Three-and-a-half years ago, my friend Megan and I took the liberty of jetting off on a very extended break from our rigorous classes in Utrecht, Netherlands to go to … Morocco!

After more than a week in Marrakesh and Essaouira, we booked ourselves on a four-day tour to the Sahara. I cannot imagine anywhere more majestic. From afar, it looked the desert equivalent of the Emerald City.

It was there that I first fell in love with the four-legged beast who lent this site its name.

The greatest part about the trip was that we actually camped far into the desert, just a few miles from the Algerian border, with a Berber tribe.

We rode camels, morning and night, played drums and sang and ate tajine and cous cous with our bare hands when we weren’t aboard our dromedary pals.

But man, did my butt hurt after all day atop that hump!

The craziest thing about the shifting sands is how drastically the colors change at different points in the day. I want to swim in that sand. I even have a bottle of it still on my mantle (and I was too lazy to put it in a proper vase, so it’s actually in the original Arabic water bottle I carried it home in!).

And then there was this picture—taken with a point and shoot, mind you!—that would go on to win a handful of photo contests and serve as the catalyst for the naming of this blog.

Oh, Morocco, I miss you. I know it’s become such a cliche place for a traveler of late, and I don’t care. I don’t often get the urge to revisit countries I’ve already been to, as there’s a whole huge world out there waiting to be explored, but I would return here in a heartbeat (ahem, Morocco Board of Tourism, did you hear that?).

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