Azib Likemt

1 october 2022

We left early this morning and made as much noise as we needed to, as our fellow campers had just gone to their tents!

It's amazing how incredible scenery, new experiences and great company can easily help you forget that you had very little sleep. Today was a steady uphill climb along a zigzagged path, the upper regions being worked on by employees from the government. In the National Park, the government department is doing what ever it can to maintain these tracks with very little funding. The workers had set up a little tea stall and I stopped to sit with them on the way up to the pass.

At 3555m, Tizi Likemt enabled you to get a fantastic view back over the valley where we'd camped and down to the green valley below where we were heading. It was as we came down this descent that we started to see the Berber villagers who live in this valley during the summer months. Rashid was brilliant at describing their lifestyle and the roles and responsibilities of the men and women. We saw the shepherds with the goats and sheep high on the mountain sides, the women collecting grass for the cows and children playing across the fields and within the houses. The homes are built of rocks and sit against the hillside. Rashid explained how the villagers were starting to prepare to move their families, livestock and belongings to the villages lower down the mountains - the temperatures were dropping, snow was falling on some nights and winter was crawling towards them. In the small fields terraced into the hillsides we saw the people clearing the land and preparing for leaving it throughout the winter. This is the traditional nomadic life of the Berber people, and I felt very lucky to be here at the very time when they were transitioning from their summer to winter lifestyle.

We camped beside a river in a shelter as Rashid could tell it would rain. Sure enough the thunder and lightening came in the afternoon and I was really happy to be camped in my tent under a solid shelter.