Alice in Wanderland

The Roz Savage Project Podcast

Since the last podcast, the world has imploded with coronavirus. Alice and Vic talk about how it is affecting them in Morocco and Norway respectively. Vic faces some real challenges: his wife is almost certain to be infected as she is an Ear, Nose and Throat doctor. Alice decided to go back into Morocco from London as that is where her home is and is now dealing with the consequences of that decision. We’ll be upping the podcasts to once a week for the duration, and, for a bit of relief from corona, do check out Alice’s Instagram @aliceoutthere1 for a daily dose of beauty from the mountains and deserts. Stay safe.

Alice is in London this week, so she tells us about her cultural shock at being among so many people after weeks of the great nothing. We also talk about her amazing experience with some school children in Liverpool, giving feedback about her expedition gear, hiking in the Atlas Mountains, second breakfast, and, of course, coronavirus complications.

Adventures in Morocco

Now south of Bir Gandouz, Alice, the camels, and her team are nearing the end of their trek through the Western Sahara. In this episode, Alice tells us about land mines, Azwo the dog, a boat graveyard, and, of course, being very nearly at the end!!

Now, south of Dahkla, Alice has had a difficult two weeks since last we spoke. Wind, heat, quicksand, and the great nothingness have taken their toll on the expedition. However, Alice and her team have made good progress and are continuing to push on toward their goal.

This week we get to hear about Camel Love, making sand bread, a lonely Mauritanian shepherd, Camel Fighting, sulfurous hot springs, and a wounded donkey.

After 39 days of sand, wind, and sun, Alice sees green grass! We also hear about Saharan hospitality, Christmas in the desert, and camel sweat.

After a tough start, we’ve got into our stride on the Sahara Expedition.There HAS been strife though. Our male camels are all hot under the saddle because it is mating season and we have been passing through Sagiyya Al Hamra which has a nomad population with lots of female camels. Check out my Instagram @aliceoutthere1 for pictures. I got to take a break from the camels’ (lack of) sex problems though to explore the incredibly rich prehistoric rock carvings around the desert capital of Smara. It’s amazing to be able to discover these millennia old traces of human life for yourself hidden in the sands.

Thanks for listening to my podcast. Please do subscribe. I try to take you along on my adventures so you can experience them too. At the moment I’m on an epic trek - 2000km across the Sahara - #saharaexpedition - beginning in Oued Chbika, and ending at the southernmost tip and border with Mauritania.The journey is expected to take three months, setting out on November 26th, I am travelling with the same team from the Draa Expedition including three local guides and five camels.The aim of this expedition is to explore this virtually unknown part of the Sahara and I will be tracking the deathstalker scorpion, hunting for meteorites, investigating the unique sand statues of the south, and searching for the lost great bird monuments which lie hidden in the dunes. Follow me on Social Media: Instagram: @aliceoutthere1Twitter: @aliceoutthere1YouTube: Alice MorrisonFacebook: Alice Hunter Morrison Adventures

From Alice's website: "I was born in 1963 in the Edinburgh Infirmary. Six weeks later, just after my mum had successfully taken her law exams, my parents Jim and Fredi boarded a ship and sailed to Africa. For the first 8 years of my life, I got to run free in the African Bush, roaming around the foothills of the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda, hunting tadpoles and running away from snakes.At the age of 11, by now the family was living in Ghana, it was back to Scotland to St Denis and Cranley Academy for Young Ladies, where I had to wear two sets of knickers – under and over – and a velour hat to church. NO idea why the two sets of knickers but they did help keep the nethers warm in the freezing winters of an unheated school in Edinburgh!At Edinburgh University, I studied Arabic and Turkish and discovered the joys of the Poetry Society and the Socialist Worker’s club – both joined because I fancied the guy that ran them. Six memorable months were spent living in Damascus with my lifelong (now!) friend and fellow Arabist Martin, where we faced down the secret police and survived on a diet of bread, condensed milk and jam because I was a terrible cook.After university I spent two years teaching English in Cairo and exploring the country. Hitchhiking on military trucks across the Western Desert and spending afternoons sleeping with the stray dogs in the shade of the Pharaonic temples of the Luxor.Moving to London, I pursued a career in journalism which had started in Dubai at “What’s On in Dubai”. My first job was with Technical Review Middle East (there is nothing she doesn’t know about concrete decay). From there to Middle East Broadcasting, the original Arabic Satellite News Station, with my first assignment being to produce coverage in the USA for the Clinton Election. My next step was to BBC News with jobs on BBC World TV and then BBC Arabic TV. I rose quickly (ish) through the ranks in BBC News and was recruited to help launch the BBC News Channel where I went on to become co-Editor of the daytime hours which meant I was in charge of all the BBC News Channel output between 10 am and 8 pm. I was one of only three female news editors in the corporation at the time. My speciality was managing the complexities of live, breaking stories in the news gallery, and one of my abiding memories is causing higher ups to almost have cardiac arrests when I threw live to the George Michael arrest press conference in the USA when the details of his cottaging were revealed – apparently that was not what the British news-watching public wanted to watch at teatime with the kids.For the new millennium I moved North to Manchester and onto the internet www.supanet.com where we built the ISP’s content from six pages to one million pages in two years; oversaw content deals with all the major players and attracted six million users. Happy days! I also started to break out into mini adventures squeezed into the holidays: the Snowdon Challenge, crossing Costa Rica coast to coast, Kilimanjaro, ice climbing in the Andes, climbing the Ruwenzoris….In 2002, I plunged into public service when I was appointed as CEO of Vision+Media, a quango dedicated to growing the creative industries in the Northwest and remained there for nine years. I am proud that I managed – with my Board and my Team – to build the company from a modest start of £830k funding annually to £10 million, move it into brand new premises in Salford’s media city, work closely with the BBC Move North team and delivered 10x value to funders. However, following Tory government cuts in 2011 we were no longer viable, so I merged the company into Creative England and cast off my pinstripes for lycra."

Imlil, Morocco: https://goo.gl/maps/gBoE2jhH6WtqPHHF7 Karma is NOT a Bitch"My douar (compound) is made up of three family houses owned by two brothers and an uncle and their wives and children, my little house, and then a downstairs for the cow and the chickens. In the middle, there is a communal yard where the kids play. It is enclosed with a big double door at the end which is locked at night and it is very traditional. I am the only woman who leaves the compound without wearing a full veil and if a man who is not immediate family comes in, the women all retreat into their house. Hafida’s house is the big one and that is where we all went for breakfast. When I say all, I mean the women and children as the men ate in a separate room. “It is for respect, Alice” the women told me. “So, that we can all be comfortable.”

In March 2019, Explorer Alice Hunter Morrison became the first woman to walk the length of the River Draa in Morocco. She discovered a lost city, found the tombs of the giants and was confronted with the dire effects of climate change on once viable land.Now, she is taking on the Sahara, the biggest hot desert in the world. The expedition will cover 2000km, beginning in Oued Chbika on the Atlantic and ending at Morocco’s southernmost tip and its border with Mauritania, La Guera. It will take three months, beginning on 26 November 2019 (inchallah) and she will be travelling with her Draa Expedition team of three Amazigh (Berber) guides, Brahim Ahalfi, Brahim Boutkhoum and Addi ben Youssef, and five camels: Alasdair, Hamish, Callum, Murdo and Sausage. This time, though, one more camel is being added to the team to help carry water – Hunter, who was named after Alice.The expedition is being organised by Jean-Pierre Datcharry of Désert et Montagne Maroc who has 40 years of experience in the region.