Relentless heat, golden tajines, exceptional hospitality, sugar cane nectar, feral dogs, mechanical incompetence and a chicken shawarma that nearly ended me – Morocco proved a fitting start to the chaotic and beautiful 6 months that Africa had in store.

While my first few days in France were cold, wet and frankly quite boring, the start to my journey down Morocco could not have been more chaotic. 

Brilliant. My plan to never cycle at night had failed before I’d even started my first ride on African soil. Cursing myself for saving €3 by spending a night 2 hours ride away rather than right by the port, I anxiously waited to be escorted through an intense security scanning process before finally being allowed to leave.

While I had spent much of my childhood in Sub-Saharan Africa, I had no clue what to expect from Morocco. North Africa was a complete unknown, and arriving in pitch darkness only reminded me how out of my depth I was. As I turned on my pathetic bike lights and started slowly pedalling away from the port, the excitement of finally reaching Africa itself was dominated by anxiety and fear. The 2 hour ride along the windy coastal road to the Airbnb location felt like an age, and I couldn’t help but imagine getting mugged or hit by a car, extremely aware that with no local knowledge, cash or SIM card I was immensely vulnerable. 

Finally reaching the settlement on the map where my Airbnb seemed to be located around midnight, I pedalled up and down the road, searching for a measly bar of signal from across the sea in Spain so I could contact my host and find the apartment. After an anxious 20 minutes of miscommunication and getting lost in back alleyways, I eventually identified my enormous but barely-furnished apartment and collapsed, exhausted but relieved to have made it in one piece. 

Sourcing cash and a SIM card was a much more stressful process than anticipated, trying to seek help in an hectic and unfamiliar city while also avoiding getting scammed. Finally securing the goods, I pedalled out of the city as fast as possible. Cycling down a main road, I had to swerve as two cars nearly collided and screeched to a halt, and one incensed driver jumped out of his car and started whipping the other car door with his belt. What the heck had I got myself into? Adding to the mayhem of the streets was the fact that my Garmin had no African maps on it, and trying to follow a pink line on a white screen that wiggled through side roads and one way systems proved quite the challenge. 

While I was fearful and borderline overwhelmed by the unknowns of this new country, I also felt moments of familiarity that were both exciting and reassuring. While Morocco is so different from the sub-Saharan countries in which I had spent a lot of time over the years, it also felt unmistakably African: The rugged landscapes, roadside huts and stalls selling pottery and melons, and cold Sprite in a glass bottle all reminded me of my childhood in Malawi. The combination of the familiar and the unknown just made me so excited to take on the next 15000km of this vast, diverse and beautiful continent. 

My good friend Jacob had put me in touch with his Uncle Bahaa in Agadir, and assured me that his family would take good care of me while I was in Morocco. All I had been told when I reached Larache was to wait in a cafe in the central square, and someone would find me and take me to where I would be staying. Eventually two men showed up, and we headed off into town. I was blown away by their generosity. After paying for my coffee before I had even noticed, they took me to their friend’s restaurant where I scoffed two main meals, and the owner insisted it was on the house when I tried to pay. I thought I would be staying in someone’s spare room, but I was taken to a nearby hotel where I was given a room and was once again refused to be allowed to pay. I felt truly humbled and blown away by the generosity shown towards a total stranger. Moroccan hospitality was something else. 

Back in the saddle the next morning, I was relieved to have a relatively uneventful day. Long stretches of straight rural roads were a welcome change from the chaos of Tangier, and with the crazy sidewinds dissipated I was able to make good progress South. While I had initially planned a quieter and more scenic route winding through the Atlas mountains, mere weeks before I arrived Morocco experienced a horrific earthquake, splitting great cracks across the mountain roads.

Not wanting to risk running into more danger than necessary, I rerouted along the coast, and would hug the Atlantic right the way down the Sahara and into Senegal. While the roads were not as bad as in the city, I still had to keep my wits about me as I shared the tarmac with horse-drawn carts, speeding buses and endless police checkpoints with ominous spike strips. 

