Morocco is a fascinating world of extremes. There are few places on earth where you can journey with such ease from the exotic palaces and kasbahs of imperial cities, whether Marrakech or Fes, perhaps Rabat or Meknes, only ever imagined in an Arabian Nights fantasy, into a remote wilderness with extraordinary contrasts of stark mountains, green valleys and great sandy deserts, of colourful, hospitable peoples and isolated, picturesque settlements.

After all this, if you’d like a few days just to relax, why not simply head over to one of Morocco’s many beautiful coastal beach towns that overlook the romantic Atlantic Ocean?

Why Morocco? On the one hand, Morocco can quickly be reached by most Western travellers; yet, on the other, we are called to step into a fantastic, often surreal world that, in so many aspects, is so very, very far from our own. As was once put to me long ago, Morocco surpasses all other travel destinations because it is quite simply “le pays lointain le plus proche” (the nearest far away country).