We had no opportunity to experience its dubious comforts however as a young man called

We had no opportunity to experience its dubious comforts, however, as a young man called Said offered us a bed for the night We followed him, stumbling through the blackness. If the sparkling dresses we had seen by the roadside earlier had astonished us, Said's mother, Fatima, and her two daughters were just as impressively ornamented. Sitting cross-legged in her spotless pis home, Fatima served us mint tea, sweetened so much that our teeth became encrusted. The sugar was scraped off a conical lump wrapped in blue paper. Warm water was poured into a bowl by the youngest daughter so that we could wash our hands between each cup.

A baby granddaughter was ill, and Fatima's youngest son slumbered alongside us, invisible under a pile of blankets.The three women wore star brooches like sheriff's badges, one on each breast, linked by a heavy silver chain. These fastened a white wool pinafore- cum-cape to the blue dress underneath. The two older women had complex head wrappings but were not veiled, and had indigo tattoed patterns down the centre of their chins.The 15-year-old girl, who did all the housework, had a mass of long, loose hair. She was not yet married, and in order to attract suitors wore the chunkiest jewellery: with big earrings and a sequinned waist tassel.Cross-legged round the low table, we ate a meal of egg and tomato from a communal dish, using bread as a scoop. We weren't very adept at getting the food into our mouths, but the family were scrupulous about eating only from their part of the dish, so we had time to catch up Our room was thick with blankets, but sleep evaded us. A toy aeroplane constructed from tin cans was entwined with a stuffed lizard hanging from the ceiling, and a shaft of moonlight pierced the tiny window, giving on to a silvery view of the village We watched the dawn arrive.

In front of the house was the family orchard, with apple and walnut trees, roosters crowing, and mountains towering.Leaving money and Nurofen, worrying about the mother's ulcer and the sick baby and promising to visit Said's hammam (steam bath) in the next big town, we boarded Odette at seven. We were now part of a caravan of lorries, each with its spiky-hooded cargo. The higher and colder it got the further the men retreated into their heavy white burnouses. Women and children ranged the hills as we passed, piling their mules with towers of brushwood for fuel.Imilchil is exceptionally beautiful.

Built on an apron of flat land at about 3,000 metres, it is shadowed by the snowcaps of the High Atlas and cut off for a month or two in winter. The village is centred on a spectacular kasbah and a large and very busy walled market square. Two unappealing basic hotels do not encourage a long stay, but the place's beauty, bustle, and the clearest air are ample compensation. On the terrace of one hotel, we breakfasted on doughnuts and mint tea in the brilliant dry early morning light and watched the produce and livestock market, the scene coloured by a frugal palette of the white of snow, fleece and burnous, golden pis, sharp with shadows, and the green of the traders' turbans.

Such a fine view, with the mountains as backdrop, had our fingers twitching over our cameras, although the ground was littered with turds, mule shoes, sheep's legs and hooves. Out by the threshing floors - beautiful circular jigsaws of stone with central poles to which mules are tethered for pulling millstones - we watched an inter-village football match on the dry mud pitch.Moving on from Imilchil we had a choice. Travelling north-west by lorry we could reach the lakes, gorges, waterfalls and cedar forests of the Middle Atlas, home of the wild Barbary ape. But to the south lay the Algerian border and the Saharan dunes, reached through the dramatic Todra gorge. This leg of the journey takes 10 hours along an even more difficult path; boulder-strewn dry riverbeds, and precipitous descents where the road has all but fallen away are a few of the hazards. No contest, we decided; the gorge it must be.Once outside Imilchil we began the descent, going with rather than against the river's flow. The peaks were more jagged and redder, the slopes progressively denuded.