Mar 29, 2024

 

Today is Ma's birthday. Not the best birthday, as she has just concluded yesterday a knee-replacement surgery the previous day. I am on the phone with her and with my dad and sister, trying to find out how she is doing and so far she seems to be doing okay. While waiting for updates on her from home, my mind has been drifting to the previous month, wherein I had missed many a journal entry owing to health reasons ( and a bit of laziness, if I a totally honest). I promise everyone, this is one distinct initiative I am trying to progress on war-footing, which is almost entirely to deliver myself from the affliction of laziness which is such an inherent part of my fabric.

I was in Morocco around a month ago. Unlike most of my business travels, I was somewhat excited by this one because I had never travelled to Morocco before. The only problem was that I was still under the curse of this mysterious fever that had been ailing me for weeks. I was somewhat functional with the input of some ibuprofen at regular intervals. However, this did at take a toll on the overall experience- it leaves a bad taste in the mouth for one thing. There is obviously an overall lethargy as well that keeps you from venturing out to explore. In any case, the flight was an exceptionally long one to Casablanca. 9 hours- this is what it took to get to Tokyo. The reason it took that long was the non-intuitive flight path. The plane flew up straight north to Iraq and then to the eastern part of Turkey before making a sharp left turn to fly over the rest of Turkey, Greece and Croatia before tangentially heading south towards North Africa- and eventually to Casablanca. I don’t know why we could not have flown right across the Sahara desert- it seemed the logical thing to do. But I am sure there are many good reasons for making a detour. An airline company will not burn aviation fuel for nothing. Speaking of this, Emirates airlines is turning out to be a pricing bully. It is a good, reliable airline no doubt. But it is really tiresome to note that the fares on every class are about 200% of the other airlines. And yet, everyone flies Emirates. The loyalty program is designed to ensnare folks- but surely the competition is not asleep on the wheel. One does not have to go far- Qatar Airways, should be able to do something to either increase their own pricing or steer customers away from Emirates. Have to give it to Emirates for milking their brand- while this is painful for loyalty program members like myself, I cannot fault them for making massive amounts of money. The only thing I would say is that this windfall is not translating to anything real for the consumer. The Lounge food and even the food and drink on the planes are only going from bad to worse. Earlier you had premium mineral water in the lounge, now it is canned perrier.  The food is the same, and there is nothing premium- with the money they are extracting I would have expected Sashimi or lobster or atleast some more exotic Asian fare like bone-broth Ramen. I am sure they have this stuff in the First Class lounge- but for the First Class they should have bespoke Michelin starred meals, not sushi. All this and more, we want a lot more I say. It is daylight robbery as far as I am concerned. But is it enough for me to move way and hurt my loyalty program? Somehow I have not done the maths on this- but if I did, I suspect in terms of dollars and cents, it would still make more sense to fly alternatives. It is just that as a Dubai resident, it means I will have make a connection to most locations. Take India for example, where I fly the most frequently. I fly to Kolkata so I have no direct flight option other than Emirates or Etihad. Both are more expensive than Indian carriers. If I had to fly to Delhi, Mumbai or Hyderabad, I could choose Air India for around 30% less on Coach and a bit more on Business. It is definitely not a one year break even period for sticking with the Emirates Loyalty program. But most of us would like to believe that we would be around for more than a year.

Coming to back to Casablanca, after that pointless digression. The airport was basic, and there was a special immigration counter for premium passengers. Except that there was an extremely slow-moving serpentine queue which kept me waiting around for one hour. When I finally got to the luggage belt, the area was crowded with fellow coach passengers that I recognized from the flight. Needless to say they had made it out of immigration earlier than yours truly, a premium passenger. Not the best first impression, I must say.

We drove to the hotel which was a Movenpick somewhere in the middle of the city.  The hotel was advertised as a 5-star on sites like booking.com. I have to admit, it would barely qualify as a four star more like a 3. Very old property and completely falling apart. Furthermore, the breakfast was ridiculous, the spread was slightly greater than one you might see in a Hampton Inn in the USA. I did not explore much else, as I was not in a state of health to go for any exercise. I ended up spending the rest of the day sleeping as much as I could. Later when speaking to the taxi driver, I was told that you can pay money to get this 5-star rating for a hotel in most places, but most definitely in Morocco – so that does not mean much.

The feel of the city, visually, was somewhat unique- it was a big bustling city, that might remind you of the poorer quarters of a French provincial city in some respects. But equally there is a slightly Arab flair as well. The following morning was a long drive – first to a town called Kenitra, about an hour north of the capital Rabat, and then further northwards to the Mediterranean port town of Tangier. I must admit I was not expecting so see as much greenery as I did. On the map, it showed up to the west of the sahara desert, and somehow I always imagined it to be rather brown overall. I realise, it is largely brown, except for north west corner, which also happens to be where most of the economic activity is. The locals speak French, and even today most of the local businesses are headed by French citizens. In that sense is not yet post-colonial like India. I would need research more the French colonization of Africa to get a proper perspective of this. Moroccans, in the main, speak French for all practical purposes. They also speak Arabic at home, and I am told it is a weird form of Arabic, that people from the proper Arab world, like Egyptians, for example, cannot follow. Finally, the most important observation I picked up was from the signboards on the freeways. There was English, Arabic and a third script which resembled hieroglyphics. I came to learn that this was “Tifinagh”- an ancient Berber language, which only recently made a political comeback in Morocco and was being promoted widely by the government as a return to heritage.