DAR ANEBAR: AN EXOTIC HOME AWAY FROM HOME IN ANCIENT FEZ

A riad is a traditional house located in the medina - the old residential and commercial heart of ancient towns in Morocco.

A typical riad is a three or four storey building whose thick stone walls enclose a central courtyard open to the sky. Smaller riads may only be the width of the height of a date-palm whose trunks were used as beams. Others owned by prosperous old merchant families have carved cedar ceilings and walls adorned with elaborate plaster-work and zellige tiles. To ensure a family`s privacy there are only tiny exterior windows, but a roof terrace catches cooling breezes and provides a panorama of the skyline.

Many old riads abandoned when their owners left either to seek work or to upgrade to a modern villa, have been bought by foreign investors who have transformed them into luxurious Maison d`Hotes, a trend started by American architect, Bill Willis in the 1960s when he transformed a run-down riad in Marrakesh into an exotic town-house.

More than 500 riads -mainly in Marrakesh, Fez and the lovely coastal resort of Essaouira have now been restored by foreigners using local artisans and drawing on the abundance of crafts sewn, hammered and tapped out in the souqs.

On many trips to Morocco over the years I`ve stayed in a variety of accommodation ranging from the famous Mamounia in Marrakesh to the simple Pension Mauritania in Tangier - even a crumbling funduq once used by wool merchants visiting Fez.

On a recent visit to Fez to collect material for my new book, I stayed at the Dar Anebar, a true "Arabian Nights" style riad which has been returned to it`s former glory by Moroccan businessman Ahmed Azami .

"It was my grandfather's riad and my dream was to restore it, not just for our family use, but so visitors might experience Fassi hospitality in traditional surroundings," said Ahmed as we sipped mint tea in the calm oasis courtyard.

"Tourists can stay here from EU90 a night. If we are not fully booked, we upgrade at no extra cost. I want people to feel it is their home. They can even go into the kitchen and watch Naima making Berber bread."

Fez is considered the culinary heart of Morocco and Naima's cooking lives up to this reputation. I dined on regal dishes such as bstilla made from flaky pastry stuffed with quail, and lemony tasting tajines using chicken and olives, and lamb cous-cous smothered in toasted almonds. A wine list featured the best of Moroccan wines: even Flag beer for any Australian visitors!

Dar Anebar's five large bedrooms with king-size beds overlook the courtyard. A personal touch is a flagon of argan oil, a nutritive emollient sold in Fez for over a thousand years and recently declared a 'miracle oil' by French cosmetic firms.

"We wound our way through the medina and walked into a world of wonder and warmth," one of hundreds of comment in the Guest-Book, resonated with me after a fall on one of my daily walks through the centuries old souqs.

Down I went among cages of hens, boxes of sardines and baskets of snails as everyone from the butcher, the baker and the candlestick-maker rushed to my aid. Back at Dar Anebar bandages were produced, my shirt was spirited away and washed, and a glass of freshly pressed orange juice was brought to my room.

When I offered to pay, I was waved away and Ahmed himself drove to me to the CTM station to catch my bus to Tangier.

Further information: http://www.daranebar.com

See comments : www.tripadvisor.com

For travel arrangements in Morocco: http://www.olivebranchtours.com

Images from: www.copix.co.uk

BIRD-WATCHING IN YEMEN

Excerpt from Chapter 5: No Mocha in Mocha

That evening I found two tourists in the hotel restaurant. The first I had seen on either visit to Yemen, they were male, middle aged and sipping soup.

‘We're from the Suffolk Birdwatchers Club,’ said one, his broad grin revealing a gap in his teeth.

‘I’m Herb and this is Norman,’ he indicated his sandy haired companion.

‘We`ve been doing avifauna checks on the Tihama,’ said Norman. ‘The rest of our group has left, but we want to do some spotting on the plateau. You’re welcome to come.’

I met Herb and Norm in the lobby next morning. They were wearing khaki safari gear, multi-pocketed gilets, and canvas hats. I was in brown linen trousers and a cream high necked shirt, as worn by Meryl Streep in Out of Africa. The taxi-driver had on jeans with a sleeveless sheep’s wool jacket and a black baseball cap with Baltimore Orioles on it.