Interacting with kids on the road would always bring a moment of joy: returning a wave and a smile; giving a high five as a gleeful child ran into the road and stretches out a hand; and most of all finding myself challenged to a bike race, which I would inevitably lose as I struggled to sprint on my 50kg steed. I hadn’t seen another white person since landing in Morocco, and everyone seemed to assume I was Spanish, greeting me with a friendly ‘hola’ as I passed by. While I occasionally had to swerve off the road to avoid a collision, most drivers were pretty friendly, with lots of beep-beeps and thumbs up as we passed. As the afternoon went on I was increasingly suffering in the relentless heat, with the barren road offering no respite from the beating sun. At last, spotting a small hut with a fridge full of soft drinks, I slumped in the shade to neck a couple of cold Fantas. Reluctant to venture back out from my oasis, I once again found myself having to do the best part of an hour in the dark to reach Kenitra, finally checking into a cheap hotel before another big meal and long sleep. 

With just a short 40km day to Rabat ahead, I spent the next morning having breakfast with Jacob’s uncle Jamal, who works on film sets in Morocco. It turns out there is a booming film set industry in Morocco, with lots of American movies set in the Middle East being filmed in Morocco. He told me how he had been in Marrakech during the night of the earthquake, and it was chilling to hear how terrifying the whole ordeal was with so much panic and uncertainty. 

The clean, sleek and modern city center of Rabat, Morocco’s capital, contrasted jarringly with the miles of dilapidated buildings surrounded by piles of plastic and rubber on its outskirts. 

My hostel was in the center of the medina (old town), and it was quite the challenge maneuvering the unwieldy bike through the tiny crowded streets. The town itself was full of leather, fabric and shoe shops, with delicious smells wafting from the many food stalls.

As well as devouring the best falafel I’ve ever had, I discovered two sugary treats that would become daily staples: sugar cane juice and Moroccan pastries. Dirt cheap, delicious and unbelievably refreshing.  One of the perks of burning 5000+ calories a day is that I could eat as much sugary food as I liked guilt-free, and I was very much making the most of it as I sampled the local offerings. 

Most of the day was another long slog under the baking sun, but just before hitting Casablanca I found myself smothered by a cool and very dense sea mist, making for a welcome change. Another night in a cheap central hostel – thankfully free of Americans this time – meant another adventure with the bike through tiny medina alleyways. While Casablanca is meant to be Morocco’s most expensive city, the streetfood stands that all the locals were eating from were delicious and crazy cheap. I treated myself to a single pint at the Irish pub, my first beer since arriving in Morocco. Alcohol in Morocco is pretty tightly regulated, with a 100% tax on alcohol and consumption in theory only allowed for foreigners. More bakeries meant more pastries, and when you can get 6 or more pastries for less than £1 it would be rude not to indulge.

After an unmemorable night in the outskirts of El Jadida, an old Portuguese settlement, I faced a big 140km ride to Safi after a late start. Not wanting to get caught out in the dark again, I forced myself to ride on past most of the coffee vans as I left the sea and began to climb up the cliffs. Much of the morning was spent cycling by huge oil refineries, feeling in a sci-fi moving as the huge domes and towers stretched for miles along the sea. After a lunch of Moroccan ‘tacos’ – which in reality is closer to a grilled panini/wrap than anything you’d find in Mexico – I headed inland. The landscape suddenly felt very different, much more like the familiar rugged scenery of sub-Saharan Africa, with the trees and landscape much different to the coastal and densely populated northern Morocco. 

While I was starting to get more comfortable with my fellow road-users, there was one group that always sparked fear: dogs. 

At least once a day, the sound of barking would trigger a sudden panic, usually followed by a group of dogs sprinting out into the road and surrounding my bike. While the general advice seems to be to get off the bike, greet them and walk slowly, I found myself instinctively pedaling as fast as I could, and trying to out-sprint them while yelling at them to “f*ck off!”. At one particularly hairy moment I was freewheeling down a hill at over 50kph, when a dog sprinted into the road and almost wiped me out. Swerving to avoid a collision, I was shaken by the realisation that I’d been inches away from broken bones and a likely end to the adventure.

