Morocco '19
d e s e r t k i l l s
d e s e r t e r o d e s
d e s e r t r e v e a l s
d e s e r t s i l e n c e s
d e s e r t t r a n s f o r m s
I knew I had to see desert this winter. It called me. Hitchhiking into the desert was what had to be done.
The best way to get to Morocco when you are in Spain is by taking the ferry from Andalusia.
Tarifa to Tangier is the closest ports that connect Spain to Morocco at the strait of Gibraltar.
Back then it costed me 30€ to go over.
Getting of the ferry in Tangier you find yourself in a different world.
The 30km of ferry ride catapult you you from southern Europe into the depths of Muslim culture.
Narrow roads, Mosques, chaotic traffic, Arab language all around.
On the way south towards Marrakesh, Morocco slowly becomes the desert nation that it is known to be.
Baniaf in Marrakesh. Besonders in gebückter Körperhaltung eine absolute Augenweide.
The following pictures were shot on my Sony RX-100 IV in the IR wavelength.
In this part of the spectrum the desert looks even more extreme.
The contrast between life and death becomes more visible.
Kids of the desert.
Their skin is so smooth because of the way the long infrared wavelenghts blur fine detailed pores.
Hitchhiking experience in the desert is different. Only every 15 minutes comes a car.
Most of them are French caravans. None of them picked me up.
When a Moroccan would pass by the pick up rate would be almost 100%.
One time I hitchhiked with a meteor hunter. He is in contact with all the nomads over there.
Whenever they see something coming down in the night they call him. Then he comes and searches the whole area.
He said he only finds about 4 space stones per year but that's enough for making a living.
What a job.
The desert reveals its true magic in the darkness of the night. It is impossible to reach such low levels of light pollution in a populated area of the world.
The next village was 50km away.
Lying in the dust and watching the milky way unfold in the sky for hours was better than cinema could ever be.
The most intense experience that the desert offered me was the sunrise.
5:30 in the morning the horizon would slowly but incessantly start to light up.
Brighter and brighter shades of blue unravel.
The milky way was still there in its full glory — 20° azimuth over the horizon were the rotation of the earth would soon reveal our sun.
The blue spread from the horizon through the milky way to the zenith of the sky.
The first shades of yellow came through at the horizon.
To my amazement the milky way was still well visible in the semi-lit sky. Actually it was still as visible as if you could see it from the central European countryside.
Somewhere at this point I forgot about being human for a long time span.
My body froze.
I could not take pictures anymore.
I was listening to music but at some point I had to stop because no music would fit anymore.
No music could do justice to what I saw.
The first glimpses of yellow light were on the horizon. The first ambient light rays sent by our sun, reflected in the atmosphere and crashed into my patch of desert gently dimmed up the scene around me.
I realized the vast emptiness that I was in.
For a hundreds of acres around me was literally nothing.
Some hills at the horizon.
One empty street passing through.
No distractions. Just bare vast empty desert land, and a sky full of colors. No clouds. No shapes. Just one horizon.
Below the horizon nothing but dark dead rocks and sand.
Above the horizon there was everything.
A giant colour gradient from yellow in the front to blue above to darkness behind me.
The galactic milky way star cloud just in sight. A comforting thick light dot called Jupiter was just a few ° away from the center of it.
Our sun right behind the horizon about to show its grace, warmth and abundant power.
'Twas like watching a climactic movie. Slowly the colors on the horizon changed, intensified.
Something very powerful was about to ascend over the horizon.
Sure I knew it was the good old sun, but I never watched it like this, felt it like this.
It was as seeing a sunrise for the first time in my life.
The mellow bright orange disk of the sun dipped above the horizon.
Suddenly I was out of my body. I could see myself standing in this infinite empty space.
An infinitely small conscious pebble in an unconscious blank surface on a massive planet that is slowly but steadily rotating towards an spherical radiating nuclear fusion power plant generously emitting abundant amounts of warmth and light into the void of space but also on this evolving rotating rock that I am standing on.
It is this field of ever flowing light that allowed more complex molecules and life to form here, and now I - a small conscious dot in the desert - stand here in these nothingness.
Able to perceive this motherly field of warmth from our star.
Able to perceive the infinite potential of nothingness of desert and space.
Grateful for being allowed to try to grasp this great mystery of being.
Of existing.
Of differentiation and emerging complexity from subatomar particles to galaxy clusters.
The duality of information and consciousness.
Of space and energy.
The vastness is not the only mesmerizing direction of scale that one can experience in the desert.
One can also explore the small scales.
The flight back to Germany would be from Agadir. It was good to touch base with the element of water after the desert before returning to green Europe.
