Marrakech, getting lost in the Old City

We walked on and for a few minutes seemed to be followed by a spooky looking man wearing an ill fitting djellaba who stopped when we stopped and speeded up when we speeded up and we began to feel a bit uneasy about him. Eventually we shook him off but once again we had taken turnings and made route changes that didn’t improve our situation. Gradually we slipped out of the tourist areas into shabby parts of the city that were exclusively local but we remained certain that we must be getting close to the wall but then we came across a group of young boys who told us that we were walking into a dead end so we asked for their help.

This was a simple and elementary error because there is a warning against doing this in all of the guide books. They looked at the free give away tourist map that they must have seen hundreds of times before and appeared confused themselves and entered into an animated debate. We pointed to the wall and told them that that was where we wanted to go and then they marched off with our map and beckoned us to go with them. We were still confident that the wall must be just around the next corner so we made a mistake and followed them like sheep.

They kept walking and walking, stopping frequently to consult the map and then arguing between themselves about the right direction. It was all a game of course and one that they play every day of the week and they were walking us around in circles and deliberately getting us lost. Just ahead of us were a couple of tourists who seemed confident with their map and we thought this was possibly a good sign until they suddenly stopped and declared themselves lost as well. It was obvious now that the boys were no help at all so we gave them a few coins and dismissed them from our employment and the ran off to look for some more mugs.

In a busy main street there were some tour bus drivers who we felt sure must be able to give us advice but they either couldn’t or wouldn’t and in the next street two taxi drivers gave us completely contradictory directions.

We had been walking around in circles, completely lost, for about an hour by this time and Margaret and Kim were beginning to lose their patience and Mike and I were using up all of our chances to get the situation resolved. Luckily at last we came across a landmark that we could reconcile with the map and then we could see the Koutoubia Mosque so we knew that if we headed for that then we would find ourselves somewhere familiar and eventually to our relief we found ourselves at the Avenue Mohammed V.

After a drink at a café where we made a vain attempt to try and understand from the map where we had gone wrong we completed our long walk around the city by returning to our starting point earlier this morning the Bab Agnaou but this time we kept to the main roads so that we wouldn’t get lost again.

Marrakech, Navigational Difficulties

It was after midday by now and time for a break from walking and sightseeing so we selected a café with a roof top balcony on a noisy road leading to Djemma el Fna. There had been some hints of blue sky on and off this morning but now as we sat in the open air the cloud was noticeably thickening from the west and turning from chalky white to peppery grey and we had to admit that this was probably about the best we could expect now for the rest of the day.

The plan now was to make our way from the Bahia Palace through Djemma el Fna and the around the Souks to visit the next site the Medersa Ben Youssef in the northern part of the old city and we found our way without any difficulty back to the main square and we congratulated ourselves on our grasp of navigation around Marrakech.

To get to Medersa Ben Youssef the direct route now was to walk through the Souks again so we took the main route in through an arch and past a Mosque which led us to the Rue Semarine which is a perpetually busy street with shops selling robes, kaftans, carpets and antiques then into the Souk el Kebir with a tight warren of alleys all with tiny shops and kiosks.

The Souks were busier today because Sunday is a main trading day and all of the shops were open, there were more people and more noise. There are signs at the entrance to the Souks which clearly say ‘no bikes’ but they were only there for decoration because no one took any notice of this at all and people on push bikes whizzed past and there was the constant rasping of moped horns as impatient drivers forced their way between the shoppers and the tourists and we had to keep a permanent eye out for danger.

Half way through and we were in the Souk des Babouches where every shop sold a range of brightly coloured, pointy toed soft leather slippers and then the Souk de Tapis where the shops were larger and most specialised in carpets and then finally the Souk des Ferronniers where metal workers and carpenters were working in cramped workshops making furniture and lanterns and intricately designed silver jewellery and belt buckles.

