Morocco Planning

I've spent the past two weeks devouring all the material i can find on Morocco, or in the garage prepping the KTM 500.  Of particular note on the Moroccan front, is Chris Scott's 'Morocco Overland' book.   (i mentioned previously in the blog Jason has one of Chris' adventure prepped previous bikes, the WR250R. See here for more info from Chris: https://adventure-motorcycling.com/) 

The Morocco Overland book is on its 3rd edition and has numerous valuable tips on Moroccan travel as well a four or five chapters detailing routes.  The accompanying website https://sahara-overland.com/ has additional info and even GPS waypoints available for download.  The book is worth the money, allowing you read, understand, and then plan a route you want to take. Without the book you would be blindly following unknown tracks or waypoints, missing the opportunity to plan the terrain you want to tackle. Its been a valuable, confidence inspiring resource.

Between the book and other web resources i've been able to plan the following 1500mile route.

Its a loose plan so that i have an agenda, i don't expect to cover it all, but i have an idea about what i'd like to see. 

Entering Morocco
From my reading it appears the easiest method to enter Morocco is via the new commercial Port at Tan Med (or Tanger Med), sailing from Algeciras, Spain.  Tickets can be bought at the port or in advance.

To get into Morocco you need: Passport, Original V5, Insurance, Import papers for the bike and a police stamp (CIN number).

• Passport and V5 are simple.
• Insurance - consensus is to buy from AXA at the port at Tan Med.
• Import papers -  In January 2019 the Moroccan authorities changed the method by which you can acquire the import papers, from web based to available at the customs desk only. 
• Police Stamp (CIN number) - available upon paperwork inspection

Sounds simple enough.

Given the language barrier ive also printed a 'fiche' of my details to hand out at check points, hotels and the like.

Mapping.
Mapping offroad sections is not an exact science in Morocco.  The routes change as the weather destroys one path and the locals use another.

To begin i didn't have a base map for North Africa in my Garmin Zumo or Basecamp.  Most disappointingly, Garmin actually sell a TOPO map for North Africa for £20 that is not compatible with a Zumo!  This is despite the map being based on Open TOPO, a freely downloadable and importable format.  C'mon Garmin, what are you playing at?!

For FREE current and updated maps of any worldwide location, i referred to my previous sources;

• http://garmin.openstreetmap.nl/for maps you can build yourself
• http://garmin.opentopomap.org/ for precompiled versions.

Simply place the gmasupp.img file on the memory, or upload to the Garmin device file system into the 'map' folder. Reboot the device and you should be good to go!

I couldn't talk about mapping in Morocco without giving a nod of thanks and appreciation to Olaf.  He appears to be a man that travelled Morocco prior to 2009 and mapped immense areas in unbelievable detail.  http://www.island-olaf.de/travel/marokko/gps.html

I'd go as far as to say that i actually prefer the olaf maps for the detail and ease of mapping in Basecamp, they aren't routable, fine for track compiling though. Thank you Olaf!

i've got more to do, so i'm away to do it!