Some countries come at you hard, attacking all your senses at once.  Vivid colors assault your eyes; the smell of flowers seeps into your hair; humidity dampens your clothes; spices numb your palate.  Morocco is not like this.  It comes more subtly for four of the five senses.  Only your ears face a full-frontal assault.

It starts before first light with the barking of dogs.  Perhaps one is woken by a muezzin walking to the mosque, but once this scrappy individual starts, all the others join in.  This wakes the roosters, and they start to crow.  The two teams – team dog and team rooster – seem to be in competition, vying for the last ‘word.’ The muezzin reaches the mosque, switches on the loudspeaker, and begins to incant the call to prayer.  First, it’s only one, but soon he is joined by another and another.  Ultimately, the evocative call is coming from every quarter of the town, every corner of the valley.  Even the dogs and roosters fall silent, entranced.

When it ends, you feel somehow deserted.  It seemed to be building to some deep enlightenment but now there is only silence.  You go back to sleep, but not for long.  The dogs and roosters, apparently have failed to find enlightenment too and they quickly resume their sing-off.

So starts my second day in Morocco.  Soon, I’m riding in the back of a truck to a primary school where the crew camped the night with the horses staked around a shabby soccer pitch.  Perhaps they’re always noisy, but apparently, seeing western women being delivered to their schoolyard in the back of a 4x4 merits extra loud shouting and laughter from Moroccan children.  I quickly climb onto Gharnak’s back while he whinnies to his harem of mares.  Some knicker back but most just give him the bored look a female who has heard it all before.

We start out, eight horses’ shod feet clomping on gravel, occasionally clanging as they hit a bit of metal trash on the road.  As we move through the valley toward the mountains, each farm we pass seems to offer a new chorus.  There are, of course, the ubiquitous barking and snarling dogs but their effectiveness as a ‘stranger danger’ alarm system is put to shame by the donkeys.  And, there are oh so many donkeys in Morocco, each trying to outdo the other with his best creaking door hinge/hyena being slaughtered by a lion impersonation. 

After a few lovely canters, we reach the foot of a mountain and begin to climb.  Sheep and goats complain as their tenders drive them from our path.  We climb on, past any vegetation and into a world of stone and dust.  Now the only sound is the huff of eight horses breathing deep to carry us up the steep slope.  They place their feet carefully between the many rocks.  Still, occasionally, they are forced to scale a stretch of smooth, steep granite.  Then there is the terrifying sound of metal shoes skidding across rock and your stomach tightens until they find purchase.

At the top, near silence; only the wind.  And the sight of so many more mountains to cross.