Eventually we were through and out of the Souks and outside Medersa Ben Youssef which is supposed to be one of the best buildings to visit in Marrakech but unfortunately I am unable to confirm that because today it was closed. We walked around all four sides of the building looking for an entrance and when we had circumnavigated it someone told us that it didn’t open today because of the leather auctions at the nearby tannery although I couldn’t really understand what the connection might be.

So now we had to rethink the itinerary and we must have looked as though we needed assistance because people kept stopping to give unrequested help with the map. Most wanted to take us to the leather auctions and they assured us that they didn’t want money but we were suspicious and politely said no thank you. Some were more persistent than others and kept insisting on leading us and as we doubled back and slipped around corners we managed to disorientate ourselves and we lost our sense of direction, a situation that wasn’t helped by the fact there was no sun in the sky so we couldn’t establish any sort of directional fix.

We thought we were walking in a north-easterly direction and the plan was to reach the wall and one of the twenty city gates. This quickly proved difficult and made even more so by the fact that although the streets were named on the map there were no corresponding signs on the streets themselves so establishing location and direction quickly became a matter of guesswork and we had to admit that we hadn’t grasped Marrakech navigation at all.

Marrakech, A Pedestrian’s Nightmare

The layout of the Souks was interesting because it was set out in sections where every shop sells the same produce. A whole Souk selling silver, another selling silks and so on which would be a bit like all of the jewellers shops in a UK shopping mall being organised side by side which I think we would find unusual but here the competing shop keepers seemed quite comfortable with the arrangement.

Getting lost in the maze of streets was not altogether surprising and we wandered around for an hour or so before we emerged at last in the sunshine of the streets. In a small square traders were set out in the centre selling products, squabbling with each other and encouraging tourists to stop and take a look. On the edge of the square there was a three storey café with a good view over the proceedings so we went inside and climbed to the top of the building where we sat in the sunshine and drank tea and coffee. We would have preferred alcohol of course but this was quite impossible because of the strict Muslim rules on drink.

After this short stop we made our way back into the streets but stayed in the open now and away from the Souks as we wandered in a westerly direction, (well, I think it was a westerly direction but it was difficult to be absolutely sure) along a narrow busy street where we had to have our wits about us not to be knocked over by the horse drawn tourist carriages that seemed to use this as a principal sightseeing route. And then there were the motorbikes and the pushbikes that made no concessions to pedestrians which meant this was not really the place to have a casual stroll.

The further we walked we began to leave the main tourist areas and the landscape transformed into a predominantly local environment with little markets selling vegetables and small butchers shops, just kiosks really, selling meat I couldn’t identify, except for the cow hooves and the sheep heads! There were lots of ad hoc improvised stalls sometimes no more than a blanket or a bit of cardboard on the pavement where men and women offered a few products for sale that had probably been grown in their back gardens or on their window cills.

Soon we were the only tourists amongst the crowds of men and women in their traditional Arab clothing, the men in long gowns called djellabas and the women in colourful kaftans, headscarves tied around the hair, some with face veils and a small minority with a full burqa. We were in unfamiliar territory now and although there was no danger and we felt perfectly safe there were no street signs to help with navigation so at a convenient junction we took a turning into a parallel street which seemed as though it should return us to Djemma el Fna.

By a stroke of good fortune it did and as we got closer the local stalls gave way again to tourist shops and we pushed our way back through the Souks and into the huge square where shifting circles of onlookers were constantly moving between acrobats, drummers, dancers and street apothecaries. We kept a safe distance from the snakes and the monkeys and had a second cup of tea in a café with a balcony that overlooked the square and we worried about finding somewhere with alcohol for our evening meal.

By now it was mid afternoon and for the time being we had had enough of the market and the Souks so we slipped out of the busy square along a road that smelt of equine piss with a line of horse drawn carriages with drivers looking for customers. We walked along the opposite side of the road and looked unsuccessfully for restaurants with alcohol along the main route of the Avenue Mohammed V but a short way along we had to admit defeat and turned instead back towards the Koutoubia Gardens and Mosque.

