A private tour from Marrakech to Sahara and Draa valley over 5 days.

Please find below the resumed itinerary ( driving times exclude stops ):

• Day 1: Marrakech – Tizi n Tichka – Telouet – Ait Benhaddou (4 hour drive).
• Day 2: Ait Benhaddou- Ouarzazate – Agdz – Zagora ( 3 hour drive).
• Day 3: Zagora – Tamegroute – Mhamid – Erg Chigaga dunes ( 3 hour drive).
• Day 4: Erg Chigaga – Lake Iriki – Foum Zguid – Tazenakht – Taroudant ( 7 hour drive).
• Day 5: Taroudant – Agadir – Marrakech/ Essaouira ( 4 hour drive). 

Most of our guests prefer adding an extra day to either allow for some relaxing time by the beach in Essaouira or trekking in the Atlas Mountains. We can also break the distance in two on Day 4 if you think the drive is too long. If you prefer to spend more time in the Sahara dunes, we suggest reversing the order of the tour. Please note that all our tours of Morocco are private and daily stops are accommodated along the way every couple of hours for you to visit a site, take a stunning photo or stretch your legs.

Feel free to let us know if you would like to include a site/ activity of your own in the itinerary. If you don’t know where to start some ideas are:

• organic honey tasting experience at a 500 year old apiary;
• visit the nomad grottos;
• cooking a meal with a local family and shopping for ingredients in a local souk;
• the architectural genius of century- old Anti Atlas granaries;
• take a class in Moroccan pottery or make slippers;
• trekking/ mountain biking in the High Atlas/ Anti Atlas;
• bake bread in the village oven on almond corks.

Bellow you will find our tentative rates ( no two itineraries are similar ) based on two persons traveling together, with the relevant accommodation option. For discounted rates, we invite you to book off season. 1 % of our revenues are donated towards social causes in Morocco.

Dreamers: 1050 US $/ 975 €/ 870 £ per person ( double room & comfort desert tent);
Privilege: 1480 US $/ 1365 €/ 1210 £ per person ( suite & luxury tent with en suite shower and toilet);
Divine: price available on request.

Our portfolio accommodations do not fit into a rigorous star rating system, so we have named them Dreamers, Privilege and Divine, to best resume their nature. To ensure availability, we recommend booking at least 3-4 months in advance. 

Pricing can vary at different times of the year. If you book your tour to take place in December, January ( outside NYE holidays), February, June, July and August, you will enjoy our low season rates. An exact rate will be offered once we have agreed on the precise itinerary, accommodation range preferred and any extras you would like to include. Discounts apply when 3 or more persons share the vehicle(s). You can also choose to mix different accommodation ranges within the same circuit.

Our rates include:

– private use of the English fluent driver-guide and modern air-conditioned Toyota 4×4;
– boutique/ luxury hotel accommodation for 3 nights;
– Sahara camel trek & private basic/ luxury tent for 1 night;
– 4 three- course- meal dinners and 4 breakfasts for 2 persons;
– airport or hotel pick- up and drop off;
– caleche ride and/ or visit to the souks in Taroudant;
– refreshing drinks inside the vehicle all along the itinerary;
– admission fees to all local sites and attractions;
– 24 hours travel assistance ( with Privilege/ Divine option);
– gasoline and highway tolls;
– transport insurance, VAT and visitors tax.

WHY SHOULD YOU BOOK WITH US

# We are based in Morocco since 2006 and no, we don’t work from home :). We scout for the most unique sites & local experiences all year round. We present these on our blog, Facebook and Instagram  pages. And only a travel agent based in Morocco can keep you up to date with latest travel restrictions within Morocco or how to get the fastest PCR test;

# We anonymously test, hand- pick and continuously update the best boutique and luxury hotels, Riads , eco lodges and Kasbahs across Morocco;

# We strive to bring you most authentic experiences. Some of them are unique: private flight to the Sahara; visit of a medina with a local university teacher; mechoui with a nomad family;

# 1 percent of our receipts go towards local projects, like help educate girls from rural Morocco or restoring the agadirs of southern Morocco;

# we accept payments by credit card, PayPal, bank transfer and, in the near future, alternative coins;

# we are on hand 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, before and during your tour, by email, phone or Skype/ Zoom.

