“

Ana further disarms this time bomb by coming clean to her parents. They seem to be cool with the idea, then they start emailing her all African doom of massacres, natural disasters and civilian conflicts ever recorded.

As we’re readying, so is the motorcycle. The first mod I do is eliminate the snorkel - on the second day after I arrive from . Even without any fueling mod I can feel the improvement. Next I fit an Iridium spark plug, hand guards, a higher wind shield, wider foot pegs from Ebay, a custom Leo Vince exhaust, fabricated central stand and luggage rack for the aluminum panniers. Finally I build a fueling mod using instructions from a forum. Wow!!! That is

one completely new bike. It pulls so nicely now, with no more heavy vibrations at low range. The exhaust is mental though. It definitely makes my neighbors pray that we leave sooner.

By fall our expedition seems primed to take off. One week before departure we summon our closest friends to a farewell barbecue at the garage. Ana’s chicken satay gets rave reviews, reassuring everyone about our stakes for survival, which is surprising, given the fact that there is hardly any curry in the jungle. The next day we go for a final test trip to the Danube. We make soup, pitch our tent and lay inside for a movie. Then the storm comes and it keeps rattling thru the night. Would anybody sane leave home to be rained on? I wonder. Nevertheless we enjoy the experience. We snug closely, a little spooked, yet knowing that there is no other place we would rather be in. We just need to get ourselves going, and for a while we are tempted to forfeit whatever gear is left in Bucharest, and leave…

Up:Keeping up with Beckham. Bellow: a nomadic architect’s home.

The expedition vehicle being upgraded in the garage of all possibilities.

“Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding. Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.”

Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Cheese and Tomatoes

Chapter Three

Cheese

“Proper sheep cheese must smell of sheep poo.” my grandfather used to say. Outside late fall gives a reddish hue to dwindling vegetation. It is already shaping to be sunny and dry, a fine day to leave for Africa. But not on an empty stomach we won’t.

I wake up and put on my gear with more than usual care, indulging briefly in the smell of newness: zipping off the motorcycling jacket and pants, tying my helmet and buckling up my riding boots. The market sits at the end of the street where I’ve spent the better part of my childhood and I quickly find the kind of cheese I want, lying in large blocks on the counter. I also jam a kilo or two of tomatoes in my brand new top case, feeling awfully hungry. On the way back, the streetscape is the same as I have seen it thousands of times before: narrow and straight, interrupted every now and then by small alleys marked with speed bumps and give-way signs. At the last junction before my house, I see it – black, rolling from the right. In a split second I realize the car isn’t going to brake.

“Whaaat are ya’ doing you son of a bitch!” I shout inside my helmet. But I don’t think I make it to the “son of a…” part. Before I finish the “what”, a louder sound cracks across like a grenade going off - BANG! I momentarily the bike slamming into a bigger something. Then everything stops. Lights-off.

I wake up lying flat on the tarmac. Where I am? I try to push gently to an upright position and look around; the sight is a brutal update to my brain. I breathe the

air in and out, and my mouth becomes as dry as dust; the sun is overhead, but a bleached vignette frames my world, so I remove the helmet: small cracks stem from a dent the size of my palm.

“Don’t move, lay down!”

This isn’t my voice, I think, it’s not me who’s shouting; across the street, a man is waving vigorously in my direction. With his other hand he holds a mobile phone to his ear. What are you doing man? I don’t have time for this; I need to find my bike and go home.

“Don’t move!” the waving man shouts again.

I’d call him a name or two, but the trees and the street have started to rock and roll. The man has sunk from view, but I rely on his voice to reach the safety of the sidewalk. Minutes – I don’t know how many - go by. When I finally fold back into a sit-down on the tarmac, cold sweat pours on my body, making my eyes itch. I’m not sure when the ambulance or the police officer on a motorbike arrive. Suddenly there’s too much sound – questions are being asked, as I struggle to cope with the answers. Then my phone rings: it’s Ana.

“What’s up?”

“Um…”

“Where are you? I’m super hungry!”

“Yeah… um… I’m coming…”

“Hey, what’s wrong? Are you alright?”

“Um… yeah… I’m fine.”

“John! What is going on?”

“Um… It’s just… I’ve been in an accident. You should come outside, I’m at the junction.”

Tomatoes

On that brisk morning our neighborhood was gradually populating with sound. A blackbird male has started its wonderful routine in front of my window; across the street, a vendor was pulling the shutters to his shop as a group of students laughed by.

Busy reading about the Xhosa people, I might have heard the ambulance, but the rattle of hunger in my stomach is what shakes me up really. I realize that it’s been an unusually long time since John has left to the market, so I call. His voice is strange, like he’s been drinking. He stammers. He tells me to come outside. My heart goes instantly berserk and my hands start shaking - as they do now,

while I struggle to hit the right letters on the keyboard. I rush down the stairs.

But the street is deceptively empty. Only about 50 meters from our doorstep some uniformed people are scrambling about. I see the ambulance at the junction and John sitting on the sidewalk, alone. My sun falls from the sky. My blackbird breaks its song. The vendor gawks in front of his empty shop and I feel my face wrinkling. John gets up and staggers towards me: his eyes are bleak with eerie sadness and guilt. What is he sorry for? My heart sinks like rock thrown overboard an abandoned ship. As he hugs me, I feel him broken; only now I can see over his shoulder the white motorbike, lying down, gutted, in a dark puddle of petrol.

Tire marks are leading to a black sedan that sits askew between the sidewalk and an empty parking space. I lean over the broken window and look inside: scattered across the driver’s seat, there’s a mosaic of broken glass, sheep cheese and squashed tomatoes.

“It’s not that we have a short time to live but that we waste a lot of it.” Seneca

A Dog Sleeping In The Sun

Chapter Four

Silver Lining

We’re waiting for a cab outside the hospital where they have sewn me back to man. It’s one of those desolate yards so typical of Romanian public facilities: patches of grass and concrete blocks shaped into a garden, piles of plastic bags that an unforewarned visitor could mistake for flowers and in the middle of it all, a mutt dog blissfully sleeping in the October sun. I lean onto Ana, on a bench that feels like it was designed by the Spanish Inquisition. A ray is piercing through the foliage. Aliveness, togetherness, a bit of warmth… isn’t this enough?

Life is supposed to be difficult, they say, have it hard and enjoy your break when once in a while we cut you some slack, because you never know when the next rock hits… Then why wait for the “right” moment? If you want to live, go outside and do it. Make your dreams your priorities, and start investing your most valuable resource, your ion, to pursue them. Stop working for things that buy you extra time, if you invest none of it in what you love, but turn into more busy work instead. Twenty-four hours per day you are lucky anyway if nothing remarkable happens: you didn’t get fired, you weren’t late for your appointment, your plane didn’t get hijacked - you didn’t die. The extraordinary, the awesome, that big ride into the world – that is your job.

Me, I’ve had my warning, twice. I am ready. If I am to break any more bits, it’ll be in Africa. To be honest, going there is just as daunting for me as for the next guy. It’s the prejudice, and the media. The popular story of Africa triggers the instinct of self-preservation rather than the spirit of adventure: beautiful landscapes teeming with wild but dangerous animals, vibrant but

incomprehensible people, “half devil, half child” (Rudyard Kipling, “The White Man’s Burden”), fighting brutal wars, dying of AIDS, waiting to be saved from poverty by the providential white man.

From the beginning our plans have already inspired fear and disbelief. After this accident, it seems that our journey will never happen. Everybody takes the double u-turn as an omen of bad things to come, a sign that we mustn’t go. And even for us it’s getting harder to see the silver lining.

Friends and families come to see me in the hospital and I feel them saddened, but somehow relieved. Being hurt is a form of danger they can understand, being away is not. Danger - what a peculiar word. There are so many definitions of it: distress, jeopardy, and risk; exposure to injury, pain, or loss. Each indicates a subtly different attitude: distress carries an element of surprise, relative to an accident; on the contrary, risk and exposure suggest volition. But they are all warnings. Littered with sediments of our tumultuous history, language suggests that an attempt to venture outside the known territory will hurt you.

Alea Iacta Est

“Africa is dangerous!” everybody tells us.

“How do you know that?” asks John.

“Well, we’ve seen it on TV!"

“You cannot believe everything on TV, of course," he chuckles. We don’t even have one, you know, since seven years ago.

“Aren’t you afraid of diseases? Malaria, blackwater fever, yellow fever, Dengue fever, Rift Valley fever…” the hypochondriacs say.

“Trypanosomiasis, bilharzia…” add the nerds.

I have to point out that we’ll be properly inoculated against many of those and just be reasonably cautious about the others. “Most people in Africa manage” I say.

“But only until 35!” our parents say. “What's wrong with you?” they sigh. Micromanaging, see, is what typically overprotective Romanian parents do.

“Nothing’s wrong with us. It's just that we’re sick of being afraid of life.”

Eventually we gain clearance: we keep our stance, and everybody else keeps their pessimism. But we will not allow fear to stop us. Fear is what makes you lose today while worrying about tomorrow. Of course we know that something can go wrong, but just as well everything may simply go right. And even if our plan is not bulletproof, we should be able to fill in the gaps in the field.

The nine months that follow are still a blur to me. While he is waiting impatiently to get his good karma back, John knows we have to step up our game. On the second day after his surgery, he asks for the laptop and sorts out

Internet access and immediately starts searching for another bike. He is quite frustrated to be back in the hospital instead of riding in the south of Spain, so naturally his first choice is the buff Ténéré of JMo. Yeah, that’s right, the tough British chick who broke her leg in the 2011 Dakar Rally. The dramatic pic of Carlos Sainz zooming by her crash with a photogenic splash of sand was all over the news. Of course, JMo’s bike proves out of our financial league, so John fetches the second Ténéré – a blue one, with 30,000 km on board – on the same forum as the first bike; this time from a London commuter. A friend who lives in the U.K. helps with delivering the bike to a forwarder. A thin layer of snow still blankets our street as the courier van pulls in front of the garage. The hunt for a bike is over.

The first act is swapping the engines between the two Ténéré, as the white motorcycle had a little over 12,000km at the time of the accident. John looks confident doing it, but I’m overwhelmed by the fire-hose of complicated details. Once the transplant is complete, we start joking that the soul of the first Ténéré will still do the journey with us. The rest – stripping the mods off the white bike and fitting them on the blue one and making other parts - goes smooth, while also ratcheting up the pacing of the entire preparation for Africa. But by late May we still see no end to the waiting games: the insurer is stalling to pay the damages for the destroyed bike, while we are pretending to live a normal life. So John is the one to abruptly cut the umbilical cord. We’ll take a shortcut to Africa, he says. We’ll rent a van, load the bike inside, and get someone to drive in shifts to Italy. One week before it is scheduled to leave from Livorno/Italy to Tanger Med/ Morocco, John buys on a whim tickets on the ferry. With a click of the mouse, the final countdown begins.

“In the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” Sun Tzu, The Art Of War

First Victim

Chapter Five

Paper Laundering

On the eve of our departure Andrei drops by just in time to see us scramble. The scene in our living room must be hilarious and weird. Unidentifiable bits of gear brazenly litter the floor. Ana is quietly scanning documents, her slow, methodic gestures interrupted by sudden explosions of panic, effectively mimicking the bloodrush of a terrorist assault.

“You’re not supposed to leave in the morning bro?” asks Andrei. Apparently he finds our situation unsettling. This guy has been around since before elementary school, and we’ve done plenty together, from playing in a high school band, to going to the same university. But as our once gargantuan parties have become tamer, Andrei continued to live a double life: architect by day, rockstar by night. With a decade of stage diving under his belt I thought he isn’t easily impressed.

“You bet” I grin, “we’re almost done here.”

