Last time I wrote I had got to Ourzazate, in the southern part of 'proper' Morocco. (It's actually quite central if you count the immense wilderness that is the disputed territory of the western Sahara). We got up early on the first day of September to a glorious breakfast of coffee and bread with marmalade. Which is pretty much the only kind of breakfast available, anywhere in Morocco, give or take the odd glass of orange juice, or optional mint tea. Still, ...

After leaving the Sahara, the road took us north from Merzouga through Erfoud and from there to Er-Rachidia, where we swiftly took another grand taxi, 6 of us cramped in there with me and Natalia squashed on to the front seat, to Midelt. As its name suggests, this is a kind of middling place, in the Middle Atlas, mid way through Morocco. A kind of no-man's land between north and south which my guidebook nevertheless recommended because of the surrounding 'bar...

Getting back into this blog writing. We are now in a tiny village on the Atlantic coast - which is, according to my guidebook, the largest settlement in either direction for 100km - and the internet cafe is the hottest gig in town. As I said yesterday, Morocco hasn't yet discovered mass tourism on the majority of its coastline; which may have something , in this area at least, to do with the fact that it is one of the biggest dope-producing regions in the...

Ait Benhaddou to Ourzazate Hi, Third blog in three days! must be boring here eh. Either that or Natalia has left me and I've got nothing else to do cos I'm too sad to go out on my own. Fortunately, and perhaps surprisingly, the former is the case and I've finally come to the decision that Morocco is the best place in the world to come if you're trying to go on the wagon. I haven't had an alcoholic drink for a week now and I've stopped even telling Natalia...

Syria is quite an enigma from the outside. Very rarely in the news, either for positive or negative reasons, all you tend to hear about it is what emanates occasionally from the White House - and that's that it's a dangerous, terrorist breeding ground, or that it's a land of religious zealots and extremists. At best, it's said to be profoundly anti-western, pro-Islamic and particularly anti-American. The net result of all this means that there is barely an Am...