greetings from the teas and TKA pass in the high Atlas Mountains in the center of Morocco does it get crazier than this now a lot of people think that the Atlas Mountains are just the Atlas Mountains that run somewhere in Morocco actually it's a series of several different chains that run in Morocco and Algeria and all the way over to Tunisia so we're actually in the high Atlas Mountains the highest of all the Atlas Mountains there's also the middle Atlas north of us the anti-atlas south of us uh the T Atlas that run across the coastal uh part of Algeria uh and the Saharan Atlas which run across the southern part of Algeria but this my friends is the high Atlas and this place is awesome not because it's so high actually the highest elevations here I believe uh Mount what's the highest mountain here 4, what's the name of it mount chopal chopal mount chopal second Summit in Africa highest second Summit in Africa is here in the high Atlas Mountains and I believe it's 13761 ft High uh and there are within the high Atlas about 10 different Peaks that I believe are over 10,000 ft F feet but this is very typical of the high Atlas Mountains in fact in winter time check me if I'm wrong this would actually be snow covered so a lot of folks think oh it's North Africa it's Africa it's tropical it's Sahara deserts nearby it's hot that's true but when you get up to these elevations it can get really really really cold and this is one Wicked ass Road I have thought to have died at least 700 times since I've been on this road crossing from marash over to the Sahara desert and I love it it makes you feel alive now the other reason that the high Atlas and all of the atlas chains are important is because they actually kind of form not really a border but almost a dividing line between North Africa northwest Africa and the rest of the Sahara for several different reasons one is something called the rain shadow effect so a lot of moisture actually sweeps in from the Atlantic Ocean over that way bringing warm wet air into the continent but but as soon as that warm moist air hits the Atlas Mountains it goes up and when things go up in the world it gets colder Ah that's why it snows here because it's high and when it gets colder it condenses and Falls as rain so what happens is that that side of the Atlas Mountains is wetter there's Forest over there there's good crop land but this side not so much it's dry and if you keep going that way you eventually run into the Sahara Desert the Atlas mountain chain is one of the reasons why the Saharan Desert formed actually because no more moisture can get over from there over to there the other reason that the Atlas Mountains Are Awesome is because it's actually its own little separate culture which nobody really thinks about in Africa especially North Africa especially Saharan Africa because we typically think of Saharan Africa as part of the Middle East so Southwest Asia North Africa that's the general middle east region and so people that have no clue about the awesomeness that is Morocco or the Atlas Mountains just assume that well everything around here is kind of desert uh and everybody around here is kind of Islamic so that means everybody around here is kind of Arab wrong Arab people are from the Arabian Peninsula about 5,000 miles that way Islam is from the Arabian Peninsula so when Islam started uh and the Arabs and we're talking the 8th Century uh uh the Arabs started the Islam religion and then a Arab Islamic empire swept across North Africa all the way to here to the Atlas Mountains three 1,500 to 4,000 miles away so everyone around here is Islamic but it was the Arabs that started it and so Arab culture kind of came with it and the Arab language because the Quran the holy book of Islam is also only written in Arabic so everybody reads Arabic and Arabic language is also spread because of the Islamic conquest of the seventh and eth centuries but but there's always a butt here in the high Atlas Mountains this is Berber land okay they're not not Aon not ethnically so most of the folks here are what we call ethnically and linguistically Berber it's their own language it's their own ethnicity in fact I'm going to go out in the limb and I hope I don't offend my Berber friends but I think the berbers will eventually be recognized as the first and original North African peoples so they started here in the Atlas Mountains but there's kind of Berber blood and Berber roots and Berber language spread throughout the entire Western Sahara and maybe as far away as Egypt from here so these are kind of the protohumans the indigenous of North Africa if you like are right here they started right here in these mountains now there's still a lot of Berber people around uh the bulk of what you'd call Moroccan people or Berber the bulk of what you'd call Algerian people or Berber maybe even Tunisian most people are Berber uh but they all speak a lot of Arabic because of the Islamic conquest uh because Arabic is the language of Islam uh their language has slowly taken a hit over the last thousand years and so not as many people speak it as used to a thousand years ago but it's making a Resurgence it's coming back and there be may be anywhere from 20 to 30 million people that speak berber and ethnically which it's hard to kind of prove what ethnically who's in whose group but probably ethnically there's 50 to 60 million ethnic Berber people and there's actually a increase in Berber Pride that's happening not just here in the high Atlas not just in Morocco but across all of Northwestern Africa that a lot more people are starting to say hey we're Burber Roots we're we're not Arab uh we may speak Arabic but we're not we're Berber this is the original grouping here and language is coming back Algeria made Berber an official language of Algeria uh I believe Morocco made it a national language of Morocco just last year so they have a Resurgence of bringing it back into the schools and this my friends again is the heart the core of Berber civilization the indigenous group of all of Northern Africa as far as I'm concerned and you can still visit wonderful Morocco be on this spine tingling pass to get over the high Atlas Mountains here and visit many Berber Villages where a lot of Berber folks still maintain a traditional Berber way of life but that's my report here from the chin say it again chiniki Passa pass very high up in the high Atlas Mountains I'm not high in the Atlas Mountains I'm in the high Atlas Mountains but for now we're out