Indeed we are, by 6 a.m., when Ana discovers that her mum has accidentally washed both the registration document and the insurance for the bike along with my riding jacket. We try to contain the panic. “I could get a duplicate issued in a couple of hours,” I say, but that means driving to the other end of the city, or sending a legally delegate to do it for me. We have no choice: I and Iulian (who is supposed to drive the van back to Romania) must go queue at the police. Ana stays behind with the mission to wrap up the documents and be on time at the meeting point. At 2 p.m., instead of crossing the border to Bulgaria, we are

driving through horrendous Bucharest traffic, 12 hours behind schedule. “What’s the rush, boys?” says the police office at the counter. Whatever man, in 31 hours I’m boarding a bloody ferry in Italy.

Death On The Highway

Considering that the van only broke down 300 km to destination, I’d say that my plan worked quite well.

We have been rolling since the day before, while the names of the countries kept changing: Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. The moon came up a tattered, pale shape, making us dream of vast savannahs. When we hit Italy, I assume we have it in the bag. So I take my shift on the car floor, looking forward for a nap. During the last 60 hours I have barely slept 4. As I am dozing with my feet on the tank bag, Ana gives me a pat on the shoulder.

“Wake up! Something’s wrong with the car.”

I open my eyes: “What is it?”

“Um… something’s broken, I guess. You have to come see. It just stopped rolling.”

The car’s dead, alright. And we’re in the middle of nowhere. Hoping that the other cars on the highway spare me, I go out to investigate. The news is bleak:

for some mysterious reason, the transmission belt has broken. This just wasn’t supposed to happen. A chaotic race against the clock ensues: Iulian calls the Roadside Assistance and 45 minutes later we are loaded on a platform by a lovely chap, Giovanni from Vescovana. We brush our Italian and he enjoys our story, but once at the warehouse in Rovigo there’s no more time for pleasantries. No gear-folding, no box-ticking off packing lists; things get crammed into panniers, bags are strapped onto machine. We abandon civilian clothes and become rider and pillion in a desperate sprint for Livorno. A light rain quenches our nerves, and we hope that nothing essential has been left behind.

Mediterranean Cruise

We make it in the nick of time. “Welcome onboard!” says the Greek captain. “Claim any free spot you like, and enjoy the trip.”

Ikarus Palace is a retired cruise ship from the 80s. Eight decks, a casino, pubs and restaurants offer plenty of sleeping real-estate up for grabs, if the best spots haven’t been already taken. In this surreal floating bedroom of mirrors, neon and velvet, dozens of families have rolled up their mats, sleeping bags and carpets on every square inch of available space where no enormous clusters of unshapely luggage lay. Most engers are Moroccan emigrants going home for the holidays. The rest is crew, plus us two and a posh Italian couple in their 60s who - by the size of their Louis Vuitton bags - must have gotten on the wrong ferry to Barcelona. After scouting the entire ship, we settle for a corner in the pub, big enough for our sleeping bag. It’s comfy, but we’re low on food, because the shop in Livorno only had Lady Gaga CDs and we barely hoisted anything from the van. But worry not; cooked lunch and dinner are available in the canteen: mushy sides, bits of mammal DNA floating in sauce, even gooey deserts and bread rolls. Ah, the feast! Prices judiciously match a Parisian bistro, to remind us that we are on a Mediterranean cruise after all.

In the end the two and a half days trip feels two and a half days too long. By the last day of sailing we have smelled the feet of hundreds of people, the two toilets we all share are spurting into the lobby, and even the coffee in the bar has started to taste good. At the last breakfast onboard, the Italian tourist wears an elegant nude shirt that would look great on the Rambla. I glimpse at her, and she attempts a smile, while a curly Moroccan lad is smearing her silk sleeve with a delicious apricot jam.

As the river of engers cools down, we roll out of the recently inaugurated Tanger Med port. Engulfed with joy, I parked for the first time on Moroccan soil and leave Ana at the bike while I handle the paperwork. “Her eyes look different now,” I think. I liked to feel those eyes on me as I walk away. When I return, I have two stamps and the entire Africa ahead.

“You know what I deserve? “ I ask her. “What?” “A kiss.”

Practicalities -Visas and TIP for the motorbike

EU citizens, Romanians included, are allowed a 90 days stay in Morocco without a visa. The formalities for the bike are a breeze in Tanger Med port. The temporary import permit is called Declaration d’ission temporaire de moyens de transport and it is issued for free. You can fill in your customs papers online. The International Motor Insurance Card (green card) from your country of origin may also cover Morocco; you want to check this with your insurer (that is the case for Romania). Otherwise, you can purchase insurance at the border. The Moroccan infrastructure is well developed, with over 1145km of highway

and good tarred roads even in countryside. The gas (essence) is about 1 Euro/liter and widely available at gas stations or at hole-in-the-walls in small villages. There are ATM machines everywhere, but obviously the food stalls are cash only.

Up: a paper laundering in the morning of our departure. Below: bunking up on a Mediterranean cruise.

Up: on Ikarus Palace. Below: finally on African soil!v

“The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.” Albert Einstein

Friend Or Foe?

Chapter Six

The First Night of War

We have deliberately chosen to do little planning for Morocco. It’s supposed to be our testing ground. Adventure is a state of mind after all. We want a challenge, not a guidebook holiday; we have to let it happen. Of course, as scores of ride tales praise its diverse landscape, foodies the beguiling cuisine, and potheads the Riff, nobody comes to Morocco without super high expectations. The later attraction would not fit this time on our itinerary, but the rest sounds just too good to be true. But only one hour of riding the coastal route from Tanger to Larache and one spicy kafta later, we are sold. A patron of the small street-side t is happy to chat with strangers. With his small fishing town feeling the crunch of a spiraling economy, this fisherman is busier hanging around than heading out to the sea. “You are going the wrong way around,” Sayeed says. “You should go to Chefchauen. The Prophet, peace be upon him, says that the closer you get to Mecca, the more delicious the fish is.”

Not a bad advice, but this time we’re heading south. John has seen some lagoons on the map, so I ask someone which way we need to take to get there. Unfortunately the man speaks no French, which keeps the experience uncluttered by communication. We go in circles for hours, paddling in the deep sand that soon covers the entire dirt road. We fall and sweat buckets, and John curses his road tires wondering if we should stop and fit the knobbies on. Of course we never find the lagoons.

“Can we sleep here tonight?” I ask a few villagers, too tired to desire to go on. But either they can’t understand, or they are scared to have a couple of strangers out on their land. So we return to tarmac, and push on to Rabat.

“Can we camp here tonight?” I ask again at the police checkpoint at 1 a.m. But we get turned down again. We finally pitch around 3.30 a.m. on what we identify in the morning as Rabat’s garbage dump. It’s the first glorious wild-camp of the expedition. We cross the street for a coffee, keeping an eye on our tent and the bike, while an orange sun is rising above the Atlantic. Our nomadic journey has begun. What until now was just a word – Africa – has become real.

Indecent Proposals

The next bush-camp is prettier: a lonely beach, between a pond and some shrubs – crucial for a bit of midday shadow. We leave the bike on one bank, and carry our gear across the pond to the other, though waist-deep, cloudy water that reminds me of the Danube. The place is 20 km away from Rabat, a good base for our visa runs to Mali and Mauritania embassies. While Rabat has a European feel, the shanty towns that line the coast and the lively fresh food markets are quite different. So is charming Mahommedia. We ride there twice a day, for soup and chatter with the vendors, who soon start to supersize our meals and offer free servings of freshly squeezed orange juice. This sweet delight becomes the ubiquitous fuel of our days.

If I have worried before about wild camping, I am now discovering I had every reason for it. Our routine requires locating and then settling into a new spot at brief intervals. This has two major effects. First, it breaks down all my personal habits to atomic level. Intimacy is the first thing I have to give up. Secondly, I start to scan all surroundings – both wild nature and its nemesis, the city - in of potential campsites. After feeding the pond, the stream trickles along our beach for about another mile before ing the ocean. It is not even a palm deep, but it’s the only flowing water available and the place seems remote enough to experiment with my first shower. I keep the bathing suit on, and rub my back against the rocks. I’m chuffed. Suddenly two fishermen by, interrupting my splatter. I jump up reaching for my towel, but they look even

more ashamed than I am as they walk away without saying a word.

About half morning, John sets off for food supplies. But after we cross the pond, we discover that the battery has discharged overnight. There’s no point to try to push the bike through sand: we decide I should walk to the road and look for a helpful driver with cables and time to spare. I am lucky. Across the bridge there’s some construction site with plenty of vehicles laying around, but bummer, none has what I’m looking for. Finally the chief of staff shows up. He listens bewildered to my story, then agrees to drive with his entire team there. The men are ecstatic to meet John and lend him a hand, and after we kickstart the bike, he gets to leave to town with an impressive group of acolytes.

The third day, a girl and two men, all wearing a baseball caps arrive on our beach as I am filling a bottle with water from the stream.

“You shouldn’t do that,” the girl says. “This water’s not good.” Soukaina tells us that she is Echoudine’s girlfriend, and that Echoudine and Dawar are brothers. That doesn’t fit at all with the Moroccan stereotype. Men and women are rarely seen mingling like this in the Kingdom, even if they nurture close family ties and friendships, greeting each other for minutes. Women remain a rare encounter for the traveler and they stick to the hammam for socializing – these are places where the threshold between torture and pleasure is finer than we have ever imagined. Innumerable Parisian-style cafés do line the boulevards and they have plenty of business, but the patrons are invariably clusters of men. From dawn till dusk they sip on coffee and read newspapers. None of them appears to have moved for many hours, and if we happen to look away for a moment, the one man that decides to leave is quickly replaced by another, almost identical.

The five of us share lunch: the Romanians bring the roast meat, the Moroccans cook a fish tagine right on the beach. With sand between our toes and scooped with the hand, the food tastes amazing. As they leave home, the girl and the men invite us to move camp in their village. Just give us a call, they say. We are

tempted, but also a little paranoid.

“Should we go?” I ask John later in the day.

“Um, I don't know. What do you think?”

I’m not ready. “Next time maybe?”

“Yeah, I don’t wanna go either.” John says. “Let’s do Meknes tomorrow.”

“What about the itinerary? What about our ports?”

“The hell with the itinerary. It’s just a few extra kilometers.”

We soon realize that French is not enough, and that in the countryside a couple of basic words in Arab or Berber would come a long way. We base ourselves 15 km off Meknes - one of the four “Imperial Cities” founded by Berbers in the IXth century. It’s a grubby little campsite, and the stocky man who should theoretically guard, fix and clean the place doesn’t speak a word of French. But Sadirkel Habib won’t stop talking - in Tamazight, a Berber language. With signs, and later with sketches in the dust, we try to make sense of his jabber. We learn that Sadirkel is from Merzouga and that while living in isolation in this corner of Maghreb, he has it all figured out. He will marry a beautiful French woman with a plump dowry, like all European wives must have, and use the money to build a house with Moroccan tea saloon and a rose garden.

Sadirkel is fun, but a little messed up. Soon he starts cutting off power and water supply, from early morning, till almost midnight, so we have to beg to let us charge our computer. One day he asks us to move the tent to a different spot, and after we do, we find it drenched as Sadirkel is watering the garden. What’s his deal? But when his tantrums become proper crises, and morning handshakes evolve into awkward hugs, I decide that I am no longer in the mood to find out.

Sardikel is not the only failed attempt at making friends. One afternoon in Meknes, we meet Mustafa, if that is his real name. Many locals, lacking proper jobs and having to feed extended families, became touts. The imperial towns are full of them. Mustafa approaches us as we are haggling for figs with a vendor, and it takes a kilo of fruit, two miles of walking and a lot of lies to finally get rid of him.

