Ait Ben-Haddou

It was quite a journey from the big city of Marrakesh to Ait Ben-Haddou. We crossed the Atlas mountains through dangerous winding roads to get here. By now, the lush mountains have turned into dry desert-like landscape. It is beginning to look more like the desert fortress that it should be. We were let off at the entrance to Ait Ben-Haddou. We were met by a Berber tour guide who would be bringing us around the fortified village. The guide seems to be very knowledgeable in fact, he can speak several languages Berber, English, French and even Spanish. In a way, this kind of slowed us down because each time he needs to talk about something, he would have to say it three times – English, French and Spanish. I was hoping that I would just abandon the group and just go around as I want and meet up at an agreed time but the guide insisted that we all stay together – in hindsight, I should have left the group but more on that later.

Ait Ben-Haddou is officially named Ksar of Ait Ben-Haddou. A ksar is a Berber term for a for a fortified village or castle. From here, it already looks very imposing. It is also part of the UNESCO World Heritage sites because it is regarded as an excellent example of a fortified village. I known that Ait Ben-Haddou has been used in numerous movies but what our guide told us was that not all of the buildings we see here in the ksar are original. There are several structures that were built for the movies but they left them there when filming ended. I am of two minds on this because I know that it helped improve the appearance of the ksar but at the same time, it isn’t the original structure anymore. To get to the ksar, we needed to cross a bridge which traverses an almost dried up riverbed. I imagined that it would be nice to get photos of the ksar along the water.

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