5 Day Tour from Marrakech: Desert and Kasbahs

We head east on the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs. First stop is the Skoura palm grove, a dense oasis hiding some of the best preserved kasbahs in the south, among them Amridil, the one on the fifty dirham note.

We carry on to Kelaat M Gouna in the rose valley, where Damascus roses have been grown for centuries. The festival is in May; the rest of the year the distilleries and cooperatives are still working.

In the afternoon we drive up the Dades gorge, with its zigzag bends and the eroded rock shapes people here call monkey fingers.

Dinner and overnight in the Dades valley, with the canyon walls opposite.

We start in the Todra gorges, where the walls rise 300 metres and narrow to about ten metres with the river running along the bottom. We walk inside the canyon in the shade, usually with climbers on the routes above.

The road then runs south-east into stony desert. We stop at Erfoud, capital of the fossil trade, where slabs of marble are cut and polished with ammonites four hundred million years old.

Then Rissani, built over the ruins of Sijilmasa, where the gold caravans set out for Timbuktu. Its souk runs on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays and is still a working market. We eat medfouna, the stuffed flatbread baked under hot sand.

Late afternoon at Merzouga: we swap the car for a camel and ride into Erg Chebbi, dunes reaching 150 metres, arriving at camp in time to climb one for sunset. Berber dinner, drums by the fire, a night in a tent.

Up before dawn for sunrise over the erg, when the sand shifts from grey to orange in minutes. We ride back to the village and have breakfast at the hotel, with time to shower.

No long drive today. Depending on the season we visit Dayet Srji, the seasonal lake where flamingos stop in spring, and Khamlia, the village founded by descendants of sub-Saharan populations where gnawa music is played live.

We can stop for tea at a nomad camp, or drive out to the abandoned mine workings at Mifis and the line where the sand gives way to flat stony hamada.

Second night in the Merzouga area, in a hotel or back at camp, whichever you prefer.

We leave after breakfast and head west, retracing Tinghir and the Dades with the light on the other side, which makes it look like a different road.

Long stop in Ouarzazate for whatever we did not have time for on the way out.

Then the Tizi n Tichka again, with a last look back at the southern slope from the viewpoints at the pass.

We reach Marrakech in the evening and drop you at your accommodation or at the airport. It is the longest driving day, so we break it up.