In most Moroccan cities, an avenue named after a famous king (usually Hassan II or V) divides the thick-walled medieval medina (the old town) from the ville nouvelle (the new town), built during the French protectorate. We go past Bab el-Mansour gate, lavishly covered in zellij, we cross the el-Hedim square, and venture inside the souk. We are making our way to our regular venue for chat - a corner tea stall. Moroccans love mint tea - sometimes peppered with sage, always saturated with sugar. The flamboyant pouring from pot to pot, at arm’s length, with never a drop of the hot liquid potent enough to power a car being spilled, isn't just a ritual; it’s a sign of hospitality, friendship, and, luckily for us, a delicious tradition. We wouldn’t miss the 10-minute sit down in the shade, to carefully hold our hot tea glasses by the rim and watch the bustle of the medina. The embroidery shops, the wood carvers making window frames, the brass and copper banging of the craftsmen, the vendors who push their donkey carts past piled high with watermelons and cactus fruits - calling out as they go. Across the alley there is a hole-in-the-wall for soup and other bits, and they don’t mind serving our bowls of harira right at the tea stall. The other customers pause from their newspaper reading and gossiping to quiz us. Where are you from? What is your name? What do you think of Morocco? Of course they all assume we are married with children, and it’s always uncomfortable to disappoint them.

The second day our spot is taken, so we drift to another cafe.

“Bonjour!” is the first thing he says. The elderly man sitting to my left is looking at me. He is perhaps fifty years old, with bony features, sleeves of his white shirt rolled up above the elbows. A glass of coffee is getting cold on his table, next to a folded newspaper.

“You’ve chosen well,” he adds in French; “these people make the best coffee in Meknes.”

“Yes, they do” I say. A couple of tables to the back, the conversation has stopped: both men, in similar white shirts, are now staring in our direction; next to them, a very tall man in another of those white shirts is stirring sugar in a pot – a tea man. Circling his feet expectantly is a family of cats.

“Where are you from?”

I look at John. “Romania.” I mumble a bit surprised; it’s bothering me that in such a conservative environment this stranger is addressing to me, instead of my companion.

He doesn’t seem to mind though: “Morocco must be too hot for you at this time of year.”

“Actually, the weather isn’t much different in Romania really.”

“You don’t say. Are you a tourist?”

“Yes sir, I am traveling with my husband here.”

“On that motorbike? Is that what you do?”

“Oh, no sir; we are both architects.”

He takes a sip from the glass. “Oh, what a coincidence. I am an engineer, you see. Retired.” And adds softly: “tell me, do you have extramarital relations?”

I do not move for several seconds. “Excuse me?” I say. Either my French is really rusty, or this conversation is going the wrong way. John touches my arm. “Why are you talking to this guy?” he says in Romanian. “At this hour in all the cafes in the entire city of Meknes you are the only woman; you should know better than to entertain strangers with details about your personal life.”

But he barely gets to finish his word. A bee flies over our pile of figs and into his right hand. Making friends is not going to be easy, I think.

Half of an hour later, John’s hand looks like a bear paw, and we must run to nearby Moulay Idriss to buy antihistamines. The fairytale town sitting on top of

a mountain is an oasis of calm. It is from there that Islam started to spread throughout Morocco, and to where six pilgrimages are said to equal one Haj to Mecca. In the central square dozens of stalls are ranged in tightly drawn rows. We take a seat beside them, in a café, under the shade of oak. Men wrapped in beige kaftans hoist their donkeys to market; women on foot, toting baskets with live chicken. Nobody gives a damn about my unscarved hair, or about our knees slightly touching under the small table where a swarthy waiter brings our honey yoghurts.

“Well, judging by the way things went so far,” says John, “you aren’t gonna leave Morocco unmarried.”

I turn my face away. “Very deep,” I say, “you should get you own talk-show in Romania. They're running out of crappy jokes you know.”

“See, you're mad!”

“I'm not. I’m just a tad disappointed.”

“What about me? Nobody gives me a second look; how am I supposed to get a date around here? ”

“That bee sting should do it.”

“Ouch! That hurt.”

I grin. “Why would that man say he was an engineer?”

“That was French for I’m whatever you want me to be sweetheart. What did you expect him to do?”

“Eat up,” I say, “I’m going in to pay.”

“Don’t forget to zip up!”

“Very funny sir, very funny!”

Frankly for a country where concealing clothing, including head coverings, is not mandatory for women I find the definition of modesty quite inflexible. And in this heat I’d happily trade my sweaty riding gear for a djellaba and a scarf, but I’m not sure if Muslim garb makes foreigners look inconspicuous, or more provocative, really.

I still haven’t made up my mind as we stroll along the cardo and decumanus of Volubilis. The 3rd century Phoenician and Roman city lays in ruin, just miles from Moulay Idriss. It’s an inspiring place for an architect, vast and complex, but instead of Doric capitals, it has stork nests on top of the svelte columns, and outside the site scalpers sell stolen bits of ancient mosaic as souvenirs. We decide to bump our mood the next day in Fez.

Workingman’s Death

A seat of Arab learning, a Holy City and a place of pilgrimage in times when the route to Mecca was obstructed, Fez has been until recently a place of considerable importance - the depot for the caravan trade from the south and east of the African continent. More colorful, and trickier to navigate than the one in Meknes, the legendary medina of Fez – a cacophony of merchants and craftsmen, stalls with spices, dried fruits and nuts, fish, handmade carpets and musical instruments - feels oddly touristic. We arrive in the early hours of the morning, so the touts are still sleeping. But the visitor buses are here, and people are already shopping for “I Heart Morocco” t-shirts and fridge magnets with the monumental gate of the medina. Even more surprisingly, in the al-Seffarine square the workers are rhythmically pounding their copperware only as tourists start tipping.

„Harira?” asks John an old man who has laid out some greens on a piece of cloth. The man stands up and starts walking fast. We don’t know what is he doing, but we follow him anyway. He leads us to a carpet shop. From barely big enough for the knees of a man at pray, to many meters wide, carpets are the most desirable and heavily traded goods of the medina. But we are not interested in shopping, we are just hungry.

Sayeed smiles demurely from the back of a small restaurant. John steps inside: there are two wooden benches, a long table and an enormous clay pot simmering on the open fire. “B’sara”, he says to my pulsating nostrils. It’s a fragrant fava bean soup, typical to fassi cuisine, a 2.0 version of the harira we’ve known since Rabat. I don’t know how he does it, but at 13 years old Sayeed makes the best soup in Fez. Many times what they put on our plate makes or breaks the trip; it certainly adds to the experience. We would miss many spicy details of local culture if we didn’t sample street-side, if we didn’t risk our stomachs with unfamiliar flavors, or lift the lids of mysterious pots where grandmothers have forged in decades of service the most amazing stews. In all our travels and culinary adventures we seldom had a disappointing meal. We’re not

anthropologists. We’re not even journalists; our opinion is, at best, of humble amateurs, of foodies. But chances are that a good soup in the right place will make a couple of strangers stop being strangers. The world may look bleak in the news, but in fact everybody is simply doing the best they can. People love their families. They like a good joke. And if they are lucky enough to have food, they are proud of it, and they invariably enjoy sharing it with us. Shuffling his yellow babouche slippers, Sayeed brings an extra bowl to the table. “It’s good, right?” he says to John. As we slurp the first spoon of this divine soup, a distant muezzin starts calling the faithful to prayer.

There is one place in this astonishing medina which doesn’t smell of honey and spices, but reeks instead of cow urine and pigeon guano: the Chouwara, the largest and busiest of the four traditional tanneries still operating in Fez, and world’s oldest. To reach it, we tackle a spiraled labyrinth of stairs and climb on a terrace out in the blazing sun.

From up here it’s a confronting vision: in a process that is still as manual as when it began in the 8th century, dirt-poor workers, many just teenagers, make some of the world’s most expensive and delicate high-street leatherwear. It’s a lengthy affair: first, sheep, goat and cow hides are cured in smelly concoction. Then a Maluum artisan stretches and refines the leather to rid of any imperfections. Finally the hides are dyed in honeycombed earthen pits, and laid atop the rooftops to dry.

After this, I can never look at shoes the same way again.

African Artisanship - Maghreb

After the demise of Cordoba, Chouwara tanneries became instrumental for an age-old craft. The tanneries are still one of the most important sources of income and trade for the city of Fez. The only modern concessions to have infiltrated the process are a mechanic rinsing machine and the use of chemicals. In the past the colors came from vegetable dyes: poppy (red), turmeric (yellow), mint (green) and indigo (blue).

Up: friend or foe? Below: medina of Meknes.

Up: the first meal of the expedition. Below: and the first bushcamp.

Up: Chouwara tanneries in Fez. Below: Volubilis.

“Great things are done when men and mountains meet.” William Blake

Off The Road

Chapter Seven

A Gift Of Milk

The 25th of June. We drive to Casablanca - the city that is nothing like the movie. It’s Morocco's biggest, and ugliest: modern, crowded with advertising boards and cars; a pungent, mackerel-smelling, polluting high-rise and fast-foodidolizing version of its imperial self, hardly a place that says “Africa”. We ramble in the medina in search of grilled corn, and settle for the boiled kind. Then we catch the sight of the world's highest minaret atop Hassan II Mosque. The 689ft tall spire makes us hope that world’s biggest orthodox cathedral – which the Romanian Church plans to erect - will never haughtily cut the already gritty skyline of Bucharest.

Leaving Casa behind we realize that the first challenge of the High Atlas, which lures us with the promise of a motorcycle exploration paradise, is to be getting up the bloody thing. There are dozens of alternatives, some appear on our maps, others not. And by the end of the first long, draining day of riding, finding a place to camp in the dark proves the worst idea ever. The tarmac ends abruptly as the road starts uphill. With every bend, the wind gets stronger and the plateau rockier. It’s impossible to pitch anything here. My head is rattling and every bone in my body hurts. We’re both exhausted and new to this sport.

“I cannot do this anymore,” I say. “We need to stop.”

Pushing further will make absolutely no difference tomorrow. John rides back to the tarmac, then takes a left and continues for another few kilometers, and then

turns left again, right into the field. We pitch our tent on the first available spot, without headlamps - the moon is bright enough and we can’t be bothered to fish more gear from the bags. The roar of ing cargo trucks will do for lullaby.

“You do realize that there’s people back home who envy us in this very minute, don’t you?” I say.

“I know. They imagine we’re relaxing over sundowners, as a Moroccan beauty fetches us a rose petal bath. But they aren’t too far from the truth, are they? I can’t the last time I felt this good.”

A trodden body is indeed a wonderful outcome of a day well spent: it allows no turbulent mind. In my line of work I met so many clients who complained that they could only fall asleep with the TV or radio on. I wanted to explain that you shouldn’t have those damn things in your bedroom, but what would be the point? Nowadays if you don't own a plasma screen TV, people think you're an extremist - so we just put outlets in each room of their house, whilst contributing to Xanax sales across the nation. Besides, I it I had my own share of days when the buzz of stress was so loud, that at night I needed a noisier thing to knock me off. Tonight it is definitely not the case.

“As-salamu alaykum,” is the first thing we hear in the morning. John unzips the tent and steps outside. “Wa’ alaykum salam,” he replies to Aziz, who is standing next, holding an aluminum can. The day looks steamy, maybe already 30sh degrees. It’s quieter now than last night, and a thresher combs the blond field, filling the air with barley stardust. The man must have noticed us while walking home after milking the cows. I wonder if villagers here mind strangers pitching tents on their land, as they would back home. But Aziz only wants us to have some milk, and his telephone number. How can we acknowledge such kindness? John asks, and the best thing I find is a bag of dates. The milk is raw, lukewarm; I sniff a faint smell of grass. It’ll make for a fantastic breakfast. Generosity of strangers is as moving as in familiar settings we take it for granted. But do we

travel, John wonders, to meet the very people who back home we don’t even notice? The language barrier keeps our encounter somewhat superficial, but nevertheless we part ways happy: I have the sentiment that this is what we came here for. And boy, the day continues to deliver!

The road uphill seems to exist contrary to the will of nature. It slices a razoredge track of dirt, gravel and sand, along mountainsides and canyon faces, through some of the most astonishing vegetal display we have seen. “It reminds of Transfăgaraşan, doesn’t it?” John says. But the Mediterranean climate makes the scenery in the High Atlas dramatically different from home. A succulent flora in the most brilliant magenta carpets crevasses, fragrant juniper and cedar forests rise from sheer rock, and cactuses double every boulder.

