The Sahara is mainly barren earth, stones and rocks. No vegetation, or almost none, perhaps the odd scrub plant occasionally. But that isn’t the general perception; a desert equals sand in one’s imagination. So off we go to find some REAL desert, some sand dunes.
This is Tinfou, proper sand dunes, and we are about to picnic in the silent, solitary immensity of the Sahara. But solitary the Sahara is not. In Morocco, wherever you are you are never alone: there is always a salesman tracking you. In this case it is the camel trekkers. So we have our picnic, a little gritty due to the wind (proper sandwiches you might say), and then barter for a trek. We struck a deal as you can see, and great fun it was, so you’ll have to put up with several photos of our little expedition.
We usually call at a café sometime on a day out, and at today’s café the proprietor seemed keen to chat, so we asked him how the many different types of tribal headdress are made up. He told us that most headgear was a strip of cloth about 7ft by 3ft, wound round the head in a variety of ways to create the different styles. Of course, he knew an expert in this field, who appeared within seconds bearing a selection of these very lengths of cloth, which he would be happy to sell. Both the “expert” (a shopkeeper from a few doors away) and the proprietor knew their stuff and we had a fun half an hour being rigged in various turbans. The result is the photo below, and naturally we ended up with some cloth lengths, not dear at £4 a piece.
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