Welcome back to my wander around Skoura, a rare desert oasis on Southern Morocco’s famous Route of 1,000 Kasbahs. In my previous post, I discovered a ruined kasbah (fortress) beside a dry riverbed, likely destroyed by a violent flood from the past. Today, I take you back to the dry riverbed, as we make our way to Kasbah Amridil, the best preserved kasbah in all of Morocco.
When we first set out on our walk through the oasis, we were just trying to stretch our legs and enjoy the journey through this interesting new environment, with no regard for the destination. This yielded us great results in that we found some fascinating ruins, and really got to see the personal side of the oasis walking by the small irrigated gardens along our path. Having not checked the map until this point, we hadn’t realized that we had wandered to the far northern edge of the oasis.
Looking at my friend’s map, we noticed a saved location, Kasbah Amridil, the best rated site in Skoura, and perhaps the most famous kasbah in all of Morocco. Having just seen what a ruined kasbah looks like, we were now quite eager to see what a whole kasbah looked like. The only problem was that Kasbah Amridil was at the southern edge of Skoura, nearly 5.5 kilometers away from our current position …if we walked by road. As it was already after 4pm and the sun would be going down soon, we decided to take a shortcut through the dry riverbed rather than going the long way around following the road.
It wasn’t long before a friendly local started following us.
This good boy accompanied us all the way to the kasbah, my favorite guide so far in Morocco.
We paid the small entrance fee of 20MAD, which comes out to roughly $2 USD.
The main part of the fortress is very well maintained and is really fascinating to walk though. Despite it having been a sunny day, all of the rooms were well ventilated and cool, which I know is due to the design of the building and the thick adobe walls.
The views from the top floor were really spectacular, looking out over the lush oasis, and with the striking mountain ranges in the distance.
Looking out of one of the windows, you can see the other ruined sections of the kasbah, and you get a better sense of just how large and important this building had been throughout the region’s history.
While we were exploring the kasbah, a man started following and walking around with us, questioning us rather aggressively about the site so he could give us the answers. After a long and tiring day, none of us were really interested in having a strange man following us, especially with the sun setting. When we left he kept following us before proceeding to angrily demand money. I wish this was an isolated case, but unfortunately this has happened a few times already on this trip. One of the girls didn’t want any trouble, so she gave him some money and he disappeared back into the shadows.
I was a little disappointed that the aggressive guy had distracted us while we were in the kasbah, as I didn’t really feel I got a chance to fully immerse in the ambiance of the place when he was around. Luckily, the sky was looking rather magical as we began our walk home, so I was quickly able to snap back into a peaceful state of mind. Additionally, we were joined again by our four-legged friend from earlier, who walked us all the way home.
I hope you enjoyed reading about my experiences in Skoura. Next stop, Marrakech!
If you would like to read more about my adventures along Morocco’s Route of 1,000 Kasbahs, please consider checking out some of my previous posts, including:
A Ruined Kasbah & A Dry Riverbed - On the Catastrophic Edge of Skoura's Lush Oasis, which can be found here.
Exploring A Rare Desert Palm Oasis & Discovering A Ruined Kasbah, which can be found here.
Abandoned On the Route of 1,000 Kasbahs - A Journey to Skoura, which can be found here.
All photos were taken by me. Have a great day!