Morocco: The Rough Guide, Sixth Edition (Rough Guides) (Paperback)

by Mark Ellingham (Author), Shaun McVeigh (Author), Don Grisbrook (Author), Hamish Brown (Author), Jon Marks (Author), Andrew Gilchrist (Author) "The simplest way to get to Morocco is, of course, to fly..." (more)
Key Phrases: andalous music, poor piste, grand taxi, High Atlas, Moulay Ismail, Tan Tan (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
INTRODUCTION

For Westerners, Morocco holds an immediate and enduring fascination. Though just an hour's ride on the ferry from Spain, it seems at once very far from Europe, with a culture - Islamic and deeply traditional - that is almost wholly unfamiliar. Throughout the country, despite the years of French and Spanish colonial rule and the presence of modern and cosmopolitan cities like Rabat or Casablanca, a more distant past constantly makes its presence felt. Fes, perhaps the most beautiful of all Arab cities, maintains a life still rooted in medieval times, when a Moroccan empire stretched from Senegal to northern Spain; while in the mountains of the Atlas and the Rif, it is still possible to draw up tribal maps of the Berber population. As a backdrop to all this, the country's physical make-up is also extraordinary: from a Mediterranean coast, through four mountain ranges, to the empty sand and scrub of the Sahara.

All of which makes travel here an intense and rewarding - if not always easy - experience. Certainly, there can be problems in coming to terms with your privileged position as tourist in a nation that, for the most part, would regard such activities as those of another world. And the northern cities especially have a reputation for hustlers: self-appointed guides whose eagerness to offer their services - and whose attitude to tourists as being a justifiable source of income (and to women as something much worse) - can be hard to deal with. If you find this to be too much of a struggle, then it would probably be better to keep to low-key resorts like Essaouira or Asilah, or to the more cosmopolitan holiday destination of Agadir, built very much in the image of its Spanish counterparts, or even a packaged sightseeing tour.

But you'd miss a lot that way. Morocco is at its best well away from such trappings. A week's hiking in the Atlas; a journey through the southern oases or into the pre-Sahara; or leisured strolls around Tangier, Fes or Marrakesh - once you adapt to a different way of life, all your time will be well spent. And it is difficult for any traveller to go for long without running into Morocco's equally powerful tradition of hospitality, generosity and openness. This is a country people return to again and again.

Regions

Geographically, the country divides into five basic zones: the coast, Mediterranean and Atlantic; the great cities of the plains; the Rif and Atlas mountains; and the oases and desert of the pre- and fully-fledged Sahara. With two or three weeks - even two or three months - you can't expect to cover all of this, though it's easy enough (and highly recommended) to take in something of each aspect.

You are unlikely to miss the mountains, in any case. The three ranges of the Atlas, with the Rif a kind of extension in the north, cut right across the interior - physical and historical barriers, and inhabited for the most part by the indigenous Moroccan Berbers. Contrary to general preconceptions, it is actually the Berbers who make up most of the population; only around ten percent of Moroccans are "pure" Arabs, although with the shift to the industrialized cities, such distinctions are becoming less and less significant.

A more current distinction, perhaps, is the legacy of Morocco's colonial occupation over the fifty-odd years before it reasserted its independence in 1956. The colonized country was divided into Spanish and French zones - the former contained Tetouan and the Rif, the Mediterranean and the northern Atlantic coasts, and parts of the Western Sahara; the latter comprised the plains and the main cities (Fes, Marrakesh, Casablanca and Rabat), as well as the Atlas. It was the French, who ruled their "protectorate" more closely, who had the most lasting effect on Moroccan culture, Europeanizing the cities to a strong degree and firmly imposing their language, which is spoken today by all educated Moroccans (after Moroccan Arabic or the three local Berber languages).

About the Author
Written by a very experienced team of authors and contributors. Mark Ellingham is a co-founder of Rough Guides and author of the original Rough Guide to Morocco. Daniel Jacobs is a long-time Rough Guide author and has written the Rough Guides to Jerusalem, Israel, Tunisia and Egypt.

Written by a very experienced team of authors and contributors. Mark Ellingham is a co-founder of Rough Guides and author of the original Rough Guide to Morocco. Daniel Jacobs is a long-time Rough Guide author and has written the Rough Guides to Jerusalem, Israel, Tunisia and Egypt.

Written by a very experienced team of authors and contributors. Mark Ellingham is a co-founder of Rough Guides and author of the original Rough Guide to Morocco. Daniel Jacobs is a long-time Rough Guide author and has written the Rough Guides to Jerusalem, Israel, Tunisia and Egypt.

