The High Atlas
The next day I had a nice breakfast with Tea and amazing Chapati (didn't have Chapati since I was in Tanzania and I loved it there!) and then got ready to get on my way. I only had to get fuel. But it turned out that there wasn't any in Midelt, although the town has three petrol stations.So I had to drive back till close to Zaida (about 30km) till I got some. Having fuelled up, I went via Cirque du Jaffar into the High Atlas and followed a mix of piste and tarmac to Ilmichil.



The Cirque du Jaffar is a generally difficult and fairly dangerous piste that is winding up into the mountains where it eventually follows a loop around the river jaffar - hence the name. On the way to the cirque I had some unwanted company by a pack of dogs. They didn't look like they were coming to play so I throttled up and got out of their way. On the actual cirque one climbs down a narrow track with impressive drops to one side. In dry conditions this is fairly straightforward on a bike (a few dried out river beds are technically most challenging - momentum is your friend) but I wouldn't recommend this piste in rain. I met a group of french guys with a local driver in a land cruiser. Whilst I happily hammered through the cirque, they had to go inch by inch through some narrow passages.

On the piste, I was stopped by several kids and nomads. General recommendation here, don't stop and don't hand out gifts and candy. This is helping no one but encourages begging and in the worst case brings you into trouble. Also, although Morocco is absolutely safe, there are reports of bandits trying their luck on tourists in the area. But this is very rare, so it shouldn't keep people from going there (I was much more worried about the dogs that chased me earlier).