Ready to create your unique Morocco tour? Get in touch here with our on- the- ground team in Morocco.

Day 1: Marrakech- Tizi n Tichka- Telouet- Ait Benhaddou ( 4 hour drive). *driving times don’t include the various stops. 

As our 5-day tour leaves Marrakech, the distant haze begins to resolve itself into a jagged mountain range – the High Atlas mountains, jutting abruptly from the plain. Our route follows the same one caravans used centuries ago, to bring into Marrakech slaves, gold and precious wood from the other side of the ocean of sand, Sahara.

[… in the sands of that country is gold, treasure inexpressible. They have much gold and merchants trade with salt for it, taking the salt on camels from the salt mines. They start from a town called Sijilmasa… and travel in the desert as it were upon the sea, having guides to pilot them by the stars or rocks in the desert. ] ( Tohfut-ul- Alaby by anonymous author, 12th century)

Beautiful scenery and small villages built in tiers succeed among oak trees, walnut groves and snow patches before arriving at the Tizi n Tichka pass, at 2100 meters high.  Once over the pass a totally different picture is unveiled: the lunar landscape of the Anti Atlas. Scent of thyme from the bushes around fills the air.

[ Read: Morocco on a honeymoon ]

Just after the pass, the tour leaves the tarmac and goes off road to then reach Telouet and former pasha’s palace dominating the village, a fortified citadel that is both a microcosm of an empire and its demise. Pacha Glaoui overshadowed the sultan by controlling most of nowadays Morocco and  decided to erect a palace in the middle of nowhere, where his family had originated from. He had employed the most skilled artisans to build and decorate his main residence and, in its golden age, armies, stables and Christian slaves were confined within its walls while a flourishing Jewish community was managing the nearby salt mines.

Leaving Telouet behind, our Moroccan itinerary crosses spaghetti western backgrounds to then follow the canyon. The gardens by the river bed melt into a gigantic green serpent imprisoned between the barren light brown walls of the canyon, only to escape out into the horizon. Here and there, decaying kasbahs stand witnesses of an age soon resolute. Late afternoon. The right time to visit UNESCO site of Ait Benhaddou, the postcard- like adobe citadel. A fat, red sun, only underlines the beige tones of the mud and straws mixture and through the covered passages and stone walls, the past filters itself into the present. In spite of the local ‘guides’, the best is to just lose yourselves in its alleyways. There is always a new way to reach its peak, from where the snowcapped Atlas Mountains framed by the denim blue sky will steal your breath away. If the climb up hadn’t already. Dinner and accommodation next to Ait Benhaddou. 

Day 2: Ait Benhaddou- Ouarzazate- Agdz- Zagora ( 3 hour drive)

After breakfast, our trip crosses Ouarzazate, made famous by its film studios where scenes of ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘Gladiator’ were shot. As we leave Ouarzazate behind, the road skirts through desolate arid landscapes.  Soon after, the road climbs, twists and turns its way through bleached volcanic ridges, before breaking through the scarp at the pass of Tizi n’Tinififft and descend onto the lush palmgrove of Agdz. Right after the pass you catch a first glimpse of the valley and the oases, the green swath of palms snaking up into the haze bordered by the Kasbahs, adobe guardians rising as if from the earth where the green gives way to the desert. There is no road sign but somehow you become aware you have entered a different land, Le Grand Sud.

{ Read: The House of Dreams, between Marrakech and the Sahara }

Draa Valley, with its numerous oases, Biblical adobe villages and kasbahs, used as overnight stops by the caravans until not too long ago is the beginning of the ‘caravan highway’ connecting for centuries Timbuktu, Gao and the kingdoms of Ghana and Mali to Morocco. 

