6 days from Ouarzazate to Sahara adventures desert tours

Day 1: Ouarzazate – Skoura – Rose valley – Dades Valley – Todra Gorges

We leave Ouarzazate after breakfast on the road east, and the first stop is the oasis of Skoura, where the kasbah of Amridil stands in the palm groves — the one on the old fifty-dirham note, and among the best restored in the south. The road then climbs to Kela’a M’gouna in the valley of the roses, where we stop for tea and, if you want it, for rose water and oil from one of the cooperatives. From there we leave the tarmac and follow the road of a thousand kasbahs to the Dades gorges for lunch. The afternoon is free enough for a walk along the Boumalne Dades river under the red cliffs before we carry on to the Todra gorges, where the night is spent in a hotel.

Day 2: Todra gorges – Ziz valley – Tafilalet – Erfoud – Erg Chebbi dunes

There is time in the morning to walk into the Todra gorges proper, where the cliffs close to a few metres apart, and through the Tinghir palm grove. Then we drive south through the Ziz valley and the Tafilalet, with lunch at Erfoud, the fossil town on the desert’s edge. We reach Merzouga in the afternoon in time for an hour’s camel trek up Erg Chebbi to watch the sun go down from the crest (250m). Dinner and the first of your two nights in the dunes is at the desert camp below.

Day 3: Merzouga – Rissani – Alnif – Tazzarine – N’Qob – Draa Valley – Zagora

Worth waking for the sunrise — the colour of the sand and the length of the shadows change minute by minute. After breakfast you ride back to the car by camel, and we head west from Merzouga towards Zagora through Rissani, Alnif and Tazzarine (where parts of the film ‘Babel’ were shot), stopping at N’Qob for lunch. The afternoon follows the Draa valley and its chain of kasbahs, dropping off-road here and there for a closer look at the villages. The night is in a riad in Zagora.

Day 4: Zagora – Tamegroute – Draa River – Anti Atlas – M’Hamid – Erg Chegaga Dunes

South from Zagora, with a stop at Tamegroute for the Qoranic library, the underground kasbah and the green-glaze pottery kilns that the village has worked for centuries. Lunch is at M’hamid, where the paved road simply stops. From there it is 65km of off-road driving to the dunes of Chegaga — the highest in Morocco at around 300m — crossing erg, reg, hammada and oasis in turn. Sunset from the top, then dinner and the night in a nomad tent at the foot of the dunes. This is the second and last of your desert nights.

Day 5: Erg Chegaga – Iriqui lake – fossils – Foum Zguid – Taznakht – Taroudant

Sunrise over Chegaga if you are up for it, then breakfast and another 100km off-road west across stony reg and hammada, including the dry bed of Lake Iriqui. Out in the middle of it you will very likely see a mirage; the water is not there. (After heavy rain — rare — the bed turns to mud and we take the road round instead.) There is time to look for fossils, some loose on the surface, most still locked in the rock.

We rejoin tarmac at Foum Zguid and turn north to Taznakht, known for its Berber kilims, for lunch. Over the Tizi-n-Ikhsane and Tizi-n-Tighatine passes we come to Taliouine, the centre of Morocco’s saffron growing, and on to Taroudant for the night in a riad.

Day 6: Taroudant – Essaouira (tour ends)

The morning is spent in Taroudant, “the little Marrakech”, walled in mud-brick ramparts you can walk the length of. Then west along the Souss valley through argan groves and banana and orange plantations to Agadir, and north up the coast past Taghazout, the surf village, with the Anti-Atlas on one side and coves opening on the other.

We drop you at your riad in Essaouira, and that is where this tour ends — the rest of your time on the coast is your own. If you would rather have a guided day in the Essaouira medina and a transfer on to Marrakech afterwards, that is our 7-day Ouarzazate desert discovery tour, which follows this identical route and adds a seventh day.