Footsteps on the Sahara (Part 2)

.....contd from Footsteps on the Sahara (Part 1)

The car drove on...100 more kilometers to go......to the Sahara desert.

The land scape started changing. The peaks of the mountains started flattening out more into high plateau shaped structures. The vegetation started hinting on the proximity to the real desert. The greenery almost vanished, more and more of the thorny cactus trees became visible, the colour of the land itself changed into more of a sandy brownish shade, and yes....we could see camels on the roadside. My never-seen-a-desert eyes eagerly looked our of the window as if expecting the Sahara to be visible all at once!!Achmed stopped at a very small roadside shop saying, "this is where you need to buy your stock of water for the desert".We were already tired from the journey hence when he offered to stop for photos we had declined twice. But the mention of the two words "water" and "desert" in the same sentence was actually quite effective, enough to make us get down from the car and rush to the shop to get some bottles. The shop also sold "turbans", definitely not a coincidence.We  had experience putting them on for a photo, remember? Now was the "real" stuff!! The shopkeeper helped us tie these 3 m long pieces of cloth around our head and face...yahoo!! All geared up we drove to the nearby "camel-station".

Believe me, the sight was exciting!! As exciting as when I stepped into the plane (Calcutta airport --my first plane journey to Japan in 1996) or boarded the Shinkansen (first time on the Japanese high speed trains, 1998) or.... The "first time"  for anything is super exciting, right?

The similarity ends at that, OFFCOURSE!.I mean when I come to the "speed" part!

So infront of us we had these fleet of camels ...totally expressionless...patiently waiting for us to get on them. One thing really caught my attention--have been told from childhood that the ship of the desert carries its water in its hump...finally got to see it!..Do you also see it in the picture?

A camel with water stored in its hump

The camel men looked at us, did some mental calculations...and pointed each of us towards a camel. First it was Abhijits turn. He smartly walked on to the camel , got on it and even smiled for a photo (I  had my camera on to capture such a moment). Then the camel man whispered something to the camel and the huge animal started to stand! It reminded me of Lalmohanbabu's  camel ride in Satyajit Ray's Sonar Kella and I forgot to click the camera!! Do you remember his face? Could not laugh for long because then it was our turn. Arno needed to travel on the same camel as me. He got up on the camel quite easily-eyes sparkling with excitement. My turn. First, I tried to make eye contact with my camel (sort of begging her to "gently" stand up). She ignored me. Then I lifted one leg and just as I was about to sit she shook her head vigorously and made a noise which in the camel language might as well say.."Thats the wrong leg stupid!!"..I ignored her. A few hufff and puffs later I was successful. Again the few whispers by the camel man and she stood up!
THAT itself was  a journey!!! My body needed to bend and unbend atleast at 467 different angles with the camels jerky motion from sitting to the standing position. 
Our fleet of four camels started its journey into the desert. After kind of settling down into that "ship of the desert" motion, when I looked up...all I could think of is "Life is colourful". Sand does not have many colours, right?...But I was totally surprised and amazed by what the sun can do to the colours of sand .As the sun rays interacted with the sand dunes, falling on them and off them at such unrealistic angles, it generated atleast a thousand shades of "sand colour".At the far horizon,the setting  sun lent its orange , yellow and red palette to the blue..resulting in wonderful shades of pink and violet. I tried to capture some of these shades in my camera..but the pictures really do not do justice to the real colours in this case. The car road gradually vanished into a sandy road which gradually merged into the sands of the desert.

Sunset in the Sahara--what colours!

Sunrise in the Sahara--what colours!!

Once the eyes got accustomed to the colours and the mind to the surroundings, the body started becoming aware of the movements and hence the pain. Even though , I have used the expression "pain in the a**" several times till now, this is when I REALIZED what it meant. Literally. To say politely, a camel ride is NOT COMFORTABLE.
After about 20 mins, the sun left and took with it all the light and all the colours leaving us in pitch darkness. It also became very cold within moments (Thank God we had our turbans on!!).Our camel man knew the way very well, I am sure. But still the fact that we were in the Sahara desert, on camels, riding at a mind numbing slow pace,into the darkness,in the cold, no TOMTOM to happily say "stay in the left lane",...can be quite something!
I asked our camel man how far we were from the tents.He answered in a mix of Arabic and French which sounded like  "Greek and Latin" to me! I tried body language (which I realised is very difficult on a camel!). The body did not twist and turn as I wanted it to, so ended up asking nothing at all. Our camel man gave me a toothless smile (he was easily above 70!) and moved on..Ok, so surrendered to fate and our dear camel man , the little group silently continued the journey. I lied to Arno.
"No worries dear, we will be there in 10 mins"
Maybe it was 10 or 20 mins..(it seemed like 60)..we suddenly saw some black dots and some specks of light like fireflies in the far...Our camel man pointed to it and told us something...the language was not a barrier anymore.We understood we were near our camps!
What a relief..!!

