2 hrs 3.0 kms



In Tanalt I enter a dingy, dirty café with three fellows sitting inside . There's television that’s showing a TV series that vaguely brings back memories of a distant previous life. I’ve only been away from civilization for a day, but it feels more like a month. The room is a reasonable 5 euros, and the owner manages to fry up an egg for me a give me some biscuits and yoghurt—which he overcharges me for… and there’s no water whatsoever. I don’t care. This sure beats spending the night out with the wild boars.

But my day’s adventures aren’t quite over. One of the fellows, an older guy wearing a traditional djellaba and a baseball cap is fiddling around with a rebab, traditional Berber violin, and spotting my guitar invites me to join him for a jam session. I pull it out, and try to follow along, but as usually happens, I don’t get the rythmn quite right and mess things up. We do much better when he tries to follow me, and does impressively well improvising for my bluegrass song "Giants on Earth" and reggae style “Happy land” I decide to give a shot playing my new favorite “Me and El Maghreb” my song about Morocco, and I love the combination of my folk rock style with his mournful violin sound—which is normally played with more chirpy rythmns… I decide to do a short video clip of us… Maybe I’m even post it on youtube and see what people think .

I really like this guy… I even have fleeting thoughts of us getting together… forming a rock/Berber fusion band…

Next Morning

 

Next day I’m feeling very refreshed. I go up to the roof to soak in the view of the grimy village with mountains all around, partially covered with clouds. This town feels much poorer and down to earth than the empty villages I’ve passed. People here, it seems are still just trying to scrape by the traditional rural way. I head out, make sure I stock up on food and water, grab another eggs and tomato omelette… and I’m ready. I know which direction Tafraoute is, and I’m confident I can get there tonight where another warm bed should be waiting for me… so this is going to be an easy, relaxed day compared to the uncertain adventure of yesterday.

I run into the village sheikh, who stopped by last night. It’s the law in these isolated parts to report any foreigner staying in town. He’s a friendly, respectable looking fellow and offers to hook me up with a ride up to Ait Baha. I explain that, thanks, but I really want to walk. He seems to understands, points out the way, and I bid Tanalt farewell.