THE RED OF THE DESERT

Desert is often associated with yellow, sandy, beige color. Those are the colors of Sahara in Algeria and Morocco. But the desert can also by red, dark red … I know a person that collects the sand of the different deserts, and he has some red sands in his collection. The reddest, darkest sand I saw at his place came from southern Jordan, from the Wadi Rum desert. And this is what the red sand looks like:

The sand in Wadi Rum is very soft at the dunes, but it can also be quite rough as it crumbles from the sandstone rocks. Just as its consistency varies, the color scale is very rich – within the dark red there are shadows.

The red color can have more of pink or more of orange in itself. Wadi Rum is often dubbed the pink desert, but I personally like its lovely dusk orange shadows:

Henna painting in Marrakech

I have always been fond of henna, especially for hair dying. Amazing way to keep them healthy while giving them a bit of a color, each time turning out different :-). The body painting I do much less, but at Jamaa el Fna in Marrakech, few women resist. The local Berber girls are fast and cheap. After a bit of bargain, you can get both hands painted with one of the offered patters for about 20 dirhams. She is done in 10 minutes, and the hands look exotic for about a week. Fun!

Orientoholic to the World

The time span between a set up of this blog and its actual coming-to-life with its first entry was quite long. Is it even possible to express myself in English as well as I do it in my near-mother-tongue Czech? I have heard someone say that as many languages as possible is the best choice. It is true that speaking and writing English I am not the same Katka that writes in Czech or Slovak. Suddenly I become Katrina, someone serious and calm, the silliness gives way to a calm and collected demeanor. However, my stylistics might sound and look just as funny as my putting ketchup on the pancakes once upon the time while living in Chicago.

Yet I do have a message to pass on, and I want to tell all the world that I love the Orient. My Orient, to make it clear, is the world from Morocco through the North Africa and the Levant countries through the Gulf and up to Iran. While I like travelling in general, is it worth anything to babble about Sri Lanka if I do not speak its language and do not know its culture? I doubt it. And all the respect to those that can and do it well. I will stick to my part of the world, with its Morocco-Iran borders.