A man came out of the tents to welcome us.
"Welcome to the 10,000 star hotel in Morocco"--Thats what he said. I smiled , too tired to even try intepreting his welcome message. He pointed up...I looked up...Never in my life have I seen so many stars !!It was like there was less of sky , more of stars..wonderfully bright and amazingly close. The "pain in the a**" did not matter any more, nor did the language barrier or the eerie darkness. I blinked several times to capture this wonderful picture with my own eyes..

The tents are called  bivouacs..basically nomadic tents..with narrow camp beds inside but thats it. Some very small lamps lit the tent area. We needed our own torches to go to the common "toilet tent". There were other groups of people from other tourist agents as well. We said brief hi and hello and proceeded towards our tent to get ready for dinner.
They served us a "berber dinner" which consisted of slices of moroccan bread , a thick soup and a tagine with chicken. It was very very cold..the taste did not really matter..the warmth of the food was more important. We lapped it all up. The bonfire and the berbers singing their folk songs, the open sky with its innumerable stars, the warm food served with moroccan hospitality...the whole package was awesome. Sleep descended on us.......
Next morning we woke up with hot moroccan mint tea..we were already dressed (it was so cold at night that we slept with our sweaters on)..came out..watched a wonderful sunrise again with the surprising colour variations...and got on our camels to come back to locality.
Achmed was waiting with the car to take us back to Marrakech. Definitely a relief to be back in the car ( a much familiar transport !!)...

As I looked back at the desert gradually fading away in the distance, I realised what a wonderful trip it was...

I can still feel the thrill of the vast, unknown, limitless sands of the Sahara.........

Memories of the desert

Stay with me,  tomorrow we shall visit the town center of Marrakech where we will share a delicious tagine recipe together.

;-)

Footsteps on the Sahara (Part 1)

I had only seen it on the maps. Especially the night before the geography exam when the huge world map swam before my eyes...trying to point out the rivers, oceans, mountain ranges, deserts at the right places....The great Sahara desert was one of them.

The Bhattacharys footsteps on the Sahara

Never did I imagine then that me, a girl from a small town in India would one day set foot on the Sahara desert.   Someone once said to me "lucky people travel"...I completely agree.

In this post, let me take you to Marrakech, a city in Morocco, and to the dunes of the Sahara..a trip into the desert.

It was a bright sunny morning. Actually, all the six mornings we were there in Morocco were bright and sunny (very different from our lovely Dutch weather!!!). The car was waiting for us infront of the Marrakech hotel to take us on this trip into the desert. This was a trip we booked from Holland...lots of expectations...Lonely Planet recommendations....the website promised a lot..hence excitement levels were running high!

As our car sped along the Atlas range, the scenery outside was mesmerizing. The mountains had a certain dangerous ruggedness....beautiful yet ruthless. The road was very pretty on the long stretches, quite scary on the sudden twists and very interesting when there was suddenly a shop out of nowhere on the side. At that height , it was very cold and windy so these stops where hot mint tea was sold was very attractive.Most of these places had  a terrace where the tourists were busy clicking away on their camera.We did the same. Surrounded by snow covered mountains, with the blue sky above, sunshine smiling , a cup of steaming mint tea cupped between my palms, posing for photos--life could not be any better!

At one such stop, we were led up to the terrace by a guy (later on discovered he was the shopkeeper). He related a mix of history geography literature in his broken english ..the summary of which was how beautiful it is to have a photo here. We were a bit apprehensive...WE have the camera..WE are on the terrace...WE will take pictures, why was HE bothered? Our question got answered in a moment. He mentioned something about Moroccan turbans and actually did not go into any discussion of whether we want it or not. Within moments Abhijit was totally captured by this blue turban and then it was our turn. He took snaps for us and then with the same momentum led us to his shop to sell pottery and handicrafts. We were almost in a trance...our Pied Piper led us into his shop..and offcourse we ended up buying pottery! Like most customers who want to defend their buying , I said "did you see? How skillfully HE led us into HIS shop and SOLD the stuff?"Much later as we sat in our living room in The Hague, far far away from this beautiful place did we realize what a wonderful snap and experience that was..and in my mind thanked this man for this lovely picture he took for us.