The hot weather makes us decide in favor of a dip in the Ouzoud falls. But as we arrive, the touts are on to us. “Parking here!” says one. We look around; there is no parking, no sign, nada. “We’re fine, thank you,” John tries to dodge. But the parking guy won’t give up that easily: “Want to see waterfall? I take you to waterfall. Official guide, 20 dollars.” Now, we appreciate people’s ingenuity in trying to make a living, but the waterfall is behind that shrubbery over there. Actually, the roar is almost louder than the tout’s voice, and if we squint, we can see the water flowing. If all that the tout wants is to point it to us, I’m afraid that at twenty bucks a pop, we are unconvinced it is a snip. So we . Down the stream the waterfall has carved a couple of pools. There are a couple of dozens Moroccans out here. As inconspicuously as we can, we strip down to our knickers and sneak in. The coldness of the water stuns me. When I’m ready to pop out, the air feels like a giant blow-drier. It wicks my skin within seconds.

Back from the swim, our guy is still there. This time he wants to fix us a meal, but no, thanks, I’ve already seen the toilet, which is next to the kitchen, and frankly, the loo was the better looking of the two.

But hungry we are: the bite is had in Azilal, and the respective calories spent

climbing from 2000 to 4000m altitude. We lifeless valleys with cactusinfested walls, solitary holm-oaks and pines, and the occasional Berber settlement, nestled in the bare folds of the mountain. If not for the barely-there windows and the trodden-dirt roofs sewed on top of the walls, the huts, molded onto sheer rock, would be invisible to us.

We continue eastward, and up. The soulless vistas have us wonder if we’ve taken a wrong turn somewhere. To add to the stress, the swirling road starts to disintegrate in clumps of boulders and icy water. This means landslides, but how recent? Should we worry that they are still at work higher up? After the initial baptism in a shallow pool, the wet sections rarely allow a dry patch, until the right side of the road eventually collapses into the abyss. We see kites circling high above. Our accelerating pulse and freezing knuckles aside, this is a place of unbridled beauty. That’s why we enjoy traveling overland so much: it’s uncomfortable and engaging; it makes us process every inch of the voyage with every atom of who we are, leaving us unable to stay indifferent, or the same.

John suddenly stops, takes the camera and positions it in front of us, at arm's length. “What are you doing?” I ask. “I'm going to take our picture. So I don’t forget you, or all this.” Since Azilal we haven’t seen a soul all day. When the road appears to end, children come running with wide faces, slanted eyes and gnarled hair. We are in Imilchil.

Raja

Fatma is beautiful. High cheekbones burnt by the wind, strong eyebrows, almond-shaped eyes – the eyes of a mother. The scarf she wears wrapped over her hair matches her robe, which is stained with proofs of a busy day in the household. She is not much older than me, really, but quite taller. The way she stands there, holding her youngest, says “I belong.”

“Good evening,” I say.

“Good evening.”

“We’re looking for a place to sleep. Can you help us?”

“You can stay with us,” Fatma says.

I’m not sure what she means. It’s too cold to sleep outside.

“At the gite,” she smiles again.

We are in luck. Meaning a place to hide or to rest overnight in case of heavy snow, a gite d’etape is usually a wooden little house in remote alpine areas of central Morocco. Trekkers and sometimes even the herders use them. Fatma and her husband Aziz have organized a gite in a room of their house. Their typical Berber homestead is built by Aziz. The walls are painted in white and are made of dirt, which is not red, like in the lowlands, but grayish brown, like the mountain. The kitchen, the saloon and the residential wing with the bathroom are organized as three separate units connected by a small uncovered inner yard where we park the bike. A narrow hallway leads to a central space: two small windows cut right under the roof flood the entire house with a soft light. There are three bedrooms: one for the children, one for the parents, and one for the gite, where four hay mattresses are lined up. In another room Fatma has a vertical loom for making traditional wool crafts. Aziz, who is a licensed guide, sells them in their shop, up in the village. Fatma’s artisanship is evident around

the house: colorful kilims and tapestry cover the simple cement floors and the walls, blankets soften the sofa in the saloon, and Berbers symbols are woven onto everything to bestow prosperity on the family. In a small tray placed under the window, rose petals are drying out, filling our room with delicate scent. Everything is clean and has its place; it’s a proper home.

It is hard to imagine that these people are Aït Haddidou Berbers, belonging to the last semi-nomadic tribes in North Africa. Traditional shepherds, their forefathers emigrated in the 11th century from Boumalne Dadès to higher altitude, where conservative social norms and geography make finding a partner a complicated affair. To fix that, one of the most famous Berber events in the world was designed: every September the of the tribe gather in this alpine village for Imilchil Marriage Festival. It’s probably the only time of year when camouflaged as it is in the rockscape, the place doesn’t appear deserted.

We bring our bags inside the gite. Raja is standing in the door, her brown eyes gulping with curiosity the details of my face and of my biking gear. She is irresistibly cute - you can tell why she’s the family’s darling – not just because she’s the youngest. I take her in my arms as she probably knew I would. Raja has the most delicate skin, soft henna-died curls, but she is proper heavy - a wellbuilt, strong mountain baby. Her brother is playing outside and her older sister, already in her early teens, takes us to meet him. Amzil jumps straight into John’s arms. He carries the boy to the house, where Fatma is heating water for a bath.

Cleaned and fed, I cuddle in the sleeping bag. I can’t help wondering if everything in our life – our childhood, the stint in architecture, the accidents – were supposed to lead us to this exact point, but I fall asleep before arriving at the answer.

African People - The Berbers

By early Roman, Greek, and Phoenician colonial s, several tribes collectively known as Berbers were already living in northern Africa around 3000 B.C. In the old Greek “Barbarian” meant non civilized, which was what the Greeks called the Germans, Celts, Iberians, Thracians, Persians, and generally all that was not Greek. The Berbers call themselves “Imazighen”, the free. Even if they are non-Arabic tribes, as many have converted to Islam over the last several hundred years and as some trace their lineage to Yemen, Berber people are often referred to as Arab-Islamic.

Historically the Berbers were nomadic, transporting goods by camel caravans across the five Trans-Saharan trade routes which ran from the northern Mediterranean coast of Africa to the southern edge of the Sahara, to cities like Mali’s legendary Timbuktu. Today most Berbers are farmers in the mountains and valleys throughout northern Africa, and only a few still do trade throughout the region.

Plastic Sandals vs. Enduro Boots

In the morning the house smells of fresh bread. Fatma has laid out for us a couple; couples more are folded and ready to be baked in the clay oven. A tagine pot is simmering on the fire. With its coziness, this charming place tempts us to cancel our nomadic intentions, and just stay. But there’s a grey area on the map that I am curious about. So after breakfast we take the road to Dadès.

Enter the most thrilling piste so far. Past Agoudal village the road isn’t sealed. Soon gravel turns to traces in the dust, and then disappears altogether under a

riverbed. I am feeling the crunch of every single extra pound of gear on that bike, so we decide that Ana should walk until solid ground. I stop every now and then to let her catch up, but I ain’t much faster than her, really.

After about a mile, I notice that Ana has removed her helmet. She isn’t alone anymore. He sees my bike and lets out a faint sound of surprise. “Tisbah 'ala kher” I greet the man who seems to have materialized out of thin air. “Tisbah 'ala kher” he says, and some other thing, possibly in Tamazight. He is very thin; wrapped rather than dressed in thick grayish fabric, and he carries a stick. But I’m sure that we look just as alien to him as he does to us. And frankly, I am too hot to worry, or to think. Ana keeps quiet: walking in boots on the sharp stones through ankle deep water must be tiresome for her, but the man seems to do it effortlessly just in plastic sandals.

Little after we re the road, the man stops and points to a lump of rock – a hut in the distance. He shouts, and a woman comes out and waves; then he turns his back to us and starts walking to that shelter of some sort which allows these people to exist in such remoteness. With our mountain of gear, GPS and water filter we feel again inadequate. Nothing about the place says home to me. The strange geological formations, the pattern of bare rock and tumbleweed, the silence, the ferocious emptiness – it’d be more reasonable to suspect it’s another planet than our own. I realize how little I understand it, how I cling to what’s familiar, reluctant to surrender it to the distance. Images of my dear ones and Bucharest flash by; the time and the space I have put between us are now tangible. It’s time to move on. It’s time to own my decision.

I am fully torqued for the road ahead. And the piste certainly does not disappoint: alternating sand with bog, decent gravel with rocky goat paths, climbing to frosty mountaintops at 3000m, and then sloping down in hairpins, it could rightfully feature on lists of the world’s greatest roads. But it is a bitch to drive, really.

When time comes for me to inevitably bite the dust, I have two reasons to feel lucky: first because Ana is not in the saddle at the time, and second for wearing enduro boots. What has happened? I was climbing a stretch carved by downpours, with deep trenches running along for many meters, the last place I would expect a kid to jump in front of my wheels. I tried to avoid the waving’n’screaming apparition, and lost the back, sliding in a ditch with all the 250kg of bike on my left foot. The kid was petrified, and his dad or older brother came running to watch the process of getting myself, and then my foot, out of the trap. Have I not had proper boots on, the panniers would have crushed my shin. Of course soft luggage helps avoid such problems, but those were never an option for our 2-up journey. Now I have dented panniers, but an unharmed limb. Since our cheap aluminum boxes appear to be worth their price and I am still a man potentially defeated by gravity, we feel that it is better if I have less weight to drop. So every now and then, Ana gets a chance to test if her riding boots are made for walking. She can also pay more attention to the surroundings.

“Camel!” she shouts promptly, pointing somewhere to my left. The camel chews on like: “I’m a dromedary, you fool!” but who are we to speak dromedary? Then a dozen more long legged creatures become visible: it’s as if our eyes are slowly becoming accustomed to see in the dark. The day is still young and things are looking positive, but I still have to focus and push hard. We need to reach the city early enough to avoid another after dark scramble for a bushcamp. I need a good average speed and will have to ride for about six more hours with only very short stops, perhaps once every two hours. After six years on road bikes, the High Atlas is my maiden off-road trial, so progress continues to be fun, but slow. I work hard to cover 100km in the first four hours, then, as we cross a last river, the gorge of Dadès suddenly allows a different world to unfold.

Tarmac spaghetti zigzags down and a scarlet canyon cracks open for a patchwork of gardens, crops and gushing springs. Climbing the mountain was frugal, there was nothing but the sky to aim for; on descent the landscape opens full of sun, and the mind can wander. The summit has stripped our soul to the bare. Back in the lowlands, we are relishing the aspects of community. Things are easy again.

Lush oases explode, olive and orange trees and date palms sway in warmer winds. Women and children lean in the fields, cutting hay by hand, stacking it in small bunches, then wiping the sweat off their foreheads to wave. The villages we cross appear to share one mill, and donkeys to be the transport of choice, if anybody here ever had a choice.

In Dadès the vibe is political, and festive. This is Morocco’s take on the Arab Spring, which has been bubbling for six months across North Africa and the Middle East. Rallied behind the recent Referendum on constitutional reforms, hundreds of people have taken to the streets over the weekend, brandishing flags and posters of the King. We ride by dozens of cars – maybe the same from a few days ago in Meknes. The men and women are young and look quite happy that their equally young King is willing to loosen his grip. We shake a few hands and search for a peaceful spot outside town. Tomorrow we’ll leave at sunrise for the place where Sahara begins.

Up: Raja, the Berberi toddler from Imilchil. Below: everyday look.

“We don’t see things the way they are. We see them the way we are!”

