WALKING TALL

Just two hours from Marrakech, the valleys of Morocco's High Atlas Mountains are home to incredible scenery, traditional Amazigh villages and a network of excellent and uncrowded hiking trails

- BEN LERWILL

Shortly after 4.30am, the day's first call to prayer drifts across the mountains. A gauzy predawn light hangs over the Ait Mizane Valley, where a dozen villages are scattered across the rough slopes. Each settlement has a small mosque and an early-rising muezzin, whose wavering invocations roll out into the morning air. Twelve voices flow from 12 minaret loudspeakers, filling the sleeping valley with a river of song. In two hours' time, the sky will be busy with swallows and the ridges will be washed in sunshine, but for now the mountains stir with hazy shapes and halfawake mantras.

In Morocco, proximity on the map can be misleading. The valley sits barely 40 miles from the city of Marrakech but may as well be on a different planet. If street-level Marrakech is a whirl of thronged souks and bleating taxis, Ait Mizane Valley is its slow-motion antidote. The main village, Imlil, is a place where the smell of freshly baked flatbread drifts on the air, where you can stroll from cafe to mountain stream in two minutes and where your gaze is routinely drawn to the craggy crests overhead. The traffic jams and snake charmers of the city feel a long way away.

I'm here to walk. The valley is located among the hulking summits of the High Atlas, a brawny mountain belt stretching for over 350 miles across the heart of the country. It's June, and the upper slopes are dry and biscuit-brown, while the lower slopes are lush with walnut trees. Peaks ring the scene, snow lingers in some of the highest cols and the ridges on the skyline are as jagged as torn paper. "The local name for the High Atlas is Idraren Draren," says whippet-fit guide Abdul Toudaoui, flashing a grin as he zips up his backpack. "It means 'the mountains of mountains'. People once thought they were the biggest in the world."