Google Maps won’t help you find your way through this ancient maze

I’ve always been hopeless at finding my way around anywhere – and particularly back out again – so I approached one of the largest open-air markets in the world with real trepidation.

The traditional medieval medina in the Moroccan city of Fes is as huge as it is alarmingly maze-like. You hear it, and smell it, before you see it, and that blast of indecipherable noise and an intense pong herald the terror that lies ahead for anyone with no sense of direction.

Once you’ve started to enter, there’s no going back, either. As one of the biggest car-free areas on the globe, covering about 280 hectares, the eighth-century spectacle is approached by a vast labyrinth of more than 9000 corridors only just wide enough to squeeze one Western body through (and occasionally, not quite wide enough).

Once you’re inside the main part, there’s not much relief, with a crush of market-traders fighting for room with daily shoppers and tourists wide-eyed at the mass of people jammed in, alongside the donkeys and carts and wheelbarrows. And no, Google Maps doesn’t work.

Instead, most tour groups visiting the collection of sprawling markets will be instructed by their guides to walk in strict single file, with eyes always on the person in front, never straying from their formation. If anyone makes a mistake and gets lost in the morass, they’re told to stop absolutely still, and the guide will come back for them.

Yet while this is a sure-fire way of spending the night in your hotel rather than curled up in the dark in a doorway, it’s not very satisfying. You’re having to walk through at everyone else’s pace, with no stops to look at the fare or engage in conversation with a stallholder.

A far better solution is to hire a personal guide to take you through, hang back when you want to look at goods on offer and, even better, to barter in your place. The savings you make on your buys can go a long way to making up the extra expense.

Alternatively, if you’re determined to wander alone, make for a specific landmark first. There are several to choose from. There’s the 11th-century Choura Tannery, for instance, that’s distinctive with its incredibly foul smell, or even the oldest university in the world, the University of al-Qarawiyyin (857AD).

Once you’ve located either of those, or your own favourite location, then give yourself permission to get lost and wander aimlessly, absorbing the sights – both weird and wonderful – tasting some of the samples (ditto), and chatting with locals.

When you’ve finally had enough, offer a young local a smallish amount of cash to guide you back to your mark, with the promise of a tip if they succeed. If that works well, it can then be a great idea to offer a little more to guide you completely out.

And congratulate yourself: you’ve experienced a world wonder to its fullest, and still emerged to tell the tale.