Talmud

Into The Desert

Chapter Ten

A Pink World

There’s something about this wide stretch of sand and rugged mountain that bewilders the imagination: one third of Africa is Sahara – and scientists say the desert keeps advancing south, towards the fringes of the tropical rainforest. A Berber tale says that this is the ebb of a once a lush garden of jasmine, palm trees and nightingales, a place of harmony where all men and women were honest and kind. It all ended when someone told the first lie. “Each time one of you lies again,” God said, “I’ll throw a grain of sand onto the earth.” The people didn’t think much of a little grain of sand, but lie after lie, the story says, the world was covered in sin, leaving only the odd oases as testimony that not all men lie.

The dunes of Sahara rise from two sides of Morocco, in two different shades of yellow: golden in M’Hamid, and a psychedelic pink in Merzouga. We were going to do both. Purists say Merzouga has been too heavily touristed, but in the ides of summer, daytime temperatures rarely drop below 50°C, so few bother to visit. The downside of dog days is that it’s gruesome to camp, unless you pack a touareg tent of goat hair, which foolishly, we don’t. So there is nothing else to do at noon in the Sahara, but nap, sip water and save our energy for later. Suddenly a light rain patters the baking sand, but the miracle only lasts for a few brief minutes.

It’s our first night in the desert - we think how hot it is, and that we’ll have to ride in this for days. Too excited to sleep, we wake up early, to catch the sun rising behind the glistening mirage that is Erg Chebbi, a 160m high dune bordered by the village of Hassi Labied. The desert looks lifeless, but close to the village there are faint traces of snakes, small rodents and some other godly

creatures. Brittles grasses pop here and there.

From here and up to the Nile, nothing but more of the same spans the entire continent. John and I are insignificant specks. And once again, it is not just geography that astonishes. The ocean of sand tempts us deeper, revealing newer, more voluptuous shapes with each step that is soon erased by wind. I climb the dunes, trying to guess where it’s solid and where it would crumble under my foot, how far I am from John, or from the village, and I am wrong every time. I’m stopping often for photos. Then I lay on my back: Sahara’s sky is steep, the steepest my eyes have ever seen. Such extreme places – like deserts or mountain tops, I think – have the potential to change you. I breathe in, and I feel the millions of atoms of raw cosmic material interacting with my body, becoming the flesh and bones that I inhabit (as Deepak Chopra writes). Or perhaps I’m just hallucinating from the heat.

The Weakest Link

My rant suggests we lingered; we did not. On the next day a technical problem we have been nursing for a while now becomes serious. “What was that?” I say when I hear the ping-chug-ping resonating from underneath the bike. It’s the sound of something metallic meeting its demise, and coming from a vehicle that is much more than machine to us, we both take it quite personally. I watch helplessly as John, who has been honing his mechanic skills since tender age, lurches to investigate. “Yeah, it’s just as bad as it sounds,” he says solemnly. He means that our chain, barely used when we left Romania, has just become useless after less than 5000 km in Africa. “Forget about M’Hamid,” John says, “we have to ditch it now, or get stuck who knows where, if we are lucky to even make it that far.” We are carrying half of bike in spares, so I assume we’re set, but do we have a chain? “No dude, this one was meant to hold until Cape Town.” Within moments a storm breaks out in our corner of the Sahara – we are having our first fight of the trip. Somehow though, call it motorbike catharsis or just heatstroke, before long we are both smiling again; there is no practical or

personal reason to stay angry in our situation, we have committed ourselves to this adventure, and to this home-on-wheels; we are stuck with one another and both with a blue Ténéré. “We’ll be fine.” John says, and I know he’s right. We just need to crawl to Ouarzazate, the nearest place where it’s possible to order a replacement chain from Casablanca.

The 400km road happens to cross more of the Sahara: the desertificated Drâa Valley. Whimsical as it may appear, the desert it’s actually a battlefield for survival. Every lizard, bug and plant that we see, appears marvelously adapted to life in this harsh, waterless environment. Thorny shrubs, thistles of all description and prickly seeds don special “wings” ready to make use of the faintest breeze. We are hardly as well equipped. We make tiny, incremental progress, with agonizing efforts. Our bodies cringe to stop and the chain is audibly dying on us. It takes a fair amount of diligence to keep doing this grind.

In the blazing sun the sky is so blue, the gravel so red and the shadows so black, that I can feel each pixel of this Daliesque landscape scratching my retina.

Up & below: the Sahara.

“The best things in life make you sweaty.” Edgar Allan Poe

Head First

Chapter Nine

Brain Of Lamb, Voice Of Nightingale

Up on Tizi-N-Tichka the air is cooler, but as the road tumbles in hairpins towards the arid expanse of the central plateau where Marrakech splendor awaits, the temperature starts rising again with every kilometer, until our riding gear clings to our sweaty bodies like Berber houses onto the mountain. We have a new chain since Ouarzazate, so we are in no hurry to waste the vistas. Huts cluster, fortified mud-brick villages and citadels dot the horizon and myriad of paths disappear into an overcast valley.

We've now traveled for a while across the desert, but Sahara proves just training ground for Marrakech. This is a steamy, bursting with energy mess of a city; finally a proper introduction to urban Africa. Instant love or hate deal, it hits us like a punch in the face. To survive the unbelievable heat and humidity, we strip to flip-flops, leaving our bike in the guarded parking behind the Koutoubia mosque, our riding gear strapped-on as best as we can, and the cover thrown over. We dive headfirst.

If New York has Times Square and London the Piccadilly Circus, the beating heart of Marrakech is Djemaa el-Fna (‫ﺟﺎﻣﻊ اﻟﻔﻨﺎء‬. ‫)ﺳﺎﺣﺔ‬. It’s a nine centuries old living organism, the hub of the community and a chaotic arena: the hum of storytellers and tourist touts, the frantic din of snake charmer’s oboes and gnaoua drums, the Berber potion makers quarreling for customers with henna artists, the swirling Senegalese dancers… I see no direction to this flow, but I sure smell it: beyond the carts chuck full of animal bits said to cure both broken heart and body, there are dozens of stalls arranged around a smoking barbecue. “What’d you think?” John asks, and I nod; I am suddenly very hungry indeed.

If I may indulge in overstatements, let me start by saying that few cities can rival the street food variety and quality of Marrakech. And when it comes to placing an order at one of Djemaa el-Fna’s mobile stalls, well, the sky is the limit. Food is banked up in the middle: a dizzying array of seafood, spicy tagines, lamb guts and whatnot awaits whomever can make up their minds. Even whole-baked sheep heads lay in a row, like the old Marrakech pasha’s enemies that once hung on the nearby city walls. Djemaa el-Fna, they say, means “place of annihilation”. People continue to attend its public executions, and happily they are no longer under, but behind the knife. Insha’Allah we’ll them behind the fork. John points to barbecue stall number 14: is that sheep tongue? To some diners this might sound gory, but the melt-in-your-mouth chunks of tongue sizzling in cumin are some of the tastiest street treats around.

Bring on stall 31; the smell is inebriating, so we sit down and let our taste buds rejoice. The cook offers us a choice of deep fried mussel or squid, with soft or crispy dough. But the next treat is unabashedly, exuberantly delicious. Snail soup with thyme: a buoyant handful of shells topped with the briny taste of the ocean. Even a locavore’s delicacy can be had here for less the usual price and minimal fuss. The Moroccan pastilla may be a pastry, but stuffed to overflowing with pigeon mince, pine nuts and raisins and dusted with cinnamon, this one is anything but mundane. “Fancy some brain?” says John. He knows it is one of my favorite foods, the way my mum makes it. But what separates this version from everything else I had before is the cut of meat (sheep instead of beef) and the spices that go into the clay pot where the buttery thing was baked. Over the decades, the taciturn chef has built up a loyal clientele willing to wait up in sweltering rows for a spot on the bench and a plate of his masterpiece. Then we taste the tangia, a local creation of mutton or beef slowly cooked in a doughsealed clay pot with cumin, ras-el-hanout, preserved lemons and olives. What results is an extraordinary street food meal with the cumin salt and the flat bread served separate. If proof is needed of its flavor, come to Marrakech, a city that over the last hours I have come to believe is the most sheep-centric in the world.

On the fringes of this meat bonanza there’s a belt of fresh orange juice squeezers

and gem-like sweets and pastry vendors, but sadly we never make it with enough space in our stomachs. Well, that’s what second days are for.

As the heat of the day wanes and the night progresses, crowds migrate shoulderto-shoulder back to the entertainment area, forming circles around performers. The halqu – street theatre – is in full swing: hands tied in front and with beads of perspiration dripping from his brows and into his heavy moustache, a man is bellowing at the top of his lungs. These artists seem to know that if it falls flat, their performance would certainly be sanctioned by the audience. When we leave the square, another man – apparently immune to the heat in his thick woolen robe - is bewitching a pair of spitting cobras poised to strike.

We’re spent, and for a change, tonight we will not return to tenting. The Moroccan riads are world famous and Marrakech boasts some of the best; with so many months of travel ahead, we are obviously not fit to splurge on a proper one, it doesn’t take long though to find a shabby riad to fit our budget. It’s a crumbling old building, not the glamorous type you see in magazines, but charming nevertheless. Our zellij- covered room doesn’t even have a fan, yet it gloriously opens to the central atrium, where in the morning nightingales gather and sing by a spurting fountain. What wonderful simplicity! We architects strive to imitate nature’s ways, when it would be much easier to just let it enter our buildings and infuse life into our designs.

After another delicious breakfast, we return to a resurrected Djemma el-Fna where mobile restaurants, fortune-tellers and diviners are slowly regrouping. Two months ago a terrorist attack has rattled the square, and in plain daylight we can see the damage. Men are at work to rebuild the bombed building and keep the show going. Back home we never have to deal with such threats, and we are hardly equipped to understand them. Here it’s the local folk that suffered most, yet nothing seems to quell their spirit; it is a miracle that this square hasn’t been yet bulldozed out to make way for a mall!

Djemma’s light and amplitude couldn’t contrast more with the labyrinth of dark and dusty souks. This is a different kind of chaos: jeweled mirrors, rusting teapots, leather handbags and baboush slippers stacked on top of spices and Chinese merchandise, making us stop, take photos, or just appreciate the mosaic. But the medina is not as tidy as in Fez, nor as intimate as in Meknes, and we get too tired and too hot to continue. Luckily, beyond the sacks of saffron and almonds of the city’s souk, a magnificent wooden door catches John’s eye: the 16th-century Ali ben Youssef Medersa. This wonderful Koranic school is nothing like the noisy, blistering hot rest of the medina; we spend a good few hours exploring it, and then escape from more midday heat in the shade of Jardin Majorelle, a vast collection of cactuses and other bush.

Soon, gluttony forces us to return to our main sport in Marrakech: eating. Be it a protein load in the carnivore’s “mechoui alley”, or another plate of über hot sheep brain simmered in cumin, we keep getting properly stuffed and visibly chuffed.

By evening we arrive back at the bike to discover that our boots have incandescent buckles and that the soap has melted into a shapeless blub. It takes a while to gear back into shape, and when we’re done, what we have on is already soaked in sweat. All this intensity has us longing for the calmness of the desert, which we vaguely as a distant mirage from another life. We certainly hope to find it somewhere else again, and soon we will. But it is to be neither easy, nor without hazard.

On this page: Ali ben Youssef medersa of Marrakech.

North-African Architecture - Berber Vernacular Architecture

Typically, nomadic Berbers lived in tents made out of goat hair called khalima. During their sedentary period, they started to build ksours, fortified villages and kasbahs, fortified citadels. The building materials - adobe, stone and sun-dried brick – make them blend seamlessly with the environment, but also vulnerable to decay. A homestead consists of several separate dwellings surrounded by a wall and is usually shared by an extended family. Because it’s prevalent in the south of Morocco, this architectural style was dubbed the “Southern Kasbah”.

Islamic Architecture

Once amongst North Africa's largest Koranic schools, Ali ben Youssef Medersa used to host as many as 900 students from Muslim countries all over the world. Their former sleeping quarters resemble monks' cells organized around the courtyard. With its six Carrara-marble columns from the prayer hall, and intricate decoration of gibs (stucco plasterwork), carved thuya, and zellij (mosaic) which depict palm motifs and Islamic calligraphy, the building appears taller than it really is. The intelligent design of hallways and windows allows the medersa to ventilate naturally.