‘Siddiq, friend America,’ he said clearly pleased I had noticed.

The rugged central plateau of Yemen abounds in birdlife. Creeping about the giant euphorbias with expensive Luger binoculars, Herb identified Arabian babblers, amethyst starlings, rollers, shrikes, warblers and weavers for Norm to record in a log-book.

The driver looked on as though they were mad. A task for small country boys in Yemen is to scare birds off the crops. Beginning at dawn, they spend all day seated in the fields firing stones at them from homemade catapults. The iridescent throat of the grey rock pigeon makes it an easy target.

‘Look!` said Herb, whistling through his teeth as a beautiful bird alighted on a fig tree. It was a shimmering paradise fly-catcher which our driver, deftly miming the action, explained will nip off its tail in order to confuse a predator.

After an hour’s bird-watching, Herb and Norm spread out a tartan blanket and sat down with a thermos of tea. It was still too soon after breakfast for me and I wandered off along a track where a tall woman was climbing up from the ravine.

She wore a smock over black harem trousers embroidered at the ankles, gold bracelets and a piece of muslin wound around her head securing a bunch of marigolds. A goddess of the coffee terraces, showing no sign of astonishment at our meeting, she walked up and kissed my hand all in a single movement, and continued striding up the hill.

Travels With my Hat for publication 2012.

WATER CRISIS EXACERBATED BY TOURISM IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

Years ago, I met an old Bedouin woman in Abu Dhabi who said her greatest joy was being able to turn on a tap after years of drawing well water in the desert.

Thanks to oil wealth she is one of the lucky ones, but today nearly 9 million people, mainly in developing countries, live without access to safe water and proper sanitation.

Clean drinking water is a right, not a necessity, for every person on the planet and as the world population grows and aquifers shrink, future conflicts will arise over water. And not over oil as in the not so distant past.

The rationale for water usage dates back to a vast dam built to store water for workers quarrying stone for the Pharoahs. In Southern Arabia, the Sabaeans also constructed the mighty Marib Dam. The Sumerians, Akkadians and Babylonians were all skilled canal builders. Ancient falaj like the one pictured, are still in use in Oman.

But when you think that the shadouf (a bucket and pulley contraption for raising water) was invented some 2400 years ago: is it not shameful that spacecraft are sent to the Moon before the Earth`s peoples have a proper water supply?

The situation is especially critical for many poor countries in Africa and Asia which have become dependent on tourism for revenue, when tourism is the biggest water consumer of all.

The FAO estimates that in 55 days, 100 hotel guests use the water equivalent to the needs of 100 urban families over two years. An 18-hole golf course soaks up the requirements of 100 Malay farmers.

Many NGO`s are directing their efforts to supplying villages with drinking water and while travel writers can do their bit, the onus is on travel agents to stress to tourists - particularly anyone visiting East African resorts, currently suffering the most severe drought in decades - to consider water usage.

Shower with your partner (bathe in the sea) and don`t allow the sheets to be changed on a daily basis. You can turn on a tap in your hotel, but local communities may not have access to the infrastructure ensuring your supply.

c.Christine Osborne

Image: Falaj in the interior of Oman.

Source: www.copix.co.uk

DON`T VISIT DUBAI UNTIL THE WHALE SHARK IS FREED

It was on a visit to Dubai in 1975 that I discovered the theme for my first book - oil and the changing face of the Gulf.

In the end I included all the Gulf states and also Oman, on the Arabian Sea. But it was the Dubai of `Old Gulf Coast` days that I found most enchanting with traditional dhows moored along its creek and a forest of open-throated wind-towers gracing coral-stone mansions in the Bastikia Quarter.

At six o`clock one morning I watched Sheikh Rashid, Dubai`s canny old ruler, point out a suitable site for a road tunnel, beneath the creek, the first step in urban development.

Now Dubai is about to open a new Metro and the phrase `Desert Manhattan` if not entirely true from a financial view, is certainly accurate of the architecture.

