Two days in Erg Chigaga reminded me how loud normal life is
We spent two days in Erg Chigaga, and the thing that stayed with me most wasn’t the dunes.
It was the silence.
Not empty silence, but the kind that makes you notice how much noise you normally carry inside your own head.
No traffic. No notifications. No schedule pushing you to the next thing. Just wind, sand, tea, fire, stars, and people sitting together without needing to fill every second with words.
The desert has a strange way of simplifying life.
After a few hours, you stop thinking about what you should be doing, what you should buy, where you should be next, or how you look to other people. You start noticing smaller things again, the temperature changing after sunset, the sound of someone preparing tea, how enormous the sky actually is.
Maybe that is part of the wisdom of places like Chigaga.
The desert doesn’t give you answers. It removes enough distractions that you can finally hear your own questions.
Our two days there felt much longer than two days, in the best possible way.
If you ever go to the Sahara, don’t only go for the camel ride or the photos. Give yourself enough time to sit still.
Sometimes the most memorable part of Morocco is the moment when nothing is happening at all.