This involved the tricky process of crossing the busy road with two lanes of manic traffic driving in each direction. Buses, cars and lorries don’t give way to people in Marrakech so this was a potentially death defying procedure. There are zebra crossings marked out in the roads but they are there only for a bit of highway decoration and are not something a walker can rely upon so we watched the locals as they strayed into the carriageways and we stuck close to them because they appeared to have a sort of sixth sense about which vehicles might stop and which would simply mow a pedestrian down without a second thought.

Marrakech, The Souks and Djemma El Fna

There was only one way out of the warren of alleys so we had to follow the same route again back through the anarchic streets and to the hectic roundabout where the traffic situation had not improved and even the policeman had given up and left his post but his didn’t seem to matter at all because he wasn’t being very effective anyway. We were a bit confused and the free tourist map wasn’t a big help but we were confident that we were making steady progress towards our first intended destination of the famous big square in the heart of the city, the Djemma el Fna.

A pedestrianised boulevard gave us relief from the incessant traffic and this led us directly into the square which claims to be the biggest in Africa and is an all day spontaneous entertainment centre. The first people we came across were the city’s iconic water sellers in their red tunics with gold braid, colourful sombrero hats and brass cups hanging from leather belts strapped around their bodies. In the old days these people provided a real and valuable service and dispensed water from a leather canteen to local traders and thirsty travellers but they are practically redundant now in their substantive role because sensible people prefer safe bottled water to the uncertain quality of the water in their satchels. Their job now is to have their picture taken with the tourists and charge 10 dirham a time (about £1) and they probably make a lot more money doing this than they ever did selling dirty luke warm water.

Djemma el Fna was busy but because it was so big didn’t feel crowded. I took a picture of some musicians who demanded money and became rather agitated when I refused and then we walked past the snake charmers and the men with Barbary Apes all trying to sell photographs, fortune tellers and soothsayers and my favourite the tooth puller who would have provided dental surgery at a fraction of the cost of the National Health Service if we had been brave enough to allow him. There were rows and rows of market stalls selling fresh and dried fruits and others competing to sell a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and all around the square were cafés and restaurants with high level balconies where people were sitting and just enjoying the random entertainment.



This was quite unlike anything we had ever seen or visited before and it was everything we had expected but more with a riot of colour and frenetic activity that was exciting and vibrant. We walked through the square in a northerly direction and eventually arrived at what most people concede is the biggest Souk in Africa and we slipped into the labyrinthine maze of covered but sun-dappled market streets.

Here was a whole new experience with street after street of shops all overflowing with things for sale that we didn’t need but each with an owner who didn’t understand this and was determined to part us from the cash in our wallets. Some of the shops were no bigger than an average English garden shed or a Moroccan broom cupboard and many of them sold exactly the same things and as we walked through we were under constant pressure from the owners all trying to entice us with a ‘special price’. What didn’t help in establishing whether this was a special price or not was that nothing was priced in the first place which meant this form of shopping was very difficult process for people like us who are not used to haggling. A lot of the stuff in here was rubbish of course and my favourite was the honest trader who told us that he only sold genuine fakes!

We walked past carpet shops, elaborate lampshade shops, slipper shops, silver and pottery shops, shops selling leather, silks, ceramics, spices and pastries and our senses were under constant assault from the colourful sights, the rich aromas and the constant chatter and noise of the traders. Occasionally a donkey and cart would send people scattering as new supplies were delivered and the shop owners were probably glad of this because the only place to go to get out of the way was inside the shop doorways where someone was waiting to pounce.

Threading our way through the heaving twisting lanes we nodded politely as we rejected invitations from all sides, trying all the time not to make eye contact and declining inducement to go inside and look until at one point Kim and Margaret were caught off of their guard and were persuaded to take a look inside a herbalists shop where they were talked into a €2 ten minute shoulder massage each. Mike and I had to wait outside and try not to draw attention to ourselves or show any unnecessary interest in the products for sale in the adjacent shops.