The Riad

The traditional Moroccan house took the elements of Hispano-Moorish architecture to the next level. The riad is inwardly focused, designed to allow family privacy – as required under Islam - and protection from the elements. It is entered through a succession of windowless rooms that open to the central atrium and garden where live trees and fountains are sometimes present. The austere façades disguise the splendor of the interior, which is decorated with arabesque, Koranic calligraphy and geometric patterns.

African Cuisine - Maghreb

Food is a reason in itself to visit Morocco. Breakfast usually means flat bread dunk in olive oil or eaten with honey-sweetened leben (a yoghurt variety), or couscous with sour milk served on ice by street-side vendors. In Fez bakeries sell spongy Moroccan pancakes. Lunch must be a tagine - a typical stew of meat or fish, slowly cooked on charcoal in a unique clay pot that shares the name with the dish. Dinner is protein-based: kafta (minced meat) or harira (bean soup with aromatic herbs, which in Agadir is served with a local twist: dates, a boiled egg and a piece of hard caramel!). Other signature Moroccan treats are freshly squeezed orange juice and strong tea perfumed with fresh mint (le whiskey marocain). Tap water is safe to drink countrywide.

Moroccan produce is regional: the best finds are in and around the Imperial Cities. Fez boasts a unique fassi cuisine with treats like b’sara (a soup of fava beans served with fragrant garlic olive oil), pigeon pastilla (a pastry stuffed with mince and heavily spiced with cinnamon) and a thick, burning hot sausage of mutton and offal. Meknes has the freshest figs and a variety of flat bread sprinkled with cumin; pure eucalyptus, almond or cactus honey is produced high in the Atlas; Erfoud is famous for its Medjool dates and for Khalia, a mutton tagine containing a whopping 44 spices; Marrakech is home to sheep meat and offal delicacies like tangia (mutton or beef slowly cooked in a dough-sealed clay pot with cumin, ras-el-hanout, preserved lemons and olives), sheep brains and tongue, and mechoui (whole sheep baked with spices in a vertical clay oven) a dish that has earned its own alley in the medina (the old town). All coastal cities boast superb fish; in “Banana Village” near Agadir grows a local variety of banana and cactus fruits. Souks (traditional markets) across the country offer tasty veggies, mutton and beef kafta, dried fruits and nuts, along with top quality spices like saffron, paprika, cumin and ras-el-hanout. Also, it will be difficult to leave the country without buying some good quality shit.

“Life is a sum of all your choices" Albert Camus

Smooth Criminal

Chapter Ten

Ingredients

He has described himself to me as, alternately, an “artist”, and “the last vigilante in Essaouira.” He owns a spice shop in the medina, and sometimes organizes tours and accommodation for the few tourists who straggle out to this side of Morocco. The smell in his boutique, where jars of incense, condiments and tea line the shelves next to food dye and henna, is intoxicating. He gives me that weird look again: “Don’t worry, I’ll help you,” he says. But it’s an awfully pathetic catchphrase for this unlikely savior. Besides, I already know that Simon is a liar.

I smile politely and excuse myself for having to consult Ana in Romanian. I’m thankful that our lingo offers now the refuge that tourists from former colonist’s countries rarely enjoy. We have to discuss how to fix our first great mistake; in the three weeks of journey across Morocco we have never made an error like it: we are here because we’ve been robbed.

Yesterday at 5pm when we left Marrakech, the roadside thermometer read 53 degrees Celsius, but 200 km further, in Essaouira, the wind capital of Africa, it’s a chilly 22. Here every morning begins at noon; as the ocean mist fades off and the sun starts shining, everybody in Essaouira feels hungry. Somewhere deep inside the medina, fishermen are spreading the day’s catch: sardines, crabs, octopus, mullet, sea beams, marlin, barracudas and swordfish. People buy their bits, and then leave the bags in line at a three meter-long public grill, where fish will be charcoaled and smoked to perfection for only 5 Dirham per plate. It’s just that the place isn’t easy to find. Sure, cobbled streets throughout the medina are lined with seafood bistros: these are the tourist restaurants. There is also some

fresh fish in the port. But the really good stuff is tucked away behind any photogenic va-va-voom.

The white and blue architecture of Essaouira echoes a distant Spanish influence; the colonial settlers were once stopped with cannons still visible in the fort. A sleepy market town until about six years ago, the picturesque town has recently become a hotspot for western bourgeoisie. Prices in the medina have exploded, expatriates are buying holiday homes and opening new businesses throughout town, and their white Q7 4x4s are lining the beach in the nouvelle ville. It may be a heaven for wakeboarding and kite running, but the Northwest trade wind of humid Atlantic anticyclones, the Aliseo, drives every sun-worshiper away. Only on Fridays the wide strip of sand is covered in people out for a stroll or a picnic. The locals are mellower here than elsewhere in Morocco: it’s easier to walk unnoticed, the light is softer, and the narrow streets are animated by seagull’s shadows and gnaoua music.

Method

We relax so much that we walk straight into a trap. North of medina, there’s a winding alley where the last artisan vendors of Essaouira seem to congregate: a fresh produce market, a butcher, two shacks with fried fish, a tailor selling traditional djellaba and kaftan, some bakeries and a couple more teleboutiques with leben and eggs, water, washing powder and mobile cards. In the back of the alley there it is - that fabulous public grill. There are no souvenir shops here. No tourists. Women lay out their laundry to dry in the blazing sun, kids play, vendors broadcast their best deals. Inside the fish market though, it’s pure mayhem.

We jostle in to auction our lunch. There’s shouting, and shoving, and people crowding in. Soon enough I feel my backpack move; or at least I think I do.

When I turn around to check, the men behind me just sit there, hands in their pockets, eyes on the fish. A minute later I feel it again, I look again, and this time I see my guy making his way out across the crowd. I put my hand inside the bag and it takes a moment to know. “He grabbed the GPS!” I shout, and rush after the thief. But within minutes he simply vanishes in the maze of alleys and shadows of the medina.

I get back to Ana, who is waiting for me outside the market with a desperate look on her face. We’ve taken a serious blow: many days of work, many gigs of data – basically all our maps - and our most essential piece of kit, all gone. Albeit we have lost our appetite along with the GPS, there is no point to waste two kilos of perfectly good fish. We line our bag next to chatty locals, and wait silently. That’s when Simon comes in.

Aftertaste

He looks like a hipster gigolo: five foot two, tanned body, western clothing.

“Look,” he says in French, “this dude” (and he points to a second guy in rags and smeared coif) “he says he saw you earlier chasing someone. He asks if somebody took something from you.”

Bang! So we got pwned… “Yeah,” I say.

“What was it? Your wallet?”

“No, man, a GPS.”

The bum says something in Arabic. “He knows the thief,” translates Simon. “He’s offering to go to his place and get your thing back.”

“Right, now why would that work?”

“Look, man. This ain’t a town, it’s family. Everybody knows everybody. He knows him, he knows his mum. He’s gonna get there, tell him he’s got the cops on him or something, and get your thing back. That’s all.”

“What’s the deal, then?” I ask.

“He helps you out, you are nice to him… give him a gift. Come, you and your wife can figure this out in my shop,” Simon says. “It’s round the corner. Here’s not safe.”

I look at Ana; it pains us to fall victim to such petty scam, but we want to see where this is going, and we have at least another hour to kill until our fish gets barbecued. I suspect that this gang was hoping for a smartphone or money. What they got instead is a gizmo that is a hard to sell, and of little use for a local. So why not try to sell the thing back to me, right? Let’s see, I say, maybe all is not lost. Shipping a new GPS from Europe to Morocco would cost us a wad of cash anyway.

“Follow me,” Simon says. “I told them to bring your fish to the shop when it’s

ready.”

In the dim-lit boutique there’s a small gang of backpackers hanging out: two Canadian chicks and a French guy. “Where’re you from?” they giggle, as Simon’s friend starts brewing a tea of verbena, cardamom, cinnamon, rose petals, and surprisingly, no narcotics.

Sometime later the fish arrives, and yeah, it is delicious. But it’s after we’ve bought our stolen GPS back from the thief, for roughly 30 Euros. As much as we’d like to explore more of Essaouira, after losing our anonymity in such a public way, it’s time to move.

Environmental Concerns - Where is the fish?

With 3500 kilometer of coastline, the Kingdom of Morocco is the largest fish market in Africa. It is hard to imagine that these nutrient-rich waters can be depleted of fish, but the environment has suffered greatly from water sources contamination, over-fishing and poaching. The numbers of the native species are dwindling, which calls for drastic repopulation measures. Unfortunately this means that there are now more young fish than matured in the water, and vessels therefore harvest bigger loads because of the smaller fish sizes.

“I thought that my voyage had come to its end at the last limit of my power, ---that the path before me was closed, that provisions were exhausted and the time come to take shelter in a silent obscurity. But I find that thy will knows no end in me. And when old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.”

Rabindranath Tagore

Sand, Sky & Everything In Between

Chapter Eleven

Office Tan

After the assault on my backpack and on our reputation in Essaouira, we turn to Agadir for a more relaxing environment. We must deal a.s.a.p. with an unfinished project from Romania; we promised our clients to do it before leaving Morocco. They fear that once in Mauritania, we’d get immediately kidnapped, stabbed and shot.

“It’s not like that at all,” John told them in Bucharest. “Romanian hostages aren’t popular with kidnappers. Besides,” he joked, “stabbing and shooting almost never happen to the same person. It’s usually just one or the other.”

But clients don’t pay us to be funny. First we stop on a beach outside town, where we quickly wear off the laptop battery while skyping our mums. To do our job, we need to get a decent room with actual electrical outlets and light bulbs and a table; in one word, stop vagabonding. Working inside all day long, shelters us from the sun and from the zero-personality of the package-tourism scene of Agadir. Because they own miles of prime beachfront real estate and the mildest climate in Morocco, you’d think that the locals have become accustomed with the sunbathing crowd. But we soon start suspecting otherwise. At least vendors in the market and patrons of the harira stand we visit every night aren’t particularly fond of westerners who flaunt their bronze naked skin in skimpy white mini-shorts and halter dresses. With our “office tan”, long sleeved shirts, baggy pants and a sketchy at best attempt at Arabic, we look like another breed of aliens, and this encourages people to chat. They are curious to find out where we’ve come from, and why we aren’t at the beach. Our answers seem to be to their liking: Hakim, the tomato vendor gives us discounts, the grocer offers a

handful of Medjool dates, the fruit vendor cleans our cactuses for free, and we are even pitched the real price for olives. “Come inside if you like” says one day the friendly baker on our street; but I’ve learnt my lesson. I remain on my side of the counter and ire silently the precise kneading and shaping of the dough, and hundreds of flat breads being lined on plank and then into the oven. This bread, honest and tasty, with a dense crumb and a thin, crunchy crust, ensures the survival of generations of artisans, and of an entire nation. Even the wacky Sadirkel has taught us how to appreciate it, the Moroccan way: dipped in fragrant olive oil, bread makes a complete and tasty meal.

We have been by now for over three weeks on the road. Things are starting to show signs of wear: the color in our salt-crusted jackets is paling, the tent is bleaching, and our weights are dropping. But the human is a quirky animal: it’s hard to simplify one’s life, and deceptively easier to let it overcomplicate. Various trinkets packed because of watching too much Bear Grylls are becoming quite a nuisance. It has downed on us that no waterproof matches or foldable shovel are going to save our ass in case of real trouble, as in the desert, or a warzone for that matter, things just ain’t work like that. We’ve had enough of this clutter, of having to pull things aside each time we want to reach the really important stuff. More out of necessity than logic, we are becoming the manbearpigs of the desert: some sort of minimalist hippies. But when we lose our multi-tool - which had tweezers, toothpick, corkscrew and a horseshoe extractor – and I call that “serendipitous,” John declares that it is time to get rid of the unnecessaries. Until Mauritania’s capital Nouakchott it’s very unlikely we’ll find another opportunity to ship stuff home, so we make our way to the post office in Agadir with six and a half kilos of brake plates, broken Kindle, clothing and other bits. Even the tripod has to go. We do hold on to the pepper spray and the machete, and for a while we keep sleeping with them at hand.

