The End of the Road - Credits Mark Moxon

The valley is fertile all along the river, until south of Zagora M'Hamid is a complete shithole. Perhaps the closest one can get to the desperation that lies at the end of the P31 is by visiting M'Hamid, the village that marks the end of the road, and which sits a mere 40km from the Algerian border.

The valley is fertile all along the river, until south of Zagora

The old village of M'Hamid was destroyed in the 1970s by Polisario (the movement to liberate Western Sahara, the south-western chunk of Morocco that tourists rarely visit), and a new one was built 3km further up the road, but it might as well have been destroyed last week for all the charm that M'Hamid exudes. We pulled into the outskirts of M'Hamid and booked ourselves into the somewhat empty Carrefour des Caravanes hotel, which boasted a swimming pool and real Berber tent accommodation on the welcome sign. The swimming pool proved to be half dried-up, so our swift swim felt more like a sheep dip than anything else, but suitably refreshed we thought we'd check out the options for food in M'Hamid. It's probably unfair to be too harsh on a town that's been destroyed once too often, but even if you ignore the utterly depressing architecture, the people make M'Hamid as close to hell as anyone wants to get in this life. It's possible that it's worse in the off-season - and June is most definitely off-season - but when we pulled in through the main archway into town, the local touts landed on our car like flies round shit. 'You want see dunes?' they cried. 'Just three kilometres away, can be done in your car, no problem getting stuck, cheap price, you come with me yes, I have great camel trek, biggest dunes in Morocco, you come, yes, yes, yessss?' We tried to ignore them politely, but despite our protestations that we only wanted to wander round M'Hamid and were more interested in a cold drink than a trek into the desert, things got worse. I shook my head and told myself not to be stupid, but all I could see were hundreds of monkeys leaping out of the safari park, jumping on the car and playfully trying to bend our windscreen wipers and rip off our wing mirrors. This couldn't be - this was M'Hamid, and they didn't have monkeys here. It must be the desert heat. A sharp rapping on the window brought me back to my senses, but by now it was too late. We weren't going to open the doors in case the rabid hordes of M'Habid managed to pull us limb from limb in their mad rush to extract tourists dollars from the tourists, so a quick slip into reverse and a sharp wheel-spin threw off all but the more persistant hangers-on, and we turned round and shot back into the main street. A quick drive down the street and back proved conclusively that M'Hamid is not only at the end of the road but also at the end of the world, and before you could say 'camel trek' we were heading north again, back to the shelter of our hotel.