I eagerly followed three boys, who were no older than 8 or 9, up the steep uneven stairway bordered by walls of white and turquoise blue. Skeletal cats pranced in and out of nooks and crannies along the narrow pathway. Whiffs of freshly diced jalapenos and spicy curry pastillas permeated the warm, humid air. The young boys said they would show me a place called View Panoramic. I was curious.
I stayed in the holy town of Moulay Idriss during a week-long travel writers workshop. I’m not sure what made me sign up for the workshop. Morocco was neither at the top of my destination list nor was I a writer. But I desperately wanted to retire and had a dreamy desire to one day write travel stories to share with anyone interested in reading them. As I sat in the workshop every morning with twelve accomplished travel writers, I kept asking myself “What the hell am I doing here?”
Moulay Idriss sits on two hills at the base of Mount Zerhoun, and from a distance looks much like two giant snow globes glistening in the sun, surrounded by green cascading valleys. The town is named after Moulay Idriss el Akhbar, a man credited for bringing Islam to Morocco, and who is buried in the mausoleum inside the town mosque. Up until 2005, the town itself was off-limits to non-Muslims. Even today, the infrastructure for tourism is almost non-existent with only a handful of guesthouses and eateries. We stayed at the Dar Zerhoune, a guesthouse conveniently situated near the center of town.
The writing workshops were held in the mornings giving us afternoons to wander the town’s mazelike passageways. The central plaza, surrounded by tiny shops and food vendors, teemed with colorfully-dressed women carrying bags of groceries, hurried men parading by with large bundles of produce on their backs and screaming school children playing tag. I often sat at the plaza cafe sipping on hot mint tea chatting with the local high school kids wanting to practice their English or watching the donkeys clip-clopping by with their loaded panniers. In the evenings, I lounged at the rooftop restaurant of our guesthouse, with a glass of wine enjoying the sunset. In the distance, I could hear the melodic chanting of prayer calls. With each passing day, I fell in love with the pace and rhythm of Moulay Idriss.
As we neared the hilltop, the boys turned and grinned at me, pleased with their momentary triumph. “Look. This is the View Panoramic,” said one of the boys as he gestured to his left. I turned the corner to see what he was pointing at and my jaws dropped. I couldn’t move. “Oh my god, this is magnificent,” I whispered. Two hundred yards from where we were standing was a hill sprayed with hundreds of white and crème-colored dwellings against a backdrop of luminous jade valleys. Nestled towards the bottom of the hill stood the illustrious mosque covered with shimmery green tiles. The View Panoramic was impossibly gorgeous and sent chills up my spine. It reminded me of my first glimpse of Machu Picchu at sunrise or the time I first felt the showery mists of the thunderous Iguazu Falls. Both were moments of sheer exhilaration. The View Panoramic gripped me in the same way.
The hordes of tourist buses have not yet discovered Moulay Idriss. I hope they never will.
