Fantasia or the Gunpowder Play ….. riding out of Ouarzazate along the Dades Valley late on a Friday afternoon, we ran into the town of El-Kelaa M’Gouna in the middle of an enormous market day and the Fantasia horse show.

People from outside Morocco call these events Fantasia but the locals call them Lab el Baroud, “The Gunpowder Play”. The display of skill consists of a line of jeweled horses and riders accelerating along the arena with each horse touching the next; at the final moment and at high speed, the horses rear and the guns fire simultaneously. I think the judges give extra points for speed, closeness, and synchronisation of the shots.

There are apparently thousands of these riders across the Maghreb and, in Morocco at least, there are also women riders as you can see in one of these pictures.