Even if achieved empirically, our newly gained ability to thrive in a wilderness we used to consider ourselves unfit for is the ultimate empowering experience. I’ve done little camping before, John is arguably more seasoned; even so, our first two weeks of wild-camping in Africa have been both frustrating and exhausting. Unaccustomed to the variety of sounds in nature, we slept very little, shrieking un-heroically at the faintest grass-swooshing and tent-fly-flapping.

After we relaxed, we moved on to learning how to pitch our tent in ghastly winds, to forage and clean cactus fruits and to navigate by following natural patterns of land and fog. It is a new world of ups and downs, of pleasures and pains. We learn that a success or a fail doesn’t guarantee that we have mastered the move. We learn to improvise, and to do more with less. We try to figure how much food and water we have to carry, and how often we need to resupply. That requires a bit of planning. We make plenty of un-catastrophic mistakes, until it eventually becomes second nature, just like the distribution of tasks in camp. Each takes their share of chores without debating, and as we progress south, setting up and packing out become faster, and the spots we find more spectacular. Our kitchenware consists of one multi-fuel stove, a fire starter and a stainless steel bowl which we use for cooking and serving. A Belgian couple overlanding by van has given us two Delta Airlines sets of plastic fork and knife; we keep them spotless, and continue eating with our hands. Everything that we do to those poor legumes and meats – cutting, chopping, cleaning and stirring is achieved with one two-Euro pocket knife acquired from the Agadir flea market. Showering is still problematic, because fresh water requires some form of paid accommodation, which we try to avoid. After a while we realize that with a couple precautionary measures, not showering for days is no big deal. “It’s just nature” John says: sand in hair, dust on shoes, or rain on roads… since when we’ve started calling all that a dirty inconvenience?

Not too long ago I would shriek at the idea of a bug in my bed and John would not bat an eye without his pillow. But by now, hardened to long hours in the saddle and accustomed to the unpredictability of nomadism, we have found our rhythm. We can claim any wild spot we fancy, and bush-camping is relaxing at last. John still has a sore bottom and neck, and we are still careful to leave no trace behind, yet we wake up ever earlier to make the most of being out here. We eat street-side breakfasts of couscous and sour milk from villages and fill our water bottles from fountains. The beauty and brutality of nature inspire awe and plenty of curse words, but we end most of our days happy to test ourselves in some of the world’s wildest and loveliest environments. We can finally appreciate our freedom.

Our warm-up month is soon coming to an end: after the Souss-Massa, we cross a

dashed-line on the map, entering the southern province of Western Sahara. Ageing international travel warnings list this as one of the most dangerous territories in the world. Perhaps the officials don’t get out that much, because the not-quite-autonomous nothingness is mostly barren, and its scarce population of nomads unlikely to assemble a threat. From here on, there are no more stalls with harira and cow head stew, no more bread-baking ladies in souks, and no souks whatsoever; out in the misty horizon, nothing but featureless, uninterrupted desert. The same Sahara that has begun its dominance along the route we rode on, past the black khalima tents we sipped tea in, spans the last 1000 km to Dakhla and beyond the border of Mauritania. As the sun blesses the end of another good day, we feel like two of the luckiest people alive.

Rahim

A few facts: less than half a million Sahrawi inhabit one of the harshest and most sparsely populated parts of the world. A former Spanish colony, Western Sahara is at the center of an unresolved dispute since 1975: the separatist organization Polisario proclaimed the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, Mauritania withdrew from the conflict in 1979, and a United Nations-sponsored ceasefire agreement was reached in 1991. Then, a wall was built to keep the guerrillas and the cultural tragedy at bay: a two-meter high 2,700 km long structure of sand, with bunkers, wire fences and landmines throughout. This is the Berm of Western Sahara, also known as the Moroccan Wall. It’s arguably the longest continuous minefield in the world.

In our three-day marathon we never see it. The recently built highway lines the Atlantic coast far from the berm. With no steering to do, no traffic lights and no traffic to keep me busy, I can focus on the sightscape: steep cliffs carved by the ocean on one side of the road, and looming, creamy dunes on the other, with the Saharan wind shushing like a ghost river through. I already find riding a motorcycle in itself like a form of being in the moment; it’s much more so when out in the open. And in the Sahara I am in my prime territory.

Except for the wind, our first bivouac is quite romantic: a night quilted with clear Saharan sky, a shipwreck leaning against the thump of the ocean, city lights flickering between two shades of indigo. As soon as we pitch our bedroom, a man comes waving a laminated document. “IT IS FORBIDDEN BY THE MOROCCAN AUTHORITIES TO CAMP IN THIS PLACE” it reads. We’ve heard about these bogus rules, so we came prepared.

“As-salamu alaykum,” I say. “Me and my wife here (and I point to Ana) are coming by motorbike from Romania (no reaction, name doesn’t ring any bell). We want to sleep here tonight; tomorrow we continue to Mauritania.”

He shakes his head vigorously. “No sir! It’s forbidden. You must go to town, to hotel.”

“My friend, we’re very tired, we’ve been riding all day long; we need the rest. Please.”

“Go to hotel! Here’s dangerous.”

“Why is it dangerous?”

“People can attack you.”

I sight. “Listen, I don’t want to get you into trouble. Tonight we stay, tomorrow

morning we go. No need to worry, I take full responsibility for whatever happens; thank you.”

“Do you think he left?” Ana asks after I zip the tent.

“I hope so.”

“You know what? I bet this guy’s not guarding us; he’s weary for others who might come and find out that he didn’t report us.”

“Perhaps you’re right.” Strangers are not necessarily welcome guests everywhere; I guess it isn’t unlikely that such guardians – either self-appointed or official – could fear for their own security, if proven to have sheltered the news, or even worse, the presence of uned visitors.

“What if he comes back with the police?” she says.

I am in no mood to fold back the tent and start searching for another spot. “I guess we’ll have to wait and see. It’s either us, or him. Lets' watch a movie or something, I'm not sleepy anymore.”

“Hey, listen!”

“What is it?”

“Nothing, I mean, it’s the waves; isn’t this like Arugam Bay?”

“Yeah?”

“I used to wake up every morning because of the sound. I’d come outside with my eyes closed, and opened them slowly, hoping to see wales jumping out of the ocean, but I never did.”

“Hold on to that thought; maybe you will.”

It’s dark in the tent, but I bet she’s smiling. She picks a David Attenborough documentary, something about the Arctic, but before the icecap melts we’re both dreaming.

At dawn our guardian is back.

“Did you sleep here last night?” I ask him.

“Yes sir. They call me Rahim,” he says.

“I’m John. This is Ana.”

Rahim tells us he is also a fisherman, and we tell him we build houses; he seems rather impressed. Does he have a wife and kids back in town? I ask.

“No” is his answer. “I lost her to hashish. Then The Prophet, may peace be upon him, told me to come here and change.” He raises his chin to the furious Atlantic: “So I did, but I miss my mountains.”

Rahim is from the Riff area, where a guardian job like his is much envied. It’s a humbling fact; clearly back in our socioeconomic bracket, deluged with options, we haven’t been able to make the best of our plenty. On the other hand, have we been more successful, we would probably never come here like we did, and never meet this man.

Portret d'état civil

Wind becomes a constant for the next days. It blows so hard that riding requires a lot of stamina. To be able to breathe and to keep some of the sand from coming inside the canopy of our double wall tent – which is basically a mosquito net – we build belts of rock around it. Nights are damp and cold and we sleep with everything on. We try not to rush through, but even so, by motorbike we’re too fast to notice the small details of what only appears to be a monotonous landscape. Carcasses of camels and dogs, and even the odd snake that never made it across lie in various stages of decay at the roadside. At the bivouac we take more time to explore: we find shells and fossils of some prehistoric arthropods scattered in the sand and embedded within the boulders. Deep-frying in the sun for so many days, we have forgotten that this is a former sea floor. On day two, the heat rises above 45°C, and our skin starts to feel like an old shirt that doesn’t fit anymore. Water is becoming precious, and scarce; we dissolve a couple of hydrating salts in the bottle, and save it all for drinking. We never imagined the desert before, when researching the prospective route of this

expedition. It was the one thing that slipped. And here it is: a void, and yet a haunting presence. The Sahara we are crossing today is indeed very different from the desert of The One Thousand And One Nights. There are hardly any caravans or camels left, but despite its roads and ghostly towns, this place is still untamed, a world without compromise.

I love traveling. To me, this is what makes the world real. We’ve been to places like Paris, or Sri Lanka during the civil war and had those experiences and we came back; since then these names are never the same. They aren’t just words, they have smell and sound, and their people have names that we . We’ve built a personal relationship with them. But on this land we struggle: its soul remains a mystery. The very few people we meet at all are reluctant to talk to us. With Morocco controlling the territory to the west of the berm and Polisario patrolling the east, but with no border crossings, what lies between feels like a desolate place of paranoia. The official rhetoric appears out of touch with ordinary people. “We're not like the Arabs,” says one Saharawi at a gas station, “to think naively that a violent revolution will magically fix everything. Since the war, things only got worse.”

The clan-based society of the indigenous Hassaniya Saharawi bedouins was broken up after the beginning of the conflict. A part of the population lives in exile in the camps of Tindouf, Algeria. One third of Western Sahara province remains landlocked, dry, resourceless; the other two thirds are divided into five istrative units called wilayas: Boujdour, Smara, Laayoune, Dakhla and Wadi al-Dhahab. It must cost a fortune to pipe water to these cities scattered in the desert. And with Laâyoune every settlement starts to look like props from the M.A.S.H. series. Almost everybody we see is wearing some sort of uniform. Either the locals have a quirky sense of fashion, or Laâyoune is slowly turning into a military base. A wide six-lane boulevard decorated with fountains cuts this town across: after so many days in the desert, the sight of water jetting into the air is simply arresting.

Our best bet to chat with locals is at the police checkpoints. Every fifty

kilometers we must stop and hand over our “Fiche d'état civil” a list with our personal details that should speed up things.

“Hello sir!”

“Hello. Fiche?”

“Here you go sir.”

“Cigarettes?”

“I don’t smoke.”

“Cadeau?”

“No.”

“Rally?”

“Tourist.”

“Where are you going?”

“Mauritania Insha'Allah.”

Smiling: “Wife?”

“Yes.”

“Photo?”

“Sure.”

Even if eventually we get a bit fed up with repeating the same answers, we do need to get off the bike every now and then, and these nice Moroccan lads living in the middle of nowhere look like they could use a bit of friendly conversation. We are happy to pull out our little Polaroid printer and give soldiers businesscard-sized photos of their grin.

Now this is another story. A decent portrait requires method and complicity. It speaks of both subject and photographer, of how they looked at you as you were looking at them. And our first attempts in Africa can’t hide how shy and uncoordinated we were. With each photo though, we are learning the ropes of approaching our subjects. Now I’m forcing myself to engage. I chat to my guy and I learn his name before pointing my camera to his intimacy. I don’t like to do it from across the street, with the telephoto lens. But sometimes it doesn’t work this way. We happen to walk into a beautiful and disturbing scene, like this

butcher shop in Boujdour. Our system is craving protein and as we wait for our kafta to be spiced and cooked, the minuscule stall is assaulted by hungry UN troops: svelte, blonde, joking and shoving. Imagine: the foreground is halal mutton, with background the Sahara. So I take out my camera. It’s not a huge thing, it’s a semi-pro, but to many that screams journalist. This time everyone stops. People, who were friendly a minute ago, turn quiet. I try to say, I’m just a tourist, man, but my explanation is even more offensive. “Why did you leave your home behind if nobody forced you to?” says the butcher.

