Water = Life is the unique vision of Allal Yamine, Moroccan musician, artist and eco warrior. In November 2011 he is leading a week’s expedition to the Draa valley in the south east of Morocco to experience how desert communities conserve and use a scarce and precious resource – water.

Water has a sporadic existence in this hot, dry part of the world. Sometimes it will rain prodigiously for whole day and farmers rush to plant a catch crop of barley with which to feed their sheep, goats and camels. At other times there may be a drought for seven years when the date palms, on which whole villages depend, die.

This trip will appeal to anyone interested in the geography of communities surviving on the fringes of viable agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa. You will be visiting and talking to small subsistence farmers and seeing at first hand their methods of trapping, conserving and exploiting water. There will be an opportunity to visit the enchanting oasis of Fint in the Atlas Mountains, where the rain that falls on the arid mountain peaks drains into the valleys in a long chain of interconnected oases supporting an abundance of wildlife as well as whole farming villages.

The expedition starts in and returns to Marrakech reaching the Draa valley (the Valley of the Kasbahs) by the spectacular route across the Atlas Mountains.

Allal Yamine, who divides his time between Morocco and Scotland, is an experienced, multi-lingual, tour guide with a passionate interest in ecology. His starting point was galvanising government officials to take action on rubbish disposal. Now he is keen to share his knowledge of subsistence farming and water conservation with those of us who live in watery northern Europe