Lonely Planet - Lonely Planet Morocco

Enjoying Morocco starts with nothing more strenuous than its national pastime people-watching in a street cafe with a coffee or a mint tea. Use the opportunity to plan your next moves hiking up North Africas highest peak, learning to roll couscous, camel trekking in the desert, shopping in the souqs or getting lost in the medina. Between the activities, you can sleep in boutique riads, relax on panoramic terraces and grand squares, and mop up delicately flavoured tajines before sweating it all out in a restorative hammam.

Traditional Life

Morocco is a storied country, that has, over the centuries, woven its ties to Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the wider Middle East into whole cloth. Its mixed Arab and Berber population forms a strong national identity, but an increasingly youthful one, taking the best of its traditions and weaving the pattern anew from the countryside to the city, from the call to prayer from the mosque to the beat of local hip hop. Morocco has a hundred faces and sounds, all ready to welcome the traveller looking for spice and adventure.

Erg Chebbi | WESTEND61/GETTY IMAGES

By Paul Clammer, Writer

In the 20-something years that I've been visiting Morocco from travelling as a student backpacker through leading tour groups and writing travel guides to having my own front door key to a medina house it's always the first mint tea that grounds me in the place. The ceremonial pouring and re-pouring from silver teapots. The tall glasses stuffed with viridescent leaves that scald to the touch. The impossible sweetness that would be cloying anywhere else in the world. At first, mint tea was the taste of somewhere new. Now, it's the reassurance that I'm back in a country I love. For me, there's nothing more Moroccan.