Written by a very experienced team of authors and contributors. Mark Ellingham is a co-founder of Rough Guides and author of the original Rough Guide to Morocco. Daniel Jacobs is a long-time Rough Guide author and has written the Rough Guides to Jerusalem, Israel, Tunisia and Egypt.

Written by a very experienced team of authors and contributors. Mark Ellingham is a co-founder of Rough Guides and author of the original Rough Guide to Morocco. Daniel Jacobs is a long-time Rough Guide author and has written the Rough Guides to Jerusalem, Israel, Tunisia and Egypt. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 640 pages
• Publisher: Rough Guides; 6 edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1858281695
• ISBN-13: 978-1858281698
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,528,349 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Covers the whole country in a depth unmatched by other guidebooks, and up-to-date too, January 13, 2008

By	Christopher Culver - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Morocco (Paperback)

During a recent visit to Morocco, hitchhiking across the whole of the country from north to south, I used the 8th edition of THE ROUGH GUIDE TO MOROCCO (published October 2007) and its main competitor, the 2007 edition of Lonely Planet Morocco.

For the independent traveler who wants to explore Morocco in depth, the Rough Guide is clearly the best option among current guidebooks. It is much more detailed than the Lonely Planet, covering charming smaller towns left out of the LP and other guidebooks. If you are planning to go from Morocco to Mauritania overland, the Rough Guide is extremely helpful. While Lonely Planet didn't even update their Western Sahara cover in the latest edition, Rough Guide gives information on the new opportunities for those without their own vehicle. (Be aware, however, that the Mauritanian visa must now be requested in Rabat, not in Casablanca as RG advises.) Unlike Lonely Planet, which is now abandoning its traditional demographic of backpackers on a budget, the Rough Guide has as much guidance for shoestring travelers as for people with money to spend.

If you are curious about Morrocan history and culture, the Rough Guide makes other guidebooks look like they were meant for rude and insensitive package tourists. It contains a hundred-page supplement which not only explains the whole of Moroccan history and its prominent writers and artists, but it even gives some short pieces by Morrocan traditional storytellers. The Rough Guide does a good job throughout of trying to put tourists in contact with the locals. The hammams (Turkish-style baths) listed in the book are those frequented by ordinary Moroccans, not expensive spa-type locations as in other guidebooks. I was unhappy, however, with the Rough Guide's mention of hitchhiking. While it does mention it as an option, and doesn't try to scare people away from it, it suggests that it is difficult and requires payment. That's odd indeed, since hitchhikers consider Morroco one of the easiest countries on Earth, and my usual waiting type was just a couple of minutes, and I didn't have to pay a dime.

If you are an independent traveler, the Rough Guide is probably the only book you need. Lonely Planet does have a whole section dedicated to trekking, but even for those keen on trekking this may not be worth it. All in all it's funny how the Rough Guides, held in scorn for so long because they contain ads and are published by a major corporation (Penguin), now seem the best guidebooks for solo shoestring travelers.

32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The new edition is excellent, April 17, 2005

By	J. A. C. Linden "Neil" (Amsterdam) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Rough Guide to Morocco 7 (Rough Guide Travel Guides) (Paperback)

I have no experience with the previous edition, and until now I only used the Lonely Planet on Morocco, but I did some tests on issues I had found missing in the Lonely Planet and the new Rough Guide passed the test excellently.
For instance the Lonely Planet had hardly anything on the nice road between Taroudant and Ouerzazate, in between two Atlasses, so almost fully skipping saffron paradise Taliouine and carpetters paradise Tazenaght, while the Rough Guide does not assume you will pass that road through Marrakch, which requires crossing the High Atlas twice.
And even on the road from West to East behind the Anti-Atlas through Tissint etc. the Rough Guide has a feature.
It is more weighty than the Lonely Planet, but that is because it has more information, and that is what one eventually needs.

Neil in Amsterdam

27 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Unfulfilling, December 11, 2000

By	"pmichna" (Whitehorse, Yukon Canada) - See all my reviews

As we loaded our backpacks hours before our jet departed Vancouver, my partner and I debated about whether to bring Lonely Planet's Morocco guidebook, or the Rough Guide. In the end, mostly due to weight considerations, we left the Rough Guide at home. I would advise any first-time traveller to Morocco to do the same. It's a tired, rambling, incomplete guide, full of inconsequential information and generic descriptions. Hotel prices, strangely, are not listed. There is scant reference to Morocco's massive social ills. And there are too many references to writer Paul Bowles, who, I admit, is the be-all-and-end-all of western Moroccan ex-pats. But enough about him, already. Lonely Planet gets all the promotion it needs from other reviewers, so I was hesitant in writing this review. But for those looking for a more concise, insider view of Morocco, LP's the way to go.