Night of 1001 shooting stars

Morocco is so beautiful it is almost exhausting, somedays on a wander through the souk I feel like a team of interior designers and stylists have been at work in the place just beforehand. A brightly coloured carpet, silver bowls arranged just so, a handful of rosepetals lie scattered nearby, a turquiose wooden footstool with a black cat with green eyes draped on top and that is just the entrance to a little shop selling tobacco. In a nutshell the place just ooozes style.



While we have been here we have had a couple of days in Marrakech before taking a trip out into the country and to the desert; through amazing rocky gorges and ancient mud kasbahs til on the last night we arrived in the desert where we were saddled up on camels and whisked out into the orange sand dunes to a traditional berber nomad campsite complete with lanterns and killim rugs on the sand. After an outdoor dinner of tagine where we were mugged by the cats that live with a nearby nomad family, our group all decided to climb the nearest sand dune and star gaze, the difficult climb was worth it when we all collapsed in the soft sand and look up to see the millions of stars so easily seen in the clear air and darkness of the Sahara. Sattelites whized accross the sky accompanied occassionally by shooting stars and the regular stars even made quite a show sparking and flaring in the dark velvet blue.

After a singalong by the fire, some more sugary mint tea its off to bed in our tents, a rather chilly affair until the coarse woolly blankets and the odd opportunistic cat start to warm us up and we fall asleep to the soft grunts of our nearby camels.