Morocco & Rerouting
From Portugal to Morocco, our continental adventures together begin
The start to Amanda and I’s intercontinental adventures together came with many exciting firsts and refreshing endings. The ending of my corporate work life for (at least) the next 2 years, a goodbye to the first European country we semi-traveled together, and an ending to the the first half of our 20s…woah. Most exciting of all, however, was the official leap and ‘first’ we are sharing - traveling untethered from the normality and responsibility of life we’ve shared the past couple years.
And so it begins: laptop closed, bags packed, and a midnight arrival to Marrakech, Morocco on April 5th.
Our midnight arrival in Morocco was an adventure from the offset: navigating how not to get ripped off from the taxi drivers. We would come to learn that the taxi group in Marrakech is mob-like; each area of the city is exclusively covered by a taxi post/group and to catch a cab the “right way”… according to that group… you have to pay their price-fixed rate. Unfortunate for us and our 1am arrival, that price-fixed rate just so happened to be over double an otherwise reasonable rate.
Amanda’s resourceful thinking to call our host and get his advice, which was to walk outside the airport gates, earned us a 60% discount. Sleepy and exhausted from our late travels, we finally made it to our first Moroccan Riad together.
Waking up in the Riad was surreal. The vibrant colors and greenery, stunning tile work, and charming decor that filled every room.
It was the first day, first moment even, where the reality and excitement of our travel journey set in. I couldn’t help but feel so much excitement, gratitude, and appreciation for everything. But especially for Amanda, who really encouraged this reality to come into fruition.
We began our day with the a typical Moroccan breakfast - bread. Today’s assortment included five different Moroccan breads, cheese, yogurt w/ fruit, and of course, tea.
Walking out of our Riad and into the streets of Marrakech, the new-ness of our day created a sense of giddiness inside us. The bustling streets filled with chaotic drivers who loved to honk at everything and small shops & vendors along the roads - it resembled memories I hold dearly from my childhood years in India.
As we successfully avoiding getting hit by any drivers on the road and motorbikes that would zoom through the narrow streets, our first day in Marrakech brought us into many cute artistic shops and the infamous Souks that showcased everything from bags, clothes, jewelry, rugs, pottery, spices, and so much more (including cats).
While we decided not to purchase anything on our first day, we took it as an opportunity to build our intuition in recognizing the tourist markup we wanted to avoid paying.
The beauty of the arts and handmade crafts in the souks paralleled the beauty we saw throughout the city - especially the many palaces, gardens, and mosques. The extensive designs, all done by hand, on the many walls, doors, trimmings, and every part of the buildings, inside and out, were remarkable.
Our liminal time in Marrakech set the stage for a deeper appreciation we would build in Northern Morocco. Having only 5 days in Morocco, and being here as a cheaper hub to fly to Nepal from, this is where we decided to center our time. So after a day and less than 24 hours in Marrakech, we once again took an evening flight and continued our sleepy travels. This time traveling north to the city of Fes, Morocco’s third largest city.
When we arrived late in the evening of the 5th, were kindly greeted by our sweet Riad host Ayub: a maybe mid to late 20s Fes local who helped us navigate the narrow streets of Fes at night, while continuously turning back with the biggest smile on his face as he passionately shared his love for American tv shows like Breaking Bad (which is also how he learned to speak English).
Similar to Marrakech, our day in Fes started with a stroll through the Souks - going in and out and admiring the beautiful pottery and arts. Still uncommitted to purchasing anything, we kept an eye on a few things we wanted to get before leaving the country: a mug (which we hope to collect in every country we visit) and anything we can fantasize being in our future home.
After going into a few shops, we kept a mug and a few of the lamps we saw at the back of our mind - letting our excitement continue to settle in as we continued on with our day.
Walking through the souk-dense streets, which turned out to be far more pleasant than some of the more pushy Souks in Marrakech, we made our way to the Chouara tannery: the oldest open-air leather workshop from the 11th century. The air was pungent with fumes of leather and dye, but fortunately because of the more mild and cloudy weather, we were saved from the worst smells that typically fumigate the area on a dry, hot, and sunny day.
Shortly after visiting the tanneries, we voyaged on to enjoy our favorite activity together: eating. To our demise, we continued to learn the difficulties of finding a local meal that had an ounce of flavor. Amanda blurted out “NOOO” during our lunch, which caught the attention of myself and the other diners. Surprisingly, it was not due to the lack of flavor but because of truly devastating news at the time. Our flight that was set to depart to Nepal in 4 days (and the reason we were in this rushed period in Morocco) had been cancelled because of the war in Iran. We were filled with shock and sadness, unsure what our next steps would be. Of all our travels this year, Nepal was the only semi-planned destination and the one we were most looking forward to.