Canine-based incidents aside, it was exciting to feel like I was reaching the edges of the Sahara. Rugged ground began to merge into large stretches of sand dunes. As the sun set and I neared my Airbnb, I had my first serious mechanical of the trip – I felt something was very wrong with the cassette on the back wheel, with scraping noises and a sudden resistance. Removing my bags to inspect the damage, to my horror I noticed that the rack carrying my 2 large panniers and rucksack had come out of its mount on one right and was scraping along the cassette. While in reality this was a relatively minor mechanical issue, with my complete lack of bike knowledge and inexperience in finding temporary solutions, it felt potentially catastrophic. After a fruitless search for the missing bolt as darkness approached, I had to improvise, and ended up pedalling the last couple of kilometres with my backpack on and panniers hoisted over both shoulders.

With one last big day in the saddle before a planned rest day in Essouria, I gingerly continued onwards with a plastic screw from a bottle cage temporarily holding the rack in place, painfully aware that the best part of 20kg of luggage was being held in place by a single flimsy piece of plastic. It would prove to be one of the toughest days of the journey so far, with plenty of climbing up coastal cliffs under a beating sun with almost no shade or food stalls to stop and refuel. 

Hoping to find a cafe as I left my Airbnb for some pre-ride fuel, I instead found myself cycling 30km through the middle of another huge oil refinery, lungs cooked by the fumes. Around 12:30 I finally found a tiny village by the sea, and devoured small loaves of bread stuffed with chicken and chips, washing it down with tiny glasses of very sugary tea while sheep, goats and camels wandered past. Regaining my strength, it felt so refreshing to be away from the busy cities and half-built suburbs. Stopping just once more for a mid-afternoon tajine, I powered through the final 70km of the day with almost no break, only stopping a few kilometers outside of Essouria as the evening approached to enjoy a coffee with a view over the city. I was approached by a young guy who introduced himself as Mohammed, and asked if I wanted to take a picture with his camel, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ was an absolute darling, and I obviously obliged.

As the sun sank over the horizon and the pink sky lit up the old medina, I freewheeled down towards Essouria with a joyful smile, excited for a day off exploring the old town and doing some kitesurfing.

Alas, my plans were scuppered by a chicken shawarma.

As soon as I took my first bite, I sensed something wasn’t quite right, but my hunger got the better of me and I polished off the lot. Within hours of making it back to the hostel, my shawarma was resurfacing from both ends. Burning up in my hostel bunkbed, dehydrated and overwhelmed with pain, I meandered in and out of consciousness as I slowly soaked my sheets in sweat. This was by some distance the worst food poisoning I had ever experienced. 

Still cramping in pain, I stayed bed-bound all morning. There’s nothing quite as grim as grinding through an illness stuck alone in a small bunk of a 12-person hostel dorm, and for the first time in Morocco I really missed having a companion to help get me through it. Running out of liquids and still sweating buckets, I forced myself to get out of bed and unsteadily venture into the street to buy more water and orange juice. Every additional few seconds I was outside and standing upright, I felt myself getting fainter and dizzier, and with a bottle of water secured I started stumbling back towards the hostel.

As the world began to spin more and more, everything suddenly went black. I was so dehydrated and faint that I had gone blind. Still conscious but unable to see anything, I had to feel my way along the alley walls towards the hostel, stumbling side-to side with dizziness and desperate to make it back to my bunk. I finally made it back after what felt like hours but had only been about 3 minutes, and collapsed back into my bunk, my vision slowly coming back as I fell into a deep sleep.

Still suffering from the lingering food poisoning and with no shops or shade to rest under, today was by far the hardest day of the journey so far. And yet, I somehow managed to summon the willpower to keep moving and force myself to think positive thoughts. Today would be the start of a mental journey, in which I discovered that I could push my body far beyond the limits of what it told me. By choosing to focus on moments of joy rather than the heat, pain and lingering food poisoning my body was constantly reminding me of, my positive mental state could translate into a parallel physical strength that could endure through the toughest moments of the journey. 

