We’ve been writing a lot about the landscapes we’ve seen and the people we’ve come across while we have been cycling, but it can often be really easy to overlook what seem like the more boring technical details of the day. More often than not though, the technical bits (where we sleep, what we eat, etc.) are just as instrumental in shaping the experience we have while we cycle. This has been doubly so in Morocco, so I thought I’d write down what an average day in Morocco has been like.

A typical Moroccan day for us starts when we wake up to what sounds like a donkey being strangled. It takes a few seconds for us to realise that it’s the call to prayer being broadcast about an hour before dawn. We usually try unsuccessfully to go back to sleep until the sound of Mogwai coming from Matt’s phone tells us it is time to get up.

We put on fresh nicks, but otherwise the same clothes we wore yesterday and quite possibly the day before that. One person will then pack away the sleeping bags and mats, while the other braves the cold to make breakfast. Breakfast is simple. A cup of tea (made with powdered milk) and either jam or avocado on Moroccan bread. If we’re feeling particularly energetic we may even boil an egg.

Once we’ve eaten, we then pack away the tent and the rest of our gear, and push our bikes out of where ever we’ve managed to find to sleep that night. The sun rises at 7:30, and we try to be on the road just after 8am.

At some point we will need to restock our food, which takes more time in Morocco than we had been used to in Europe. If we are really lucky, the bread, fruit, vegetables and non-perishables will all be in one store where we can pick what we need of the shelf. More often though, they are all in separate places, some of which are impossible to find. The non-perishables will be in a hole in the wall shop, where we have to stand at the front counter and point and play charades with the shop owner to get him to bring us what we need. One time the guy gave up and let me duck under the counter to get the item, but most of the time the pointing and word or two of Arabic or French work eventually. Most people are pretty good natured about the whole thing, and often end up giving us an Arabic lesson about names or amounts along with big smiles. Bread can be in the same stores, or it can be sold out of carts, car boots or my favourite: in a hole in the wall in the back of a building that looked a little like a barn shed (that one was particularly fun to track down!).

The fruit and veg are a little easier to select, although the stores are often down side streets and tucked around corners. We’ll usually have to ask someone for directions, which can often bring about the inevitable offer to come into their shop for mint tea. Refusing the offer is considered rude, but if we accepted all the time we’d find ourselves still in the same spot and broke, so we’ve come up will all kinds of less rude ways of declining as politely as we can. ‘Not today thank you, but maybe tomorrow’ seems to make people a little happier.

Once we are finally stocked up, we hit the road again. We then spend most of the day either admiring the scenery or looking for a place to stop for our two lunches (which often means playing ‘spot the tree’ to try and find some sort of shade to sit under). Sometimes we will come across a town and manage to track down a Berber omelette, but most of the time lunches have consisted of more Moroccan bread, avocado, laughing cow cheese and tinned sardines. In between times, we’ve found that mandarins, dates and chocolate make pretty good cycling snacks, and go down a treat with the locals if we’re feeling in the mood to share.

If we’re planning on wild camping that night, we’ll start looking for a camp an hour or two before the sun is due to set, to give ourselves plenty of time to scout out a perfect spot. It usually takes a couple of attempts, and is often interrupted by a goat herder popping his head out from behind a tree. For us, the perfect spot is one that has somewhat flat ground, and is completely out of sight of any road or man made structure (if we’re staying in a campground, finding the spot is obviously easier, although the views are never as good).

Once we’ve found a spot we get to work setting up the tent and prepping dinner while there is still some light. We’re pretty uncreative when it comes to cooking these days, and in Morocco have stuck to two main meals that work with what ingredients we can find in the tiny towns, give us enough energy to cycle, and don’t use too much fuel to cook. The first is pasta, with tuna, tomato paste, harissa and either eggplant or red capsicum. The second is cous cous with sun dried tomatoes, zucchini, green capsicum and occasionally fresh broad beans.

If all goes well we then eat dinner just as the sun is setting. We clean up using our little solar light to see and pull out the wet ones for a quick scrub (or play roulette with the ‘hot’ shower in the campground), before climbing into bed and either reading a book, playing some cards or watching a tv episode. We started out the trip watching old X-files episodes, which worked fine in places like Iceland where it didn’t really get dark, but as winter set in and the nights got longer I found anything remotely spooky, even if it is dodgy, isn’t conducive to a good nights sleep when I’m wild camping. Lately we’ve opted for episodes of Monk, and they seem to fit the bill perfectly.

We usually try to keep ourselves awake until a little after 9, which after a hard days cycle can be a challenge. We then let sleep take hold and hope that we sleep soundly so that we are ready to get up and repeat the process all over again tomorrow.

Its a simple routine, but one that we’ve come to love. With the cold weather in the Balkans we had to default to staying in hotels and eating out more, and we found we craved the normality and simplicity of our tent. The wild camping in Morocco was simply stunning, and for us the views and isolation it provides is better than the comfort that any other accommodation could offer. To sit together outside our tent, looking out at mountains or the night sky, knowing that there is no one for miles around, has provided some of the biggest highlights of the trip for us.

As our trip draws to a close, we can’t help but look back on our daily routine with fondness, and wonder how we are going to feel about going back to non-nomadic lives that don’t involve four panniers and a bike.