Traveling as a humbling experience Morocco

in traveling •  5 years ago  (edited)

I've been traveling quite a lot in the last couple of years, but there was no country that really humbled me as much as Morocco did.

I went there with no expectations and after 4 days left the country with a certain feeling of "shame" if that is even the correct word to describe the way I felt.

Let me explain. I currently live and work in Barcelona and have being doing so for the past 6 years. It's a beautiful city that offers everything that I can think about and more but somehow there was a point in time where I took all those things for granted. Maybe because I'm used to it that it became my standard, maybe I'm just ungrateful, or maybe and most likely a mix of both.

I arrived in Marrakesh early in the morning and I saw more life in that place that I had ever seen before, to the point it got overwhelming and I headed back to the Riad (which is a traditional house in Morocco). After resting for a couple of hours I headed back to the city center and to the markets.

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Every little street is overcrowded with tourists, motorcycles, and people trying to sell you something. Their day starts at 7am and ends at 9pm. I ended up buying a lot of stuff and for the first time in my life saw myself bargaining with locals for cheaper prices (they were cheap enough to begin with).

The next day my 3 day tour from Marrakesh to Merzouga started. On this tour I was able to experience a lot of what Morocco has to offer, from food to hospitality, culture and ways of living.

From stoping in a Berber village with 14 inhabitants, where there's no hot water nor electricity, where their source of income is hopefully the ocasional tourist like me buying hand made rugs, 20190403_105231.jpg

sleeping in a mattress that was as hard as a rock (not exagerating), visiting the famous Kasbah Ait-Benhaddou
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(that's one of the local tour guides)
and spending one night in the desert,
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I can tell you that I came back to Barcelona with a different perspective, specially taking into consideration that in some of the places I visited, people still lived out of agriculture , they don't have hot water, they sleep on the floor, no electricity, no medical assistance close-by, and they seemed (or at least acted) happier and less stressed than I could ever be.

Since this was a scheduled 3 day tour, it's pretty clear to me that this was only the tip of the iceberg and there's a lot more to experience and be amazed at if you just do it on your own.

I'm hoping to have more experiences like this one and would recommend it to any of you out there.

If you have the possibility, to do the same!

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