Onwards to Fes

It was lucky we arrived early for the Rapide train to Fes; there was barely a free seat to be found when the train left the station, bang on time, at nine o'clock. The second class compartment was standard European: eight straight-backed, brick-orange seats, a dirty window with a table underneath and cold air blowing on your ankles, little oblong mirrors and a corridor very nearly - but not quite - wide enough to squeeze a backpack down.

Where the new-builds ended the arid land began: scree slopes and flat, dusty plains like in a cheap Spaghetti Western. At the first station oranges lay all across the tracks, blown from a tree. The towns were small and box-shaped, with minarets for campaniles and cactus hedgerows. At each stop was a station building the size of a house, with a low platform in front and a man in a peaked cap waiting to wave us away.

I fell asleep at Casablanca and woke up in Fes. Outside, it had started to rain.