Marrakech to the Sahara, and home down the Draa
This is the cheapest honest way to reach the Sahara from Marrakech and sleep in it. You travel in a small group — usually eight to seventeen people — in an air-conditioned minibus with an English, French and Spanish speaking driver, and the whole thing costs €100 a head. Over the Tizi n'Tichka pass to Aït Ben Haddou, a night in the Dades Valley, then Todra Gorge and a camel ride into the Erg Chebbi dunes. Day three comes home the long way, down the Draa Valley through Morocco's largest palm oasis. About 1,250 km in three days. Departures run every day and there is no single supplement, so a solo traveller pays exactly what everyone else pays.
The minibus collects you early and Marrakech is gone within twenty minutes. The road
climbs into the High Atlas and keeps climbing to the Tizi n'Tichka pass at 2,260 m —
the highest road in Morocco. On the far side the green goes out of the landscape and
the earth turns red. Aït Ben Haddou appears around a bend: a fortified village of
packed earth, UNESCO-listed since 1987, where Gladiator and Game of Thrones were
filmed. Ouarzazate and its studios come next, then the rose fields of Kelaat
M'Gouna, and the day ends in the Dades Valley with the Monkey Fingers rock above
the hotel.
A short drive and the walls close in: Todra Gorge, 300 metres of limestone narrowing
to barely ten metres apart, with a stream running down the middle and climbers on
the rock above. Tinghir's palm grove runs thirty kilometres along the river below
the old kasbahs. Then the land flattens and empties — black hammada, the occasional
ksar, the fossil town of Erfoud — until the Erg Chebbi dunes rise out of nothing on
the horizon, 150 metres of them. The camels are waiting at the foot. You ride in as
the light goes orange, and eat under the stars with the drums going.
Sunrise over the dunes is worth the early start — the sand goes from grey to deep
orange in about fifteen minutes. The camels take you back out, you eat breakfast at
the camp, and then the longest day begins. The road west runs down the Draa Valley,
the longest palm oasis in Morocco and the old caravan road to Timbuktu, with kasbahs
standing in the palms the whole way. Lunch in Ouarzazate, roughly halfway. Then the
Tizi n'Tichka again, switchback after switchback, until the Haouz plain opens up and
Marrakech appears below.
Nights in the desert drop to around 5 °C from November to March, and summer afternoons pass 40 °C, so pack a layer either way — our Morocco desert packing list covers the rest, and the best time to visit Marrakech guide has the weather month by month. For €40 more the luxury camp gives you a private tent with its own en-suite bathroom — it is the one upgrade travellers tell us afterwards they wish they had taken. If you would rather set your own timings, the private Marrakech to Merzouga tour runs the same road on your schedule. If your trip carries on to Fes, take the shared Marrakech to Fes tour instead and skip the drive back. Or tell us your dates on the custom tour page.
