3 DAY DESERT TOUR FROM MARRAKECH TO Merzouga

At eight in the morning, a driver will pick you up from your Marrakech lodging and take you to the High Atlas highlands in southern Morocco. Along the way, you’ll stop at Tizi N’Tichka port for panoramic views and to take pictures of the Berber hamlet settlements that blend into the surrounding terrain. Then we go farther south to Ait Ben Haddou, a ksar (fortified settlement), where we will explore the well-known Kasbah, which was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1986. Famous movies like Gladiator, Obelix, The Mummy, The Jewel of the Nile, Sahara with Penélope Cruz, etc. were filmed on this magnificent set.

Lunchtime in the town is free. Then we proceed to Ouarzazate, also referred to as “The Gate of the Desert” and translated from Berber as “noiseless or without confusion.” The Taourirt kasbah, one of Morocco’s most impressive ksars, may be found here. The Rose Valley, which passes through the expansive Skoura palm grove, is the next destination to see. It’s a lovely place to admire the more than 700.000 palm trees there as well as the numerous kasbahs that have been constructed nearby. Damascene roses are grown in this valley for use in beauty products like the highly prized rosewater. This location hosts the Rose Festival every year in May and is a significant museum for Moroccan culture. We arrive to the Dades valley, where we will spend the night, at last.

After breakfast, we’ll take in one of the most stunning views of the Dades Valley from a well-placed mountain lookout, where we can take in the abundance of kasbahs and their individual aesthetic qualities. From the city of Tinerhir, a very nice asphalt road ascends the valley to the gorge and then to the desert. We will arrive in the Todra Gorges after a few stops along the road. The view is breathtaking. Local residents can be observed in their adobe villages, where they reside. These gorges are famous with rock climbers because of their rocky sides with numerous uneven surfaces.

After a brief stroll through the Todra gorges, you’ll have some free time to grab lunch in Tinejdad or Touroug before we continue on to the desert and the magnificent Merzouga dune system. From there, we will go on an hour-long camel journey to Erg Chebbi, the site of our nomadic camp. We’ll watch the sunset from a dune’s top before dinner, and we’ll spend the night in a tent under a starry sky.

We have a “Date with the sunrise” quite early in the morning. Getting up early in the middle of the desert is a “must do” if you want to watch the most amazing sunrise of your life from the top of a dune near to the camp. After that, we ride camels back to Merzouga, where a sumptuous meal is waiting for us. After regaining our strength, we set out on our final day of travel, passing through an area of dry pre-desert where we will encounter the “acacia,” a typical tree of this region.

We’ll stop a few times en route to the Draa valley to take in the breathtaking views of the river that gives the valley its name. It is the longest river in Morocco and runs the entire length of the nation before reaching Mauritania. We continue on through the Anti Atlas on the way to Ouarzazate. We’ll have some free time to eat lunch in town before resuming our journey to Marrakech in the late afternoon and arriving there about 8 o’clock. End of our services and transfer to the hotel.