During our stay we befriended another local guide named Abdul. We met him when he approached us and asked if we were looking for a guide. We declined, but he then surprised us by asking if it would be okay for him to climb with us. When we handed him the rope’s sharp end, he reached into his small bag and pulled out his harness and his prize possession: An old pair of 5.10s given to him by some Spanish climbers. He quickly led a nice line with our gear and thanked us by pointing out some other good warm-ups before bidding us a good day.
At twenty-four Abdul has only been climbing for three years, but is full of energetic psych and habitually wears a smile. He advertises his profession by wearing the same Mammut T-shirt as Hassan and takes great pride in his uniform. His profession is difficult because he only owns the gear he carries in his little bag and must rely on his clients for ropes and draws. Abdul personifies a problem that many Moroccan climbers encounter: In order to have the time to climb he must make it his profession. This means he has to rely on the same group of people to both learn from and guide. With his language skills, his knowledge of the area, and his basic climbing skills, however, Abdul is already one of the best guides and is eager to become as knowledgeable as Mouhajir.

After a few days of climbing and exploring we pinpointed something that was conspicuously absent from the Todra Gorge: local women. We had seen women during the day in the villages, and there were foreign female tourists of all types, but no local women in the gorge itself. This reminded us that we were in an Islamic country where the public and private spheres of men and women remain distinctly separated.
Visiting female tourists (and even men to some extent) are encouraged to wear pants and long-sleeved shirts in public in order to show respect for Moroccan culture. Many female tourists travel in the company of men to give the impression of being married; some unwed female travelers even go so far as to wear wedding rings in public.
We learned that the frequent marriage proposals foreign women receive rise from a genuine cultural concern that no woman older than a teenager would want to remain unwed.
We even found ourselves turning down a few veiled giggling teenage girls who proposed to us one day while we explored their village. They seemed half-serious, but we decided it probably had more to do with a peer-pressure-inspired dare than our charm and good looks.