Get Sleepy: Sleep meditation and stories - A Camel Trek in the Sahara (Premium)

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, Thomas here. You're listening to a preview episode. You can enjoy the entire story tonight by subscribing to our supporters' feed. There you'll get access to the entire back catalogue, bonus episodes, and more, and it's all completely ad-free. Click the link below to learn more. And thank you so so much. Me and the team really appreciate your support. It is already late in the afternoon when a sand-and- quested taxi picks you up in the Moroccan town of Mizzuga. Well it's larger than many of the towns in this area. Mizzuga is built around a small stretch of two lane highway.

Starting point is 00:01:02 That's the main way in and out. Non-descript dirt lanes crisscross the thoroughfare. Each side is lined with alternating plots of sandstone colored homes and empty square brush lots. stone-colored homes and empty square brush lots. Every inch of town backs up against a broad expanse of the Sahara Desert. In the high tourist season, Mizzuga transforms into a backpacker haven, where visitors gather to book safaris, sander nikes, and camel tracks. In the off season, it reverts to the locals, who seem content to let the tourists all return home for a while. It's the camel track that brought you here. But unlike your fellow explorers, you have been advised to taxi northward to a small hamlet

Starting point is 00:02:16 at the edge of a place full of stunning sights and blissful peace. Now that you're here, you can't wait to begin. The glaring rays of the sun overhead baked the villages parched dirt lanes. Over time, this is produced a crackled texture all across them, like the surface of an artist's canvas. The few buildings standing here, maybe several dozen in total, range from handicraft shops, stock with tapestries to modest lodgings. They appear alongside four table cafes, with steam filled kitchens and sturdy and rough hue intense. with steam filled kitchens and sturdy and rough-hued tents.

Starting point is 00:03:27 It has a community field to it, with restaurants, businesses, and private homes. It is a refreshing change from many other stops you have experienced on this northwest African land, like the busy streets of Fez, with a bustling chaos of Casablanca. And here, outside the town and far off in the distance, is your eventual destination of Erg Chevy. is your eventual destination of Urg Chevy. It speaks, Dan tall under a sky, beginning to streak with the purples of an approaching sunset. You've read that an Urg is like a vast and rolling sea

Starting point is 00:04:22 stretching out to the horizon. and rolling sea, stretching out to the horizon. But it is a sea of sand, not of water. Its peaks create the waves in this desert ocean, rising up to 150 meters, or as tall as a 45-story building. or is tall as a 45-story building. It looks and feels just like your imagination's idea of the Sahara Desert. The one created in your mind over all these years, from the descriptions and novels and depictions in classic films.

Starting point is 00:05:07 If any single landscape has ever spoken to your curious soul, this is the one. Gathered at the flat edge of this hilly desert, just beside the main main road is a group of Torreg men. They chapped and joked as they tend to their livestock. Every man is draped shoulder to toe in the billowy earth colored garb of a desert weller, sealed from the elements by the tucks and folds of their garments. Swirled around their heads and draped across their necks are the brilliant indigo-blue scarves of Berber tribesmen. Some are streaked with lines of darker ink, while others are singularly dyed. Recognizable across this part of the world, their bold blue color stands out in stark relief against the monochrome sand. A younger man approaches you with a welcoming grin and introduces himself as Edeer, which means alive in the Berber language.

Starting point is 00:06:35 He has a very nice camp he tells you, beyond the largest dune. He can lead you there today on a camel. He gestures over his shoulder to a dull wide, curly-haired, slow-moving ship of the desert, a dramedary camel. The camel's name is Rafique, he explains. It means companion in Arabic. Rafiq's floppy jowls frame would you believe is a camel-like grin. Over its single hump, is laid a striped, multi-colored blanket and saddle, awaiting a rider.

Starting point is 00:07:22 and saddle, awaiting a rider.

Get Sleepy: Sleep meditation and stories - A Camel Trek in the Sahara (Premium)

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