We spent the rest of the evening game planning, working through all our options, and trying to figure out any chance we could make the flight and timeline still work. But we pivoted towards a new itinerary - one that we were even more excited for. We booked our new flight, marking Turkey as our next destination and deferring our Nepal trip to September - November of this year instead.
The following morning, refreshed from building a new plan, we ventured out to make our first Moroccan purchase of the trip: a coffee mug!
With a new coffee mug and a few personal items we no longer needed, we were scouting an opportunity to send a package back home. Luckily for us, we met a vendor the day prior that gave us just what we needed; if we purchased some of his lamps we were interested in - we could ship all of our items together.
With this in mind and a few hours till our train ride to Meknes, our next city, we stopped by once again to strike a deal. And despite a few back and forths, we couldn’t reach the deal we wanted with the shop owner Nabil.
So, once again, we let our thoughts settle and decided if we really wanted it - we would come back for them.
The afternoon of the 7th brought us to appreciate much more of what we cherished in other parts of Morocco - vibrant colors and beautiful architecture. Yet, Meknes offered a refreshing and slower pace to our days. Hectic streets packaged with vendors turned into more quiet strolls - almost as if we were role playing locals in the new city we were in. Getting lost in the many shops turned into wandering throughout the city, exploring some buildings, and taking in slightly cleaner air… now that we weren’t in a dense cloud of motorbike fumes as we casually walked down the many streets. We even managed to find a meal that offered flavors and spices, how special!
While not particularly eventful, the change of pace helped tee up a deeper sense of intimacy with local culture in a day trip we took the next day to Moulay Idriss.
It’s hard to fully capture the essence of what Moulay Idriss is. Yes, it’s a small local town - one that gives you the impression that everyone knows everyone… a true community. But it’s about what the region embodies that makes it special.
Taking a 40 minute, $2 shared taxi over - we saw incredibly serene views of Morocco and ones that I didn’t know existed here. Rolling green hills, saturated and vibrant with crops growing all throughout, pastures for miles. And in the middle of it all, we arrived to the heart of the city. Situated on what seemed like a hill above this green vastness, it was pretty clear why Moulay Idriss is known for its spirituality. The life was deeply local with nearly all of the people there seemingly living there - school children, workers in a food market, people enjoying their morning coffee and bread(s). We walked through the food markets, seeing live chickens being sold and slaughtered, through side streets where children were playing soccer and running around together, and through the main streets where locals gathered.
What was particularly special was being able to see the whole city in one shot, with foggy tree tops in the background and taking some time to reflect before returning back to Meknes for the evening.
What followed this slow and reflective day, was anything but. The 9th involved a series of taxis and flights, from Meknes to Fes and Fes to Marrakesh in a travel day from 6am to 4pm. Now, the travel from Meknes to Marrakesh doesn’t need to take 10 hours. But, when you finally make it to Marrakesh, hop in a non-mob taxi cab, get pulled out and your passport gets left behind in the chaos of the situation, your travel day gets even longer. How much longer? Well we arrived to Marrakesh at 1pm and subsequently spent 3 hours trying to find the taxi we were in - which involved the help of numerous taxi drivers hopping on bikes and driving through the city in pursuit of Taxi cab 2211. To our surprise, we eventually found the taxi driver - but the passport was nowhere to be found. That is, until Amanda got a text from a Junior year project-mate from college saying he got a text regarding her passport. Danny, the next passenger in that very taxi cab, held onto Amanda’s waist bag and messaged both her and the one person who endorsed her on LinkedIn, this project mate. The amount of relief, keeping in mind our flight to Istanbul was at 2am, that we carried as we ran (and I mean really RAN) back to the airport to get the bag was indescribable.
With now 5 hours left till we had to catch a taxi to head right back to the airport, we once again did what we do best: eat! Grabbing some (once again very rare) flavored Moroccan food, showering, and getting a little bit of rest - bags packed, we headed for the airport to tackle an overnight flight to our next destination: Istanbul, Turkey!
Morocco, in a lot of ways, felt like a liminal space.
Not quite what we had built up in our heads for this chapter of travel. It didn’t fully give us the depth of connection or the kind of cultural immersion we thought we might find so early on. At times, it felt like we were just passing through, adjusting, observing, figuring things out as we went. But we’ll experience a lot of that through the cycles of our travels. It was our entry into this new way of living. The place where things stopped feeling like a future state and started becoming real. It’s where we learned how to navigate some new uncertainty together, how to pivot when plans fell apart, how to find small wins in crazy taxi mob-inflicted events.
And now, heading into Turkey, it feels like we’re arriving a little more prepared, more open, a bit more grounded, and ready to lean into whatever comes next.
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