Yes, thats us below.......

The Bhattacharyas in blue.....the blue men!

Blue Indigo Turban:This Saharan turban is traditional and is a very practical head dress that men use for many purposes. Men in the Sahara Desert would use this turban to protect themselves from the wind, from the dust, from the cold during those harsh dry cold winter days and also against the pounding heat. While in the hot Sahara Desert, using a turban helps keep the moist between the skin and the fabric. This way, the skin is protected and at the same time the body doesn’t loose too much water. In addition to what’s mentioned, men in the Sahara, especially among the Kel Tamashek people also called “Touareg” would wear a turban like this and cover their faces except the eyes even when they need to eat or drink. You would wonder why they would put them selves through this, but it is a cultural practice to show respect to the others especially the elders in the community. 

We drove on...our driver-cum-guide was Achmed...he was cheerful, friendly and a very good driver....we were extremely comfortable. After crossing several mountains and valleys driving through beautiful berber villages tucked away snugly within the mountains we stopped for lunch. We were SO hungry. Nicely hidden in one of the villages was this wonderful "restaurant"...a berber family taking in lunch guests (prearranged with the travel agency).

The food was colourful...simple....healthy and delicious...basically that combined with the setting around...it tasted heavenly...

Colourful and delicious

Simple and healthy

The terrace "restaurant"..what a setting to have lunch!!!

Our journey continued..it was still 100 kms to the Sahara .....

Achmed talked about the Berber life styles, their food, the climate, the culture and lot more....with a satisfied stomach...the motion of the car.....the murmur of Achmed....we drove on.....

Stay with me.....the camels and more are  yet to come!!!!

;-)

Happy New Year...

A Very Happy New Year to all of you!!!

Wish you all a fantastic 2012 ahead!

Time flies. It seems like "just the other day" when we celebrated last new years eve. One full year of 365 days becomes our past....a new set of 365 days is our future...although unknown but the new set comes with expectations and promises and hopes of brightness ahead.
Maybe nothing changes...but just the fact that the year is new gives a feeling of a "fresh start". Have you made your 2012 resolution?
;-)

2011 ended very well for me. I had a lovely vacation in Morocco.--my first time in Africa. It was wonderful...I need to tell the story. Hence my target in the coming weeks is to write a travelogue about this trip accompanied by small day to day incidents accompanied by some tasty recipes accompanied by some lovely photos accompanied by some daily learnings accompanied by.....

Stay with me....

O yes, before I forget. I know many of you could not sleep well with the tension of my chocolate cake last year..remember the one that I was supposed to bake for Arnos school dinner? It actually came out very well. Arno loved it. His friends loved it. To be honest my confidence on baking is a notch higher now (Now, dont start expecting cake recipes on my blog!!!).

 I cannot not take credit for the cake alone. Arno worked very hard. We did it together...
While the cake was being baked, he rushed infront of the oven 10,000 times just to see if things were ok.
He asked me "Mama, thik kore oven e dhukiyechile to?" [did you put the baking tray in the oven PROPERLY ?]
My love for baking was visible even to a seven year old !!!
Anyway, it was getting late, well past bed time for Arno. So with the oven clock ticking at 30 mins to go, he reluctantly left the kitchen in my hands and went to bed. I stood infront of the glass oven door trying to catch a glimpse of this fantastic object which gradually rose from its liquidness to a plump chocolate cake. It looked good. However, the last step was yet to come. I nervously stood with a toothpick in my hand exactly as instructed in the recipe...
"A toothpick inserted in the center of the cake should come out clean with no batter clinging to it"
The husband, from his sofa infront of the TV said with super confidence, "dont worry, everything will be fine"!!!!
I forced myself not to change the direction of the toothpick and waited patiently.....
Ting! the oven timer shook me out from my nervous daze....
With trembling hands I pricked the lovely brown texture with the toothpick, waited for a second or two (just in case), and lo behold!!...out comes the toothpick all dry and clean!
All excited from this huge success, I immediately started decorating the cake..the target was to make it so beautiful that Arno should feel proud to take it to school....phew....

Next morning:

Arno: Wow mama what a lovely cake ! The decoration is beautiful.  I know the design!! this is how it looks when you start your computer..................
For a moment, I did not understand what he meant...and then the bulb flashed in my mind!
;-)

[I did not see the resemblance until he pointed it out...yes, Microsoft Windows starting up at the center of the cake, do you see it?]