Intrepid Travel Trips

What I Wish Someone Had Told Me Before I Booked One

Okay so this is going to sound dramatic but bear with me.

I cried in a spice market in Marrakech. Not sad crying. The other kind. The kind where you’re standing there holding a bag of ras el hanout you just bought from a man named Omar who spent ten minutes explaining each spice to you even though you only asked what was in it, and something just hits you. Something about being alive and being there and none of it being planned.

That moment happened because of an Intrepid Travel trip. And I genuinely don’t know who I’d be right now if I’d just booked the all-inclusive instead.

Right. Let me back up.

I Booked It Because My Therapist Told Me To Do Something Scary

Not specifically Intrepid. Not specifically Morocco. She just said do something that makes you nervous, something outside your comfort zone, and stop waiting until you feel ready because you won’t feel ready. I’d been saying I wanted to travel properly for about four years at that point. Properly meaning not just sitting by a pool in a country I could have googled.

So I went home and looked things up and Intrepid kept appearing. Reviews, forums, random blog posts. People talking about these trips the way you talk about things that changed you. I’m naturally skeptical of that kind of language but there was so much of it and it all sounded so specific. Not vague good-trip language. Specific. Omar who explained the spices. A guide in Nepal who knew which tea house had a view of Everest that wasn’t on any map. A night bus in Vietnam that broke down and how it became the funniest night of the whole trip.

Specifics make me trust things. So I booked.

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The Morning We All Met Each Other Was Awkward and I Loved It

Ten of us in a riad courtyard in Marrakech. Seven in the morning. Everyone holding coffee and looking at each other sideways trying to figure out the social situation.

There was a woman called Diane from Edinburgh who immediately started talking and thank god for her. There was a young couple from Australia who were doing Intrepid trips for their honeymoon which I thought was either very romantic or very brave and turned out to be both. There was a quiet man from Portugal called Tomas who I assumed would keep to himself and who by day three was the funniest person on the trip.

Our guide was Fatima. From Fes. Spoke four languages, had eight siblings, had been running Intrepid Travel trips for seven years and knew everyone in every city we went through. Not tour-guide-knows-everyone. Actually knows everyone. People called out to her from shops. A woman in the Fes medina came out and hugged her and wouldn’t let us leave without feeding us something.

First morning Fatima told us: this trip will not go exactly as it says on the paper. Things will change. Go with it. The things that go wrong are usually the things you remember.

She was right about that in ways I didn’t fully understand until the trip was over.

The Sahara Was the Most Quiet I’ve Ever Been in My Life

Three hours in a 4×4 to get to the camp. Me, Diane, Tomas, and a driver called Youssef who played the same three songs on repeat and sang along quietly and didn’t apologize for it. We drove through landscape that kept changing in ways I couldn’t keep up with. Rocks then sand then this weird flat plain then dunes appearing on the horizon like something out of a film.

Social

The camp was small. Tents, a fire pit, two men from a local Berber family who cooked for us and sat with us and didn’t perform anything. Just sat with us. We ate lamb from a clay pot and bread that had been cooked in the sand and dates and I ate more than I’ve eaten at any restaurant I’ve ever been to.

Later we climbed a dune to watch the sun go down. It took longer than expected and we were sweating and Diane was complaining about the sand in her shoes and then we got to the top and everything stopped.

Nobody said anything for a long time. Even Diane.

The sky went through about six different colors. The shadows on the dunes moved. A wind came up from somewhere and it was the only sound for miles.

I took one photo and then put my phone away because it wasn’t doing anything useful.

The Medina in Fes Got Me Completely Lost and It Was Fine

Fatima gave us two hours free in the Fes medina. The old city. 9,000 streets, she said, and smiled in a way that suggested she knew exactly what was going to happen.

What happened was I got completely lost within about twenty minutes.

Not scared lost. Just genuinely, completely, no-idea-where-I-am lost. My phone map was useless because half the streets weren’t on it. I wandered for an hour. Bought a pair of slippers I didn’t need from a man who told me three different prices before we settled on one we both felt okay about. Drank tea in a tiled courtyard that I found by following someone who looked like they knew where they were going. Sat for a while and watched the light come through the ceiling onto the tiles.

Eventually a teenager who spoke some English found me looking confused and walked me back toward the main square because his dad had a shop near there and he was heading that way anyway. He didn’t want money. I asked and he looked slightly offended. He just waved and went into the shop.

That hour was one of my favorite hours of the whole trip. Nothing on it was organized. None of it was on the Intrepid itinerary. It just happened because I was there and open to it.

What I Know Now That I Didn’t Know Before

Intrepid Travel trips are not holidays. I want to be clear about that because I went in thinking of it as a holiday and it’s not quite the right word.

A holiday is something you recover from work with. You go, you rest, you come back the same. Nothing wrong with that. I still do it sometimes.

An Intrepid trip is something else. You come back different in small ways. Your patience for certain complaints shifts. Your sense of what’s actually necessary shifts. You have a handful of memories that are more vivid than most memories you’ve made in your regular life and you’re not entirely sure why.

Probably it’s the combination of things. New place, small group, no real safety net of familiarity, a guide who’s not performing their country but actually living in it and sharing it. All of it together does something.

I’ve done two Intrepid trips now. Morocco first, then Georgia last spring. I’m already looking at the next one.

My therapist asked how I felt about the Morocco trip when I got back. I said I cried in a spice market and I didn’t feel embarrassed about it. She said that sounds about right. We moved on to other things but I’m still thinking about it honestly.

Omar and the ras el hanout. The dunes at sunset. The kid who walked me back and didn’t want anything for it.

Still thinking about all of it.