The magic of Morocco

Fewer hippies, more luxury and a hotel that feels like home. Marrakesh is still the place French people go to when they want to dream. Perhaps more Indians should too

- VIR SANGHVI

"Take the train from Casablanca, going south" sang Graham Nash on his Marrakesh Express, the first hit single from Crosby, Stills & Nash. It's an instantly appealing song that became one of my favourites when I was still at school. While Crosby, Stills & Nash would go on to release much weightier material, Marrakesh Express stayed a personal favourite. I liked it because it offered a vision of freedom, of a place one could escape to. 

It was, of course, in retrospect, a grass-fed hippie dream that never held true. And so when the hippies cut their hair in the 1970s and went to work for IBM, Marrakesh ceased to be the sort of flower-power destination.

But it found new identities. It had always been a favourite of French people. (Morocco used to be a French colony and French is widely spoken in Marrakesh). It was where Yves St Laurent would hide out when the pressure got too much for his delicate creative sensibility. It is still the place French people go to when they want to dream.

The Marrakesh that flourishes today is much more the city of Yves St Laurent than it is the city of Crosby, Stills & Nash. Its smells still make you a little heady, it is filled with gardens and there are still people "charming cobras in the square", as the song has it.