Up: Off-roading in Morocco. Below: wild-camping in Western Sahara.

“The sea is as deep, there is as much water in the sea, in a calm, as in a storm.”

John Donne

Butt Out

Chapter Twelve

Baby You’ve Got A Stew Going

After days of huffing and laboring we are arriving at destination: the city of Dakhla, sitting at the tip of a narrow peninsula. This time the continent shimmering from across the strip of water is no mirage.

“Tomorrow we’re going to Africa!” I say.

Ana scratches her arm: “We must take a shower.”

Easier said than done; the two campsites in Dakhla have two things in common: abundance of garbage and lack of electricity. We stake out the tent where we find the most faucets, hoping that would increase our chances to sort ourselves out. “I’m a lama again!” Ana says as she emerges from the shower. Slathered in suncream, we venture back in the pulsating heat for a ride around town. It’s an exotic everyday: near a mosque, a barefoot vendor piles cactus fruits on his wooden cart; a white man, 6 feet tall with kaki boots and visible gun, speaks into his mobile; four boys cross the road carrying books. In Europe it’s summer holiday - are these kids going to school? Are they coming home from Koranic study?

Inside the fish market it’s nearing the end of the workday. The floor is covered in scales and a man pours a bucket of water and starts scrubbing. We buy our fish filets without having our pockets picked, and turn to the beach. The shores of

Dakhla are steep, with natural caves, great for a picnic. I light our stove and by the time Ana slices a cactus fruit, lime and fresh chilies salad, we have a stew going. The fish is stunning, with matching surroundings of frigid coast and sea. Bellies full, we want to explore more of the peninsula. It proves so interesting that it requires an extra day. The place is infested with seagulls; the sand has a surreal shade of grey, more of a haze than physical matter. It’s different than the shores of our Black Sea, different than the beaches of South East Asia. This beauty isn’t harvested and packaged for tourists. It just is.

After a field of refuse and the electric fence of the military outpost, we see a path turning left and a sign - “village de pêche” (fishing village). But we see no fishing net or boats, just ragged laundry being hanged out to dry by the most slender men. It is a Sahrawi camp: an assembly of tin shacks, mozzied puddles, and booze ts where guys suspiciously size us up. We feel that our presence here is voyeuristic and inappropriate. So we take our questions, and leave.

At night it takes a while to fall asleep, haunted by memories of Atlas waterfalls, of Raja and of spicy lamb tajines. At 5am, under a moonless but starlight sky we pack up and leave town. By 10am we've safely made it through the sixth checkpoint – only a few more to go before the Saharan highway crosses a border between two countries.

This being a line on the sand in the desert, it gets re-sketched unsurprisingly often, each time with slightly different results. Its exact shape varies according to whose map you’re using, and if other people would blame governments, here it’s the wind. All this political doodling has in time generated a strip about six kilometers wide. This is a UN buffer zone, a “No Man’s Land” crossed by a sandy, rocky, unpaved road that is maintained by neither Moroccan nor Mauritanian authorities. Besides carcasses of vehicles, the strip contains the remnants of a live minefield, left behind from the territorial dispute. That’s where we are heading. With all the early head start, at only a few hours to border shut down, I need to gun down.

Photo Finish

Ambiguous as it is, this border does have its fair share of watchful eyes. With the Harmattan haze, I notice the gesticulating policeman only when it is too late; like all Romanian drivers, I dare to consider myself a veteran, so I brace for the shouting match and emotional blackmail. There are two policemen. One saunters with a badass “you’ve got busted” swagger. He clearly watches “Law And Order” with unable devotion.

“As-salamu alaykum.” I say.

“Wa’ alaykum salam. You know you were doing 110!”

“Was I really!?”

“This is an 80 zone. Is that how you drive in ?”

“I wouldn’t know sir. I’m from Romania.”

“Driving license!”

Now, there is no way I will hand him my papers. “I’m really sorry officer,” I start my plea. “We’re in a hurry to cross the border. It’s quite late, you see.”

“Well, you must pay a fine.”

“But sir, we don’t have any money.”

“Not even 30 euros?”

“Oh, no officer, we've just filled up. We don’t carry any more cash.”

“From Romania huh?”

“Yes, yes. Romania. Hagi.”

“Ah! Hagi! Romania has good football.”

“Well, we did. These days not so much.”

“Hagi… Is he Muslim?”

“Um… I don’t know sir. I believe he is of … um… Turkish origin.”

“Yes! Turkey is Muslim. We Moroccans are Muslim.”

“We know, we’ve been here for four weeks.”

“Four weeks! That’s good. Morocco’s beautiful, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes officer, we went to Tanger, Rabat, Meknes, Fez…”

By the time I get to Marrakech the two policemen are photographing us and the bike with their mobiles. All we have to do now is cross into Mauritania without getting ourselves busted for smuggling a machete, blown up by mines, or ripped off by border officials for not having the mandatory Carnet de age.

Up & below: in Western Sahara provinces of Morocco.

In Numbers

Into The World from Romania to Morocco

Journey

• Countries visited: 7 (Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Italia, Morocco)

• Number of days spent on the road: 34 (10.06.2011 - 13.07.2011)

• Nights in the tent: 24 (minus 1 in the van, 2 onboard the ferry, 1 in gite, 1 in riad, 4 @ Agadir hotel)

• Distance covered by bike: 5500 km

• Fuel burned: 276 l

• Most economical mileage: 4.5% @ 70 km/h off-road

• Highest daytime temperature: +53°C (127F) @Marrakech

• Lowest nighttime temperature: +6°C (43F) @Imilchil

• Record continuous riding (km): 450

• Record continuous riding (hours): 8

• Highest speed: 140km/h

• Highest altitude: 3050m (Imilchil, High Atlas)

Maintanance

• Engine oil used: 3 l

• Air filters cleaned: 1x

• Punctured tires: 0

• Chains used: 1

• Biking gear washed (times): NO

• Bike washed (times): NO

• Haircuts:: NOT YET

Problems

• Off-road crashes: >10

• On-road crashes: 0

• Accidents: 0

• Stops by the police: 1 (excluding checkpoints and military posts estimated to have exceeded 100 in Morocco and Western Sahara)

• Fines for speeding: 1, never paid (Western Sahara)

• Technical issues: 1 (abnormally worn chain with o-rings missing & frozen links)

• Damaged gear: 0

• Health issues: 1 (bee sting - John)

• Stolen items: 1 (GPS - recovered)

• Lost items: 15 (pocket knife + whistle)

Money & Visa

• Fuel: 12,8 Moroccan Dirham/l (1,1 Euro/l)

• Most expensive accommodation: 110 Moroccan Dirham (10 Euro) - Imilchil gite

• Cheapest accommodation: 20 Moroccan Dirham (1,79 Euro) - camping near

Meknes

• Local SIM cards bought: 1

• Vodafone roaming available: YES

• Visa required for Romanian citizens: NU

Fast Facts

MOROCCO

Area: 446,550 sq km

Population: 31,993,000

Capital: Rabat

Currency: Moroccan dirham (MAD)

Languages: Arabic, Berber (60%), French

Ethnic groups: Arab-Berber 99.1%, other 0.7%, Jewish 0.2%

Climate: Mediterranean, becoming more extreme in the interior

Terrain: the northern coast borders the Atlantic Ocean and the interior is mountainous with large areas of bordering plateaus, intramontane valleys, and rich coastal plains.

Roadways: paved: 35,664 km (639 km of expressways), unpaved: 21,961 km (2006)

Environment - current issues: land degradation/desertification (soil erosion resulting from farming of marginal areas, overgrazing, destruction of vegetation); water supplies contaminated by raw sewage; siltation of reservoirs; oil pollution of coastal waters

The route in Morocco.

What It Took

MOTORBIKE

YAMAHA XT660Z TÉNÉRÉ

We chose the legendary Yamaha XT660Z Ténéré and it proved excellent both on-road and off-road.

Get the scoop of how the Ténéré was prepared to meet the requirements of a 55,000km journey across Africa:

White Ténéré (crashed)

- Foot pegs - cheap eBay, larger than OEM, nice quality for the buck

- KTM plastic Handguards

- Puig light smoke Windshield

- NGK CR7EIX Iridium Spark plug

- Stage 3 Kev Fuel Mod

- Cush drive mod

- Custom Leo Vince SBK exhaust

- UNIFILTER foam sport filter

- Stage 3 DNA side filter

- Scottoiler

- Supersprox Stealth Sprocket

- Hyperpro Combi Kit

- 14T JT Front Sprocket

- SW Motech - 30mm Handlebar Riser

- Alutech Cases (2X41L and 1X29L)

- Custom made Alu cases rack

- Custom made aluminium engine guard

- LED auxiliary headlight

- Alu short brake & clutch levers

Blue Ténéré (after an engine swap)

- Front + rear steel braided brake hose

- High Givi windshield

- GPS mount + direct battery charger with backup system

- Custom-made radiator protection

- G-IT aluminum engine shield + crashbar combo

- MK3 pivot pegs

- Unifilter foam air filter

- Kev mod

- Renthal Dakar fatbar with KTM plastic handguards, alu short brake and clutch lever and rallyride foam grips

- Hein Greike tankbag

- Custom made dual Leo Vince SBK exhausts (with custom dB killer)

- 14 tooth JT front sprocket

- touring Scottoiler

- Custom rack for aluTech 41l cases

- Hepko & Becker Gobi topcase

- 150W inverter for gizmo charging

- Hyperpro suspension upgrades (front progressive springs with 15W oil and rear progressive spring)

GEAR

Helmets: Arai Tour X3 + Shoei XR1100

Motorcycle Clothing: REVIT!

Boots: Gaerne SG-10 & SG-J

Camping: tent The North Face Roadrunner 33, sleeping bag The North Face Twin Peaks, mattresses Mammut, Sea to Summit liner; MSR Packtowl; 2x Petzl Tikka

Kitchen: MSR WhisperLite multi-fuel stove + tank; Magnezium Swedish FireSteel; SOG macete

Bags (on top of panniers): 2x55L Outdoor Research Durable dry sack

Photo & It: GPS: Mio 520 (broken, replaced with Garmin Zumo), camera body: Canon 5D Mark II; backup Canon 20D, lens: Canon EF 24mm f/1.4 L USM + EF 70-200mm f/2.8 L USM, Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 EX, tripod: Manfrotto 190XB + 496RC2 Compact Ball Head + 200PL-14 QR (sent home in Morocco), computer: Apple Macbook 13” (2009 model) + Western Digital 1TB ext. HD

What Is Next

Crazy Oyibo Part 2 - Into Africa

„Into The World” motodventure had a slow start, but we like to say “second time lucky.”

The month in Morocco – with a couple of setbacks, some mistakes and at least one lesson learnt – makes us hungry for more. And there’s plenty to do from now on: „black” Africa is just beginning.

We go fishing in the Mauritanian Sahara, we gorge on karité and lianas in Mali and discover an artsy tribe in Burkina Faso. We fall hard for Togo and flee voodoo in Benin. We meet the president in Nigeria, Jesus in Cameroon and a rock star in Gabon. After we cross the two Congo on roads that don’t exist on maps, we find a home away from home in Zambia and see the most beautiful naked women in Namibia. We take a once-in-a-lifetime photo in South Africa, we the alpine test Lesotho, then we change the route: through the air in Botswana, on rails in Mozambique and across the sea in Tanzania. In Kenya and in Ethiopia we face the Flood, we go back to the desert in Sudan, and in Egypt we find out how much is five millennia of history.

You’ll find in Crazy Oyibo maps with the route inside each country, information about the traditions, the vernacular architecture and the gastronomy in Africa, statistics about the expedition, details about visa and technical gear for the motorbike and much more.

Follow the release of Crazy Oyibo Part 2 at: www.intotheworld.eu