We’re happy to have Morgan Palmer Hubbard teaching yoga on the Sahara retreat in Morocco this February. We asked him to write a few words for the yoga program and he wrote a little essay which we thought we’d share here! ‘I came to yoga at 19 to help deal with a profound scoliosis that […]

From time to time as I go to Rainbow Gatherings and festivals (including the Road Junky Festival of Creativity) I meet people who have been on previous retreats in the Sahara and it’s quite confusing to see them in another context. Over 150 souls have come on the meditation and yoga retreats in Morocco now […]

Not a chance. The temperatures reach up to the mid 40’s, it’s Ramadan and so everyone is in a bad mood from fasting all day, and the wind picks up the tiny granules of sand and throws them in your face like a sadistic hair drier intent on removing several layers of skin. We only […]

While we run our own yoga retreat each winter, usually the full moon after our meditation retreat, people sometimes ask us where they can go to make yoga and find some spiritual vibes the rest of the year. Obviously Morocco is a Muslim country and is a good deal culturally removed from India and there […]

The yoga retreat this March was one of the easiest that I’ve organised. The weather in the Sahara was warm even at night, there was no wind and the group that came were so easy-going and gentle that the whole week was like sitting by a river and just watching it flow by contentedly. For […]

How mindfulness migrated from traditional Buddhist meditations to mainstream acceptance in modern psychology is something of a mystery. Having dedicated our intellectual resources to trying to understand the mind, we’ve finally come to the conclusion accepted in Asia for a couple of thousand years that it’s also key to know how to control the mind. […]

This was the largest retreat we’ve ever run and I was a little nervous when I saw all the people get off the bus and just keep getting off, handshakes and hugs in all directions as everyone breathed in their first bit of desert air. Including musicians, teachers and one journalist, we were 36 people […]

The first year I ran the meditation retreat in the Sahara I watched with wonder at the change that came upon everyone as they entered the dunes; we had been walking for about 45 minutes since we left the village and as we climbed the first sandy crest it was as though the years faded […]

There’s an old story about a monk in a monastery who asks his guru: ‘Master, what is meditation?’ The guru keeps silent, however, and the monk gets back to his duties working the garden and continues to rise each morning to meditate before dawn though he hasn’t received an answer. The next year he asks […]

Many women coming to Morocco are understandably nervous about travelling in a country with such a male-dominated culture and ask us whether it’s safe for them to travel alone. Since Easyjet and Ryanair started flying to Morocco things have improved a lot and the tourist police make sure that no one gets hassled too much. […]

For many travellers bargaining in Morocco is a total hassle. You see something that you want to buy, you ask how much it is, and you’re asked: how much you give? You have no idea how much the pot/shirt/spices are actually worth and now instead of trying to work out if you can afford it you’re […]

Of all the things to buy when travelling in Morocco, argane oil would seem to be one of the best value. You might have seen tiny bottles of argane oil for sale in cosmetics store in Europe for 30 or 40 euros as it becomes yet another hyped item to restore youth, vitality, eliminate wrinkles […]

When I made the first Sahara Retreat I thought it would be a bunch of hardcore travellers sitting around the fire trading outlandish stories from the road. When the first group turned up I discovered that while some people had been around the world and had some tales up their sleeves, most people were in […]

Moroccans are famous for being argumentative, persistent and solicitous and many first-time travellers in Morocco can feel a bit overwhelmed when they arrive to Marrakech and someone tries to charge them 10 euros just for showing them the way to the hotel! It’s important to understand, however, that the young guy who hassle you in […]

Anyone interested in understanding the subtleties of human identity and love could do worse than read the novels of Jonathan Franzen. He also gave  a commencement address at his old college a couple of years ago that struck a powerful chord in our changing times. He begins by observing how the word ‘sexy’ is ubiquitiously linked to […]

When someone asks ‘How are you?’ you know they’re not expecting an honest answer. Which is why when you learn a foreign language it’s the first phrase you learn along with ‘Fine, thanks!’ It would be strange, after all, to meet an acquaintance in the street who began to tell you in detail about a […]

These days yoga has been pretty much stripped of most of its Eastern mystique. The average dating profile is likely to list yoga among their interests along with R&B, Louis Vitton and Rihanna. Yoga is another feel-good therapy along with Pilates and aerobics. When Westerners first came to India in sizeable numbers in the 30’s […]

In 2010 I was feeling pretty excited because looming on the horizon was the Road Junky Film Festival – a hybrid event where we were going to show short films about travel and also have travellers come in to give motivating speeches and tell stories about their journeys around the world. We worked for 5 […]

If you’re wondering why the next retreat on the beach in Cyprus will have a focus on dance rather than yoga, the answer is simple. I’ve always loved dancing. I spent 5 winters in Goa back in the 90’s and once a week or so I would go down to the beach to dance all […]

Everyone likes to think they’re a traveller rather than a tourist. Indeed, Road Junky was set up on that premise in the spirit of  travel writer, Paul Theroux’s quote: ‘Travellers don’t know where they’re going. Tourists don’t know where they’ve been.’ But without speaking Arabic or Berber what kind of impression can we have of […]