Water is rare, preserved and hidden in the desert. So, theoretically, no swimming pool that might attract the jinns.
Discover, love and preserve the deserts of Morocco
Western Sahara and southern provinces, dunes of M’hamid, Chegaga, semi-desert plateaus of the Atlas, M’Goun… Morocco’s deserts are varied, with some impressive sand dunes, many stone deserts, almost lunar landscapes.
Moroccan deserts are not empty of people, like those in Namibia. Animals that had been exterminated by hunting or that had simply disappeared because of changes in their habitat are gradually being reintroduced.
The caravans of the Moroccan deserts are not the only ones to be found there.
The caravans still cross the desert. They now use trucks to transport from one grazing point to another the herds of camels, sheep and goats that once made the nomads rich. But the days of the great caravans that went to Timbuktu for gold are over, killed by borders and political unrest.
The desert is more than a geographical space. It is a culture, a way of life identical from the Thar Desert in India, to the Kalahari in Southern Africa and the Sahara that enters Morocco.
The desert is more than a geographical space.
While it seems hostile to man, it also allows those who love it to live there and meet with themselves. But for pity’s sake, avoid making the excursion from Marrakech to Merzouga, one night and back. You will only see the road. The desert needs time, to get used to its “nothingness” and discover all its riches.
Doing a rally in the desert is for us the antithesis of this very special environment, which requires time, solitude and silence to reveal itself to the person travelling through it.
In this land of almost nothing, everything is used. Cistanches, parasites of tamarisk roots, are used as food in lean years.
There is nothing worse than a car rally to destroy fragile desert ecosystems. The Paris-Dakar is no exception, on the contrary. The number of participants makes things worse.
An album of photos of the desert, the fragile handwriting of the wind on the sand, the breath in the desert, the ochre, the white, the burnt.