100km in the bag, I finally reached a coffee van at the top of a long descent back down to the ocean as the sun floated towards the horizon. Sipping on a well-earned espresso, I couldn’t help but feel proud of how much progress I’d made, having spent the previous day immobile in a hostel bunk bed. I remember I had the song Arnold Palmer by the Jeb Bush Orchestra in my headphones as Ι freewheeled down the switchbacks, feeling overwhelmed with joy and gratitude to be where I was right there. I will always associate that song with that moment: whizzing along an empty stretch of beautiful atlantic coast, the setting sun lighting up the clouds after a long day in the saddle, ready to wildcamp under the stars. 

The remains of my dinner had seemingly attracted every bug in the surrounding area, and I could barely sleep with so many new companions crawling around. Giving in at around 2am, I put up my tent to escape my new campmates. While I was able to sleep until dawn, I paid the price of getting my belongings full of sand when I packed up my panniers the next morning. 

To make matters worse, as the day went on a strong headwind grew, but rather than cooling me down the wind itself was somehow just as hot as the sun. Whenever I saw a roadside tap, I would stop and drench myself in water, trying to find any way to cool my skin, genuinely worried I might be approaching heatstroke. Finally reaching the outskirts of Agadir I collapsed by a small shop, and reviving myself with a Solero and several liters of ice-cold Sprite, I eventually located Uncle Bahaa, playing cards in a cafe with his friends. I was once again treated with exceptional hospitality. Bahaa got me a hotel room for the two nights and put money behind the desk for my food, and after I’d had a shower and a nap took me to a bar with his friends for some Saturday night beers. After everything I’d been through over the previous few days, it was a welcome (if slightly jarring) experience to have a few drinks in a loud bar. 

Taking a rest day in Agadir to explore the famous Souk market, I stumbled across the best sugar cane juice I have ever tasted.  This was truly one of the most exquisite liquids that has ever entered my body. Nectar of the Gods. I simply couldn’t stop drinking it. A whole sugar cane, ginger root and fresh lime, squeezed straight into a bottle for me to take away. It may have been 1L and approximately one million calories, but it barely lasted 10 minutes. 

Feeling rejuvenated the next morning, I continued on South into the Anti-Atlas mountains, the Sahara almost upon me. It felt like a cheat code cycling without the illness or headwinds of the previous days, and I was enjoying being back in the saddle. As I continued into the hills, I paused to investigate an unusual roadside stall covered by a makeshift tarp canopy. Before I knew it, a smiling man in a purple shirt and maroon trousers had convinced me to buy a small pot of overpriced honey. What I didn’t realise at the time was that it was only sealed by a flimsy piece of sellotape, and when I arrived in my riad in Tiznit for the night, I was horrified to open my pannier to find my tent and clothes covered in sticky honey and sand. Nightmare. 

With just one more pass left to cross the Anti-Atlas before I reached the Sahara itself, I set my alarm for 7am, hoping to finish the 40km climb before the heat of the day set in. To my horror, when I finally awoke feeling unusually well-rested, it was already 11:30. Struggling up the long climb under the baking sun, I soaked in the views of the majestic Anti-Atlas mountains around me, well aware that the Sahara ahead would offer little in the way of interesting landscapes. 

After an afternoon dodging mining trucks that took the full width of the single lane road, I finally reached the first settlement of the day with any shops, stopping for my first meal of the day at 6pm. Tucking away a delicious lamb tajine, I was back on proper asphalt with the sun setting ahead of me as I rolled into Guelmim, the semi-official ‘Gateway to the Sahara’. 

Before me lay a single tarmac road hugs the coast, a lonely 2,500km black streak marking the only sign of human civilization amidst the empty expanse of unfeeling sand. 

The Sahara awaited.