Casablanca → Ifrane → Azrou → Midelt
Your driver picks you up at your hotel or at Casablanca airport in the morning. The highway goes east past Rabat and Meknes, and then the road climbs into the Middle Atlas. You stop in Ifrane, a little town with red roofs and green parks, very different from the rest of Morocco.
Then you drive through the cedar forest near Azrou, home to the Barbary macaques, and cross the high plains to Midelt, a calm town under the snowy peak of Jbel Ayachi. It is a long first day, but the road gets more beautiful every hour. Dinner and the night are in Midelt.
Key stops
Ifrane · Azrou cedar forest · Barbary macaques · Midelt
Stay
Hotel or riad in Midelt
Midelt → Ziz Gorges → Ziz Valley → Erfoud → Merzouga
After breakfast the road goes south through the Ziz Gorges, where the river has cut a deep path through the mountains, and the Tunnel du Légionnaire. Below the gorges, the Ziz Valley opens into a long green river of date palms. Stop at the viewpoint and look down on the old mud villages.
You pass Errachidia and Erfoud, the town of dates and fossils, and then the dunes of Erg Chebbi rise on the horizon. In Merzouga you meet your camels and ride into the sand for sunset. At the camp, there is mint tea, dinner and music by the fire, and later a sky full of stars.
Key stops
Ziz Gorges · Ziz Valley · Erfoud · camel trek · Erg Chebbi
Stay
Desert camp in Erg Chebbi
Merzouga → Rissani → Erfoud → Tinghir → Todra Gorge → Dades Valley
Wake up for sunrise on the dunes, then ride back for breakfast. You drive through Rissani, the heart of the Tafilalet and the old land of Sijilmassa, and Erfoud, where workshops cut black marble full of 350-million-year-old fossils. Then you cross the open hamada, flat and dark, with small oases here and there.
At Tinghir the green palm grove appears, and you walk into Todra Gorge between walls of rock about 300 metres high. After lunch you continue to Boumalne and into the Dades Valley, where the soft red rocks look like giant fingers. Your guesthouse waits by the river, and dinner is a warm tagine as the cliffs go dark.
Key stops
Rissani · Erfoud fossils · Tinghir · Todra Gorge · Dades Valley
Stay
Hotel or boutique riad in the Dades Valley
Dades Valley → Valley of Roses → Skoura → Ouarzazate → Aït Ben Haddou → Marrakech
Today you follow the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs. You pass Kelaat M'Gouna, the town of roses, and stop in the Skoura palm grove to see Kasbah Amridil, which was once printed on the 50-dirham banknote. Then you reach Ouarzazate and continue to Aït Ben Haddou, the UNESCO clay ksar. Walk up through the narrow lanes to the granary at the top, where the view goes all the way to the mountains.
After lunch, the road climbs the High Atlas over the Tizi n'Tichka pass, at 2,260 metres. It twists and turns past small Berber villages built from the same red earth as the mountain. In the evening you come down into the warm air of Marrakech, and your driver drops you at your riad or hotel.
Key stops
Valley of Roses · Kasbah Amridil · Ouarzazate · Aït Ben Haddou · Tizi n'Tichka
Stay
Tour ends in Marrakech
