Musings from Morocco 5: To Live is to Travel with Purpose…

…is a philosophy I’ve always followed even before I was able to put the sentiment into words. It is, of course, an internal reality but perhaps it was the external experience of travel which calcified my thoughts so that I was able to put words to the creative sensibility it sprang from. I’ve tended to perceive my approach as somewhat counter-cultural but never more so than against present day habituations, where life’s purpose is constantly presented to us as a destination based game, achievement is described by socio-cultural value judgements, and the search for happiness is believed to be achievable by gaining things rather than by experiencing the deeper contentment and joy from being alive to what the universe freely gives to us in the moment. We have an education system which is ever more focussed upon league tables rather than exploration for the sheer pleasure of learning, our sport activities tend towards a narrow mental criterion of ‘win or lose’ and glossy travel brochures present a myriad of possibilities for box ticking and wearing ‘Seen That, Done That’ T-shirts, but if we stood back from the obsession of goal orientation then we would soon find that destinations are best experienced as a by-product of the rich pleasures of the journey that gets us there.

The aim then is not to arrive, but to be purposefully aware while we live, and it is with that self-same philosophy that I exited the medina through Bab Boujloud and caught a taxi to the train station. The arched entrance to Gare De Fes echoed that of the Blue Gate and, since a seat in first class was only marginally more expensive than an ordinary ticket, I booked first class and took my allotted place in the six seat compartment. A Muslim woman came in with three teenage daughters and a young son and I helped lift two cases to the overhead luggage shelf as the boy knelt at the window to peer out. I asked in a mix of simple English and hand gestures if she would like me to move next to the door so that they could all sit together, but her oldest daughter replied in English that I should take the window seat, which I happily accepted. The train soon moved off towards Meknes and we chatted briefly about what brought us together. Mother was naturally very pleased to hear how much I was enjoying Morocco, its culture and its food and she told me that they had been on a family visit and were also returning home. We settled down to the ride and I took the opportunity to catch the occasional landscape or mule in a field as the countryside sped by. It was easy to sense that this was a peaceful, happy family as they quietly talked and joked together on what would be fifteen minutes short of a four hour journey. At lunchtime mother’s lap became a kitchen board as two tote bags which stood at her feet produced breadsticks, meat, cheese and fresh juice. I was surprised to be offered a substantial and very enticing filled baguette and juice which, after generous and insistent gestures, I accepted with a gratefully enunciated “Shukran”. I could easily have skipped lunch – in fact I had planned to - but I found Moroccan culture to be honest and open and my sense was that I would neither be properly accepting of it nor would I honour the privileged of being invited to eat with the family if I were to decline. The rural landscape changed as we approached Casablanca where the train would travel on to Marrakech, they would arrive home and I would spend the night in a nearby hotel before taking the tram to the airport for the flight back to the UK.

I checked in early, secured a window seat and went through security to wait for the bus that took us out to the aircraft which was standing midfield in the late afternoon sun. I settled in to 30F with my trusty Nikon and went through my pre-flight checks - spare battery, spare card, ISO, exposure mode etc. – as our pilots went through theirs. The weather looked clear all the way along the air corridors we would traverse; up the coastline to Spain, over the western tip of France and the English Channel and onwards across Hampshire, Surrey and Kent to join the queue for the classic westerly approach over London.

The art of seeing is surely to be looking with unassuming expectation, just as a child does, so my inner child smiled as we entered Casablanca’s active runway for a rolling northerly departure and off up into the blue. London lies at around 020 degrees from the northwest African coast, so we soon entered a tight bank to starboard which revealed the Mohammad V Stadium and most of the city’s centre below us. Once fully executed we straightened up and climbed to cruising altitude. Tangier soon passed by just before we tracked across the Strait of Gibraltar, its water routes between the two countries having only just been reinstated in the previous days after being closed due to Covid-19.

Spanish topography is interesting on so many levels. Depending on time of year and region; patchwork fields with geometric rows of almond trees dot the landscape while furrowed tan and grey-brown amoeboid shaped fields are sights which would no doubt have delighted Antoni Gaudi, if he were ever to have seen the organic surrealism they create on the canvass below. Such artistic pleasures were to elude me this time, but as we flew over Andalucía I caught a sight of the Barbate Reservoir, flanked by the Algorrobo Mountains to the east and perfectly round verdant discs to the south which testify to mechanized circular crop watering in the area. Thirty minutes later we crossed the dry lands of Castilla y Léon where the winding flow of the River Tagus made itself eminently conspicuous before we passed over the Cantabrian Mountains and northern coastline, at Santander. Shipping wakes punctuated the deep blue tones of the Bay of Biscay before the French coastlines of Brittany looked up at us from below. It wasn’t long before we tracked over the Isle of Wight, where the tell-tale signs of the lifeboat jetty and rows of anchored boats in the harbour at Bembridge gave away our location. At the same time we were treated to some beautiful views of Hayling Island and Wittering standing on opposite sides of the Emsworth Channel, the two land masses seeming to hold the channel’s blue-teal features between outstretched hands, while the unmistakable triangular layout of Thorney Island’s wartime RAF airfield stood out among cotton wool clouds which dotted the area.

We’d been on a north-north-east heading ever since we flew up the Morrocan seaboard, but we finally banked to the right again as our flight passed into the care of London’s air traffic controllers. We descended over Leatherhead and Coulsdon and were vectored to the Biggin Hill waypoint, where we entered a left hand turn at an altitude of around 7,000 feet. The tarmac runway and hangars at Biggin Hill’s famous airfield were easy to spot, slipping by to our right as our Seven-Three-Seven-MAX turned to establish on the glidepath. A minute and a half later the view was filled with the Isle of Dogs and O2 Arena, but by the time we came out of the turn the view of Central London was already behind us. North of The Thames, the Houses of Parliament, St. Paul’s Cathedral and Westminster Abbey lay in the distance while the London Eye, Waterloo Station and The Oval below us signalled our fourteen mile approach to Heathrow’s southern runway.

Five minutes later we reached our destination as cold rubber met with warm tarmac and automatically caused the airbrakes on top of the wings to deploy. Moments later the roar of thrust reversers filled the cabin as we decelerated to taxiing speed. Quieter moments followed as we exited the runway and arrived on stand a few minutes later, where the aircraft’s engines would spool down only to be replaced by various staccato Smartphone tones as people stood up from their seats to open the overhead lockers.

Destination achieved, the passenger in seat 30F sat quietly looking out the window and reflected on the multiple pleasures that came to him as part of the journey he had travelled.

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