The uppermost section of one of the granaries at Amtoudi The narrow road wound through endless hills and ridges dotted with olive-like argan trees and villages spiked with white- or rose-hued minarets. At almost every turn my gaze was drawn to tantalising views and vantage points. By Tizourgane, we finally stopped and got out for a proper look at a distinctive walled hamlet crowning a low hill.
It\'s not quite what it seems. Kasbah Tizourgane calls itself a maison d\'hôtes, a homestay or inn, and here in Tizourgane village, tourists are likely to form the majority of its inhabitants. Climbing a flight of stairs up the hill, we reached a masonry gateway with an ornate wooden door. Beyond, a flat path orbited the hamlet\'s heels while another weaved up between closely packed and semi-ruined houses to the inn\'s threshold. On its rooftop terrace, with magnificent views across a small plain to the craggy hills beyond, my two young boys gleefully announced they were now \"kings of the castle\".
Morocco\'s Anti-Atlas Mountains are a starkly beautiful chain running roughly parallel to and south of their better-known relations, the High Atlas. This is not the country\'s prime tourist region and it remains all the better for it. There are no fancy hotels or swimming pools, tourism is low-key and local friendliness is likely to be genuine. And in a land famed for its mountain-desert scenery, it\'s with good reason that for decades numerous films and adverts have been shot here in the south - the Anti-Atlas is hardly an anti-climax.
Tizourgane, explained its proprietor Jamal Moussalli late one evening after dinner, began as a 13th-century agadir, a fortified communal granary built by the indigenous Berber tribes to safeguard their food stores and valuables. Unusually for an agadir, which typically stand aloof in lofty, less accessible locations, villagers came to build houses around the cubicle-filled heart of the little fortress. His family owned six dwellings here but, like many in this region who have migrated to towns and cities either temporarily for work or permanently, they left for Meknes in the 1950s.
Holidaying in the region in the mid-1990s, Jamal found the old family homes in ruins and a handful of Tizourgane\'s remaining families about to give up. To his father\'s dismay (\"he thought I was crazy, coming back to shift rocks with my bare hands\") he returned to restore the place and embrace his roots. Stung but not beaten by family disappointment and initially less-than-friendly residents, he inched forward with small renovations. Then a few passing travellers, cyclists mostly, began staying in his basic, though \"authentic\", accommodation. Six years ago, he secured a government grant to help restore the hamlet\'s fabric, so from a distance the whole looks rather more intact than it really is.
The inn is simple but spotless and nights here are bracingly still and silent. There\'s a weekly souq in nearby Idaougnidif and decent walks to be had among the rugged encircling hills and their earthy hamlets - the real Morocco, if you like. Most visitors here are either heading to or coming from Tafraoute, an administrative centre in the heart of the Anti-Atlas about an hour\'s drive away.
This functional town won\'t win any beauty contests but it\'s a relaxed, friendly place set amid wonderful scenery (think day trips). Backed by the Jebel el Kest and a clutch of settlements in the adjoining Ameln Valley, you could spend a couple of days walking the weirdly eroded russet hills with huge molten-looking rocks that resemble creatures, human faces and dinosaur eggs. In the case of Aguard Oudad village, a particularly striking outcrop is known as Le Chapeau de Napoleon, or Napoleon\'s Hat, while a kilometre away are the so-called Painted Rocks, a surreal hillock with house-sized boulders sprayed sky-blue with splashes of pink and turquoise.
Ameln\'s villages comprise an unlikely blend of old, almost biblical-looking, houses and newer pseudo-mansions. At Oumesnat, the charming \"Maison Traditionelle\" is a little folk museum and homestay run by a blind man and his family. Here, we examined Berber implements and artefacts along with the strangely Greek-looking (and rarely used) Berber script. Yet it also lends a glimpse of life today, in particular how the humblest-looking homes will probably still have an immaculate and comfortable salon to receive guests and entertain.