Imlil

The Mizane valley has been farmed for centuries by Amazigh families who built terraces along the stream, dug seguias to carry meltwater to them and put their flat-roofed houses of stone and rammed earth on the slopes above the good land. Grain, walnuts and grazing supported a scattering of hamlets, and Imlil was one among several rather than the centre it became. The valley lay within the reach of the Glaoua family, the "lords of the Atlas" who dominated the southern mountains under the French protectorate, and passes such as the Tizi n'Tamatert carried trade and tribute between valleys long before there was a road.

Climbing changed the village. The first recorded ascent of Toubkal, by a French party in 1923, opened the massif to mountaineers, and after independence the building of the road up from Asni made Imlil the natural roadhead for the peak. A national park was declared around the peak in 1942, a refuge was built below the summit, and the number of local guides and muleteers grew; in the second half of the 20th century families began converting houses into gîtes. Imlil itself is a comparatively recent village, built up to serve the walkers passing through, while the older communities remain in the hamlets around it.

The recent past has been hard. On 8 September 2023 an earthquake centred in Al Haouz province, the administrative district that contains the valley, killed nearly 3,000 people and destroyed many High Atlas villages; roads and tracks were damaged and rebuilding has been slow, with families in the worst-hit places still waiting for permanent homes. Trekking, the valley's main income, has continued alongside that recovery.

Imlil is a Tashelhit-speaking Amazigh village, and almost everything about daily manners follows from that. Arabic and French are understood, and guides often speak English or Spanish as well, but the language of the terraces and the kitchen is Tashelhit. Households are close-knit, work is shared between neighbours at harvest and building time, and irrigation water is divided by long-established turns that predate any written rule.

Mountain traditions are still visible. Communal granaries, mule paths and flat roofs used for drying grain and fruit belong to a way of life organised around snowmelt and the seasons, and village celebrations — weddings above all — are marked with ahwach, the collective dance of the western Atlas, performed to frame drums with lines of men and women facing each other. The shrine at Sidi Chamharouch, on the path towards Toubkal, draws Moroccan pilgrims who come for healing and blessing rather than for the summit.

Guiding has become a culture of its own. Many men in the valley are trained mountain guides, muleteers, cooks or refuge staff, and the village square works as a hiring hall where work is allocated and routes are discussed. Visitors are treated with practised hospitality — tea on arrival, insistence on feeding people properly — while the conservatism of a farming village remains: modest dress, restraint in public between couples, and a strong preference for being asked before a camera is pointed at anyone.

A few thousand people live in Imlil and the hamlets around it, in an administrative district of Al Haouz province where the population is spread between many small settlements rather than gathered in one town. Farming still underpins the valley — walnuts, apples, cherries, barley and maize on the terraces, sheep and goats on the slopes — but tourism now provides much of the cash income, through guesthouses, guiding, portering, mules and the shops around the square.

The day begins early. Mules are loaded at first light for the refuge and the higher hamlets, walkers set off before the heat, and women carry fodder and water along the terrace paths. The middle of the day is quiet, and the square fills again in the late afternoon as groups come down from the mountain. Children walk or are driven to schools down the valley, and a clinic and small shops cover everyday needs, with anything larger requiring a trip to Asni or Marrakech.

The pressing issues are those of a mountain community: rebuilding after the 2023 earthquake, the state of the roads and tracks, water for irrigation in dry years, and the dependence of nearly every household on a trekking season that can be disrupted by weather or by events far away. Younger people often work seasonally in Marrakech and return for the harvest.

Food in the valley is simple and filling, and most visitors eat it at a guesthouse table. The standard sequence is harira or a vegetable soup, a salad of tomato, cucumber and onion, then a tagine — vegetables with a little mutton or chicken, cooked slowly over gas or charcoal — with round khobz bread torn up to scoop it, and fruit or yoghurt afterwards. Couscous appears on Fridays and on occasions, steamed above a broth of meat and vegetables.

Mountain ingredients give the valley's cooking its character. Walnuts, apples, cherries and quinces come from the terraces, barley is ground for bread and for couscous, and almonds and argan oil arrive from lower country to make amlou, the sweet spread eaten at breakfast with honey. Berkoukes, a pasta of rolled grains cooked like a thick soup, and tagines of turnip, carrot and potato are winter staples; eggs and preserved meat fill the gaps.

Bread is baked in wood-fired ovens or on a flat pan, and msemen, the layered griddle bread, is folded around honey or jam for breakfast before a walk. Mint tea is constant and poured from height, sweet enough to work as fuel on a long day; in winter it is often made with wormwood or sage instead of mint. There is no bar culture here — alcohol is not part of village life — and water for the mountain should be treated or bought rather than taken from the streams.