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Table of Contents "On the road to Kabul and other short stories of treks"

Sahara desert hotel 1975

Sand dunes in Algeria, note persons in the foreground for scale.

Fez is a large city in central Morocco and in 1975 a popular city for rucksack tourists. I found it disappointing compared to the 1974 trip to Afghanistan.

We mainly smoked hashish and visited tourist shops while local boys tried to talk you into hiring them as a guide. One of the boys stayed with use for free, got us descent hashish and he was not as insisting as the others so we did not mind. While he took us around, we ran into a terrible argument with a shop owner who insisted we tried to steel a leather bag I was carrying accidentally on the way out. He wanted us to pay for it threatening to call the police but after an emotional discussion and with the help of our guide we got out. This incident could have been influenced by hashish, lowering your sense of reality. On the other hand, it sounded more like a selling trick, as the police was never called. Still, the threat left a big impression. Spending time in a Moroccan prison must be as bad as in a Turkish prison. I heard horror stories for being caught for possession of hashish the year before in Turkey.

After a week in Fez, Joe wanted to go to Tamanrasset in Southern Algeria with the famous black volcanic mountains but I decided to go as far as my money would take me and hesitated given the long trip into the desert. We first took a bus to Oujda in Eastern Morocco, near Algeria and the coast, passing scenic mountain ridges and palm tree oases [1]. Here we should have arranged a visa for Algeria but unaware we headed to Fiquig, 300 km to the South to cross the Algerian border in the interior. Visa’s where mandatory except for French nationals, which I found strange. We had to make a return trip back to Oujda and again spent the night in Fiquiq, now along the side of the road [1] to save money. Now we got bitten by mosquitoes all night.

Joe had already changed some money into Algerian currency at 50% of the official rate and decided to tape it around his dick to avoid customs would spot it as he figured they would never dare to look or touch his private parts. You could not tell by just looking at his black underpants. At the border, the Algerian customs were very strict. Everyone got a body search but let us wear our clothes while they reminded us how they hated Europeans because of the Algerian freedom war with France that ended in 1962, still fresh in their memory. Joes trick worked and said that I should have done the same but I chickened out, also because I would still not have enough money to make it too Tamanrasset.

A German girl was crying after she came out. The men also did a full body search on her and were trying to sexually molest her insisting of undressing piece by piece, she claimed. She was traveling with a German man in a Volkswagen van and they gave us a ride to the South, they were also en route to Tamanrasset. They were not a couple, just travel friends, she said while we drove along the desolate road passing the sparse small villages in the barren and hot dessert. Temperatures must have been in the mid to upper thirties. At night we reached a village near Timinoun.

The village was at the edge of the giant interior area of Algeria with sand dunes [1][2][3][4], the Grand Erg Occidental, and slowly being covered by encroaching sand dunes [1]. Here we stopped for the night. The surprising presence of a luxurious hotel [1] in the desert was like a fata morgana, also because we were used to very simple accommodations. The hotel had tennis courts next to the sand dunes [1], a swimming pool and around 100 rooms. French tourists frequented it to escape the winter in Europe and in the summer it was totally empty.

The friendly staff [1] offered us to stay for free telling us that they had very little to do, and appreciated to have company. We had free meals with the hotel manager in the cool luxurious restaurant with marble tiles and Persian carpets [1]. We also had good discussions on politics, very popular in those days and the pool was refreshing. He suggested I should stay in one of the rooms with the youngest servant [1] and asked me if I liked him. He was roughly my age, around 20. As we went to sleep, the young man insisted to share the bed but I felt very uncomfortable and he finally gave up. The invitation to spend the night in the luxurious hotel was clearly in return for young innocent male intimacy so common in Muslim countries.

In the morning I climbed the fascinating sand dunes [1][2] and was trailed by two children [1][2]. We also enjoyed the morning at the pool [1][2] but Joe and the Germans wanted to leave for Tamanrasset in the afternoon. As my money ran out, I decided to go back, figuring I had sufficient money to travel back to Melilla, a Spanish enclave on the Mediterranean Coast and to take the boat to Almeria. After Almeria, I would have to hitchhike to Holland.

I tried to stay another night at the hotel but the hotel manager made me understood in an indirect way that I should leave as well, a sudden change of mind. It was too late to catch the bus and I spent another night in the village, this time in a small vacant house without doors showed to me by a shopkeeper, as there was no accommodation for tourists in the village. Sleeping on a dirty concrete floor in a sleeping bag was a big contrast to the comfortable hotel the night before.

It took me a full day on the bus to reach Melilla and I was now paying more attention to Alger as I was on my own. It felt hostile and barren mainly because of the summer heat but the people were very friendly. Crossing the border from Morocco into the Spanish enclave on the coast the contrast was large. Suddenly I was in a truly Spanish town and this felt like Europe. I felt relieved to be back home.

Epilogue

The Germans in their Volkswagen van split on their way home in Morocco. He got caught in Spain trying to smuggle a few kilo of hashish in his van, according to Joe.

Joe quit the geology study relatively quickly, living in a small run-down, noisy apartment above my brother. They had constant fights over the noise as Joe favored night live with shady friends, often intoxicated by hard drugs like cocaine.

The last time I saw him was in the early nineties at a station in Eindhoven. He came back visiting his father who was a well-known surgeon. He was smoking heavily and we had very little to say.

Overview of photographs

*TITLE (to click on)*	*File name*	*Date*
*MOROC*
*Palm trees and mountains, somewhere in Moroc*	*alger06.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Fiquig, sleeping place behind shrubs (middle) along the road.*	*alger05.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Fiquig.*	*alger50.jpg*	*August 1975*
*NEAR TIMIMOUN, CENTRAL ALGERIA*
*River bed near Timimoun at the edge of the giant sand dune dessert, Central Algeria. Villages slowly covered by encrouching sand dunes.*	*Algeria.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Village, view at river bed.*	*alger51.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Same*	*alger01.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Same*	*alger02.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Same*	*alger03.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Same*	*alger08.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Same village but view to the encrouching sand dunes.*	*alger07.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Sand dunes*	*alger10.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Sand dunes*	*alger11.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Kids in sand dunes*	*alger09.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Kids in the sand dunes*	*alger12.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Sand dunes, hotel and tennis courts*	*alger13.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Hotel*	*alger14.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Hotel manager with Jean*	*alger15.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Young servant in water*	*alger16.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Near pool, Joe (left) and Jean (right).*	*alger17.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Hotel staff*	*alger19.jpg*	*August 1975*
*Jean on pool diving plank*	*alger20.jpg*	*August 1975*