Planning

Come to Morocco for its elusive magic and exotic mystery and you will probably leave with more prosaic, yet intimate, human memories: kids playing football in a dusty square, or a blind man selling bunches of fresh mint. The romance of its reputation is real enough, but it is also a viscerally lived-in place, a seething mass of humanity and inhumanity, of sounds and colour and none-too-pleasant smells. So close to Europe, yet so very different, it has dark, dank alleys as well as magnificent desert sand dunes, dirty tanneries as well as soaring mountains and secret valleys. But that is part of the extraordinary attraction of the place. Once you leave the sumptuous luxury and the dazzling intricacy of your riad behind, no guidebook can ever tell you about the mass of life around every médina corner or the views from every bend in the road. And the near impossibility of knowing it all just adds to the seduction of trying.