Читать книгу The High Atlas. Treks and climbs on Morocco's biggest and best mountains онлайн

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Nationals from the UK, the EU and most Commonwealth countries do not require a visa (others should check). As a tourist you are allowed a three-month stay (it’s in the small print usually, so most people don’t realise this, but few are staying for so long anyway). Stay longer and you’ll find yourself in the coils of the bureaucratic monster, the first requirement being seven passport photographs.

Bureaucracy

Morocco loves its bureaucracy – after all, they were French taught (when the French left Morocco they had four times as many civil servants for the country as the British had for India). In remote areas local headmen may want your particulars, occasionally the police may too, and, of course, hotels require them for the dreaded registration fiche, which must be completed for every member of the party on arrival at each hotel. So prepare a sheet with each person’s name, address, home telephone number, e-mail, passport number and date of issue and expiry, place and date of birth, date of entering Morocco, profession, next of kin’s name, relationship, address and telephone number, and leave room for the number stamped in passports on arrival! You can hand it over at hotels and tell them to fill in the fiche. If you are in a group this form is also a useful contacting sheet. Next of kin details wil not be needed with luck, but one commercial outfit was rightly criticised when one trekker had a serious accident and the organiser did not know who to get in touch with.