Present ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, has shot the emirate into the 21st century in one gigantic leap, changing it from a quiet old merchant state into a tourist playground, with ski-runs, shopping malls, and some of the Arab world`s most ostentatious hotels, such as the huge, pink Atlantis resort, on Palm Island.

Both Sheikh Rashid, and Sheikh Zayed (late president of the UAE, who won many international awards for environmental schemes) would be dismayed by the Atlantis` imprisonment of a whale shark, as a visitor attraction, in its aquarium.

Sharks and smaller fish okay, but Rhincodon typus is an endangered species, and it was never caught by accident, while stranded in the shallows of the Gulf, as is usually claimed.

It was captured expressly for exhibition in the Atlantis, whose current change of managers, offers an opportunity to set the whale shark free.

If this does not now happen, despite many international pleas, then I call for a TOURIST BOYCOTT OF DUBAI.

c.Christine Osborne, The Gulf States & Oman (1977)

Image: Atlantis Hotel Dubai by Claire Stout.

Source: www.copix.co.uk

DO YOU WRITE TO TRAVEL OR TRAVEL TO WRITE?

OR DO YOU WRITE BECAUSE YOU TRAVEL?

There`s been much recent discussion about travel writing and who is a professional travel writer, as opposed to a backpacker and/or a holidaymaker, writing about their travel experience.

It`s genuinely impossible for a guidebook writer to stay in every single hotel, so apart from writing that it overlooks a beach/garden/parking-lot, and that it costs xxx per room, he knows nothing of the reality of actually staying there: whether reception was surly/welcoming, towels changed daily/never, food brilliant/awful etc.

When I was writing travel guides, I made it a point of inspecting every single hotel I mentioned.

My routine was to ask to see a standard room where I always did five things: flush the loo, pump the bed, check the lights, available hanging space and door lock. But whatever I wrote, it could never equate with the experience of someone who had personally stayed there.

Which is why though I may still read a guide-book for other advice, I refer to hotel reviews, written by guests, on internet sites such as Trip Advisor.

It has nothing to do with whether, or not they`re professional travel writers, and all to do with their experience. Clearly, a professional writer may have more knowledge, but in simple terms of what the average person needs/hopes for on a holiday, the opinion of other travellers, is the more valid of the two.

c.Christine Osborne: author guides on Thailand, Malaysia, Seychelles, Morocco, Bali.

Image: Marriott Hotel, Cairo, Egypt

Source: copix.co.uk

KEEP THE FLAG FLYING

The Indian government is to prop up ailing national airline, Air India, whose losses are reported at $50 million a month. Conditions have been laid out that Air India must meet, in order to secure the bail-out money. Or else..

Air India was my preference for the `great flight` from London to Sydney. 9½ hours to Mumbai made an excellent break-point. The service was gracious, and the light vegetarian food, ideal for flying. Then their Australia service was suspended. Alas.

I have subsequently flown on just about every other carrier: Singapore Airlines, Qantas, United/Air New Zealand, British Airways, Gulf Air, JAL, Malaysian, Alitalia, Korean Airlines, Cathay Pacific, Thai, Garuda, Pan Am (that was).

Some good, some not so good, others terrifying.

On one flight to Sydney, I made a list of ALL the carriers I had EVER flown with. The entry was accepted by Guinness World Records but I rather feel, during her term as US Secretary of State, that Condoleezza Rice may have flown on many more. (It was not the frequency, note, but the greatest number of different international airlines).

One of my favourite trips was on Korean Air when the stewardess wheeled a library up and down the plane. Problem was the only book in English was Tolstoy`s War and Peace which would have taken several trips to Sydney and back, via Seoul, to finish.

The longest flight was on Grrr- Garuda - 45 hours - due to a hard landing and a 15 hour delay, in Abu Dhabi.

The most frightening was a BOAC - VC10 when our engines caught fire and we went down the slides and ran for our lives: 20th Sept 1971, in Singapore.

And the outright best? Well, a good flight depends on so many factors - plane, crew, food, check-in, in-flight entertainment, but all things considered, I would say the south-east Asian airlines

come out tops.

c.Christine Osborne