5250 TRAVELTRAVEL ++ LEISURE LEISURE / JANUARY 2017 / JANUARY 2017
BEYOND
PilgrimageGETTING THERE
Indian passport holders need a tourist visa to
visit Morocco, which can take up to eight
business days. The closest airports to
Moulay Idriss are Fez (a 1½-hour drive) and
Casablanca (3½ hours).STAY
Dar Zerhoune A five-room B&B inside a
traditional Moroccan home with a dining terrace
and some of the finest views in town. Doubles
from US$66; darzerhoune.com
Scorpion House Mike Richardson, the former
maître d’ at the Ivy and the Wolseley, in London,
has opened his weekend retreat as a guesthouse
with meals he prepares himself. House rentals
from US$326; scorpionhouse.com
Walila Farm A historic home in the countryside
that offers accommodation as well as meals
prepared from ingredients grown on the property.
Doubles from US$50; +212-6/5209-6373ACTIVITIES
Roman Baths Ask your host to point the way to
the path leading to these ancient thermal baths,
said to have curative properties.
Volubilis Once the capital of a remote corner of
the Roman Empire, this partially excavated city
just outside Moulay Idriss dates back to the
third century BC and is a fascinating detour.the garden eating a veal tagine, quinces,
and dates from the trees that shaded us,
a lamb grazed near a chunk of Roman
stone that had rolled down the hill from
one of Volubilis’s crumbling columns.
If you walk to the top of Zayr’s land,
you can look down on the valley and the
slip of a river and see the same sweep
of muted greens and patches farmed
by hand and donkey that the Romans
would have seen. This is a place where
time unfolds and history passes,
changing nothing.From left: A donkey in one
of Moulay Idriss’s many narrow,
painted alleyways; a guest room
at Scorpion House.observing the ‘promenade hour,’ which in Moulay Idriss begins at about
4 pm and continues until nightfall. As the streets fi ll up, so do the windows.
“People here love to sit and watch,” one local told me. When darkness
arrived, Richardson and I stayed out on the terrace under a single light,
eating rabbit that he had stuff ed with merguez sausage and dates.
Moulay Idriss was built for donkey traffi c. It is threaded with arteries
that are less streets than openings just wide enough for a pack animal
loaded with goods. One afternoon, lost in the maze of streets, I had to ask
two young engineering students for directions. As they walked me home,
they explained that development in Morocco follows a particular process
that has remained unchanged for decades. The king arrives in a region, the
people make their requests, and he allocates a budget. Several months
later, he comes back in disguise to see whether what he commissioned is
actually being carried out. I asked what sort of disguise. “In glasses, or with
his trousers torn,” one said, in a manner that suggested the answer should
have been obvious to me.
I went the following day to the town’s hammam. It is heated with
burning olive wood, the scent of which fl oats into the street. Inside,
though, the atmosphere is less like a spa than a communal bath full of
screaming women. They brew afternoon coff ee there while holding what
could be called the town congress. I got so caught up in their interaction
that I found it hard to leave.
One of the area’s best-kept secrets is Walila Farm, positioned between
Volubilis and the two hills of Moulay Idriss. Built in 1920, it was once the
weekend home of Michel Jobert, the French foreign minister under
Georges Pompidou and François Mitterrand, who wrote a novel about the
house. It had fallen into disrepair when Azzedine Zayr, a Moroccan who
had spent many years working as a chef in Belgium, bought it in 2000.
His renovation turned it into one of the most tranquil guesthouses I have
ever visited. The Jobert family remains present in every detail, from the
original tile work and furniture to the books in the library. Gardens and a
copse of pine trees surround the house, with fi elds beyond where Zayr
grows ingredients for the European-infl ected traditional Moroccan dishes
he serves to guests. Wild orange blossoms were fl owering between the
organic, hand-farmed crops when I visited. Zayr crushed a fragrant
handful and held it up to my face to inhale, releasing a delicate perfume.
Later that afternoon, he put the blossoms in a tea for me. As we sat inThe Details