Africa

Arriving in the Middle Atlas after the maelstrom of Fez, or even Meknès, is like waking up in the morning to find the sun has reared its head after days of fog. The air is fresh, and the sky is always blue. Shepherds lead unhurried lives in the hills, and old-timers sit peacefully in town […]

Each day when dusk sets in over Meknes, the sun’s last hurrah dances across the city’s Imperial gateway, Bab El Mansour. For a few lingering minutes, the hulking gate burns like Saharan sand in front of a local audience clutching shopping bags rather than cameras. Tourists are few and far between. Lacking the vast medieval

Essaouira, Morocco’s bohemian haven by the sea, has long been a melting pot of alternative cultures and lifestyles. The city’s cobbled medina and breezy beachfront provide the infrastructure for a thriving arts scene, a chilled getaway for those escaping the country’s often crowded cities and a wide range of dining options. From cheap eats to

Marrakesh is no stranger to tourists, and travellers flock to the rose-hued city to discover the medina, scour the souqs for treasures, admire traditional zellige (colourful geometric tiles) on ancient mosques and savour local flavours at the food stalls of Djemaa El Fna. With the threat of overtourism encroaching on the red city, it’s imperative

Wherever you travel in Morocco, you’ll hear its rich musical culture, with everything from Berber, Andalusian, Arabic and sub-Saharan influences. The country is fast becoming a top destination for music festivals, which showcase eclectic musical genres and rhythms across its ancient medinas and modern cities. Here are five of our favourite places to tune in.

Bustling, locally loved street food stalls set up from morning until late night prove there’s more to the food scene in Morocco than bubbling meaty tajines and mountainous platters of couscous, the dishes with which the kingdom is most famously associated. But like the diverse cultures and changing landscapes across this stretch of North Africa,

The dazzling souks of Marrakesh are teeming with beautiful objects to be taken home; colourful spices, walls of brightly lit lanterns, and radiantly patterned ceramics, to name a few. They could cost you a small fortune elsewhere but these simple haggling tips will get you a fair price and some unique purchases. Just remember to

A port town on the cusp of Europe and Africa, Tangier skillfully balances competing cultures, merging them into a beautiful, harmonious blend that only a place this relaxed could pull off. Its long-standing liberal attitude towards vice made Tangier an attractive base camp for the Beat Generation of the 1950s, whose booze-soaked explorations of the

Travel to the Kingdom of Morocco and you’ll encounter the thousands of years of history that dwell alongside the fast-paced lifestyles of the new millennium. From ancient medinas and Arabic dialects to bustling cities like Tangier and modern movie magic on desert studio lots, Morocco blends old and new in a way that always feels

From the summit of Toubkal, North Africa’s highest peak (4167m), views stretch from the city of Marrakesh across the breadth of the High Atlas Mountains and on to the Sahara Desert in the south. With such compelling vistas, it’s understandable that on most mornings of the year a twinkling line of hikers’ headlamps snakes its