In September 2017 I spent three weeks travelling through Morocco, from Tangier in the north to the remote southern town of Guelmim, dubbed ‘Gateway to the Sahara’. Here are some extracts from my travel diary, along with a few of my own photographs.

Tangier, 6 September 2017

The journey started with an appeal for divine protection. As my Air Arabia flight taxied on the runway at Gatwick, a recorded prayer sounded over the PA system: “Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! Allahu akbar! May He guide us so that our journey is safe and speedy, for truly He is the greatest!”

The skies were a dazzlingly bright blue when we landed at Tangier’s pocket-sized airport, just yards from the long sandy Atlantic beach. Most of the officials were smiley and welcoming. I took a cab to the El Minzah hotel, where I’m staying for the very first time. It’s pretty grand, and I’ve got an absolutely gorgeous view from my terrace over the lush gardens and the swimming pool to the Strait of Gibraltar.

After unpacking I went for a stroll down to the beach promenade, where it seemed as though the whole city had come out to enjoy the warm end-of-summer sunshine. The pretty young women mainly in headscarves, the boys slim and lanky in shorts and flip-flops, the elderly couples traditionally dressed, sitting impassively on benches gazing out to sea.

What I noticed above all were the hundreds of brightly dressed children running, skipping, crying, riding horses and little electric cars, sitting on their mothers’ laps, riding their fathers’ shoulders, and sometimes just fast asleep. This feels like such a young country – remarkably full of good vibes and optimism.

Rabat, 9 September 2017

When I got off the train at Gare Rabat Ville I wheeled my case past the armed soldiers guarding the parliament building, up the main avenue and into the medina where an old man guided me to an unmarked door that led into the Riad Dar Saidi.

Immediately I left the dirt and the mild chaos of the street behind, entering an oasis of calm. In typical Moroccan style, the house has no windows facing onto the street, but instead there’s a central courtyard around which the rooms are located. All the shutters and door frames are of ornately carved wood, and the bathrooms are clad with intricate mosaics.

The lovely Shakira, who manages the riad on behalf of owner Mme Zitouni, tells me she learnt all her English from YouTube videos. We chatted while she was hanging up the washing on the roof terrace . “Of course there are problems here like in every country,” she said. “But in general we’re happy with what we’ve got. We’re so glad we’re not like Libya or Syria…”

Casablanca, 11 September 2017

The city centre was abuzz in the evening. Teenagers gathered around ghettoblasters, dancing rather shyly. A man produced a wooden board with numbers in circles and laid it out on the pavement. A crowd assembled to watch. Anyone whose coin landed inside a circle would win the amount of money indicated by the number; if it landed outside, they’d lose the cash.

One punter seemed to have got lucky – his coin landed in a 20 dirham circle. But the man with the board said “la, la, la” and wagged his finger. The coin was just touching the edge of the circle, he seemed to be saying. A heated row followed. Then a policeman appeared out of nowhere and berated the man with the board, so he folded it up quietly and everybody went obediently away.

Agadir, 14 September 2017

I spent all of yesterday afternoon on Agadir’s delightful beach and promenade, which are guarded and patrolled by scores of armed soldiers and policemen. It’s all very safe and clean, and it’s interesting seeing the smartly attired locals side by side with the rather more casually dressed European holidaymakers. From burkas to bikinis, everything seems to be OK here in Agadir.

Later, when I went to the ice-cream counter just off the promenade, a little boy of about four or five came up to me with such sad wide eyes that my heart melted. “Snu bghiti?” I asked him, waving at the many different flavours in front of us. “Which one do you want?” He pointed silently at the Smarties ice-cream. I got him a single scoop in a cornet and he ran happily away.

A few minutes later I passed him – he was sitting with his mum on the pavement outside McDonalds in the shade of some trees, still licking the remnants of his ice-cream. He saw me, whispered into her ear, and she smiled and said “shukran!” with her right hand over her heart. “Thank you!”

“Blajmil,” I said, smiling back. “You’re welcome.” It was a lovely moment.

Sidi Ifni, 17 September 2017

I instantly liked Sidi Ifni. First of all, the location is magnificent, perched on a clifftop between the Atlantic ocean and the coastal hills. Secondly, the buildings are beautiful, many of them painted in strikingly bright blue-and-white. Thirdly, the people are lovely. I’ve lost count of how many hands I’ve shaken on the street – I feel like a visiting dignitary!

Aziz, who sells confectionery by the beach, proudly listed in German all the things that he sells. Hassan, a weatherbeaten old market trader, told me: “I am Hassan Zero, because I haven’t got a kingdom!” And some sweet little children stopped their ball game for a moment when I walked past and said “Bonjour!” shyly.

As the sun went down, local men huddled under parasols on the terrace of the Ait Baamram bar to escape the dazzlingly bright sunshine. Food was brought to one man’s table and instantly four cats appeared out of nowhere – they weren’t shooed away, but fed titbits from the plate.

I had a few glasses of cold beer – it was a deeply relaxing moment here amid the fantasyland of Morocco’s colonial past on a warm September evening.

Guelmim, 18 September 2017

Just after 3pm the bus arrived in dusty, red-ochre Guelmim, the so-called “Porte du desert”. At first I found it brutally hot and slightly sinister – the first few people I greeted just looked at me in astonishment and said nothing in response. Was I the only European in town? It certainly seemed so.

But when I got to the main crossroads in the centre of town, two men sitting outside their house insisted that I join them for a glass of mint tea. So I did. We communicated in a fabulous medley of my broken Arabic, their broken French and some age-old hand gestures.

Then, a few blocks later, after walking through deserted alleys pierced by insanely sharp rays of sun, another man called over to me. His name was Hamid, and soon we were sitting on cushions at the back of his brother Ali’s shop, drinking tea allegedly from Timbuktu and eating bread and sardines.

Ali was rotund and very jolly; he wore a blue Tuareg turban, which he insisted I try out (a funny photo ensued); and he told me he’d never been to Europe but travelled across the Sahara three or four times a year to buy jewellery and other goods. Could he show me some…?

By five o’clock we’d still only been through about a quarter of the contents of Ali’s capacious treasure chest, so I said I’m ever so sorry, I really must get to my hotel now, because it’s five miles out of town. Hamid jumped to his feet and took me to the roadside, where he flagged down a tiny little van driven by a friend of his.

I got in, and soon we were chugging along the desert highway, past a police checkpoint to the stunningly remote Oasis Palm Hotel. The building is literally in the middle of nowhere, and seems to be patronised exclusively by wealthy Moroccans.

After dinner I went to the hotel bar. A portly middle-aged Moroccan woman, clearly somewhat tired and emotional, started singing along rather beautifully to the music from her seat on a sofa in the corner. I watched her out of the corner of my eye.

Then she took a video call on her phone – but it didn’t go well. She began shouting and shrieking, first at the person at the other end of the line, and then at everyone else in the bar. She banged her glass loudly on the table, the waiter looked anxious and went over to comfort her.

“Hshuma!” she wailed, over and over again. “The shame of it! The shame!” The waiter patted her gently on the arm, brought her another drink, and she sat there a while longer, sniffling and blowing her nose.

I went to bed at one, but woke up with a start a few hours later. For a second I didn’t know where I was. Then I just lay there in the complete darkness, contemplating all the bizarre sights and sounds of another unforgettable day in Morocco.