Three days to Merzouga and back, with a day inside the desert
Most three-day Sahara trips give you one night in the dunes and spend the rest on the road. This one gives you two nights in Merzouga and a whole day in the desert itself. About 1,000 km in all, in a private vehicle with your own driver-guide, on whatever date you choose. Not sure three days is enough? How many days do you need in Morocco compares the routes.
You leave Marrakech early and the Tizi n'Tichka starts almost at once, carrying the road to 2,260 m before it drops into the red south. Aït Ben Haddou comes first: the earthen ksar on the hillside, UNESCO listed and familiar from Gladiator and Game of Thrones. Ouarzazate and its film studios follow, then the Valley of Roses and its Berber villages, and Todra Gorge, where the walls close over the riverbed. By late afternoon you are at Merzouga, and the camel caravan takes about an hour to carry you over the Erg Chebbi dunes to camp. Dinner, a campfire, Berber music, and a sky with nothing in the way.
This is the day the other three-day tours do not have. You watch the sun come up over the dunes, eat breakfast at camp, and then spend the whole day inside the desert instead of driving out of it. A 4x4 takes you to Khamlia, where the Gnawa families play the music their ancestors brought north; to a nomad family still living out on the open ground; and to M'Fis, the abandoned mining village with its old shafts and scattered houses. There are viewpoints to stop at for photographs, and the seasonal lake at Dayet Srij, where flamingos gather when the water is there. The second night is at a hotel in Merzouga, with the afternoon free by the pool.
Breakfast, then the long road home, though not the one you came on. You cross to Alnif through flat desert country and drop into the Draa Valley, Morocco's longest palm oasis, a green line of trees running between bare hills. Agdz has the viewpoints; Ouarzazate the coffee stop. The Atlas comes back in the afternoon and the Tizi n'Tichka in the late afternoon, and Marrakech is at the end of it, with drop-off at your hotel, riad or the airport.
Desert nights are cold from November to March and summer afternoons are hot, so bring 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. If you want to share the cost, the shared Marrakech to Merzouga tour runs the same road. If your trip ends in Fes, take the private Marrakech to Fes tour instead. Or tell us your dates on the custom tour page and we plan the route around you.