[Until the beginning of the 17th century the Taghaza- Timbuktu road, pre- eminent in the gold trade and still more important as a cultural highway appears to have been the greatest of the routes across the desert. At any rate, up to the 1880’s the Saharan trade was a factor of considerable importance in the economy of Morocco] ( E.W. Bovill – The Golden Trade of the Moors)

We will stop at Tamnougalt and roam through the eerie kasbah before crossing over the palm grove and stopping to see a small untouched community of Harratin, likely descendants from traded slaves. Further on, you can also admire megalithic rock paintings depicting animals and hunting scenes. Our itinerary today concludes with reaching the tranquil town of Zagora. A mock serious road sign spelling ‘Timbuktu – 52 days by camel’ still greets the visitors. The first real dunes a 2 hour drive away. We will stop for accommodation and dinner in a beautiful guest house nested in the palmgrove nearby.

Day 3: Zagora- Tamegroute- Mhamid- Erg Chigaga ( 3 hour drive).

In the shade of an ocean of palm trees, locals get the best out of their fertile land as olives, pumpkins, quinces, apples, pomegranate, wheat  and barley all grow aroused by the ancestral system of irrigation. We more than recommend a guided tour of this unique habitat. The nearby village of Amezrou, carries on the Jewish tradition of silver crafting and the local adobe Jewish synagogue still stands. We will stop for a break in Tamegroute where century old Qorans and Arab treaties on astronomy and sciences are neatly arranged behind glass windows at the local library.  The same village carries a pottery tradition known throughout Morocco and it is of interest to witness the shaping and baking of the emerald pots and dishes inside traditional earth ovens. Crossing Jbel Bani, we wave hello to Mount Tagine on our right and, before long, we reach M’hammid, where the tarmac ends – the last village before the Sahara. 

The next two hours of our tour make full use of the four wheel drive as rocky desert gives way to gravel and then sand dunes, past the occasional water well and oasis. The anticipation built doesn’t quite prepare you for the spectacle ahead of you: sleepy yet shifting leviathans of sand as far as the sight can stretch, dotted by the occasional desert camp. These are the dunes of Erg Chigaga. Here, we can arrange for you to be met and taken by camel ride to the camp for the last bit of the way. While the staff of the camp is unloading your luggage and preparing your dinner, you climb onto the highest dune you can find. And lose yourself in the moment. As the sun slowly sets over the dunes, there is nowhere else you would rather be. At night, dazed by the millions of stars glittering above, the silence is so thick you feel you could cut a strip and wear it as a scarf as you fall asleep. Dinner and accommodation in a private tent.

Day 4: Erg Chigaga- Foum Zguid- Tazenakht- Taroudant ( 7 hour drive).

(If you have an extra day at hand, it is worth spending an extra night in Tata inside a 500 year old noble house to then reach Taroudant on the evening of the next day following one of the most dramatic and off the beaten track roads in Morocco).

Should you have missed the sunrise… well, try not to. If yesterday was about getting away from civilization, today is about getting back to it. After toddling across sand dunes, our trip reaches the perfectly flat Lake Iriki, nowadays completely dry, where the Draa river used to form its estuary. Later on, we will have tea with a family of nomads and search for fossils. Then, we take on the hamada, the much dreaded stony desert, to finally reach Foum Zguid. Farewell Sahara, hello tarmac. On the way to Taroudant, we pass through Tazenakht, a carpet weaving center and center of Berber carpets trade and then Taliouine with its magnificent Kasbah. In the right season, learn how the saffron is turned into the spice.  

Arriving in Taroudant, there is hardly anything more relaxing after the desert trip than a plunge in the refreshing pool and/ or ridding off the sand inside the in- house hammam ( steam bath) at the local guest house. As the lights start to twinkle, in the gardens the scent of jasmine perfumes the air while dinner is set. Dinner and accommodation inside the medina of Taroudant or in the palm grove nearby.

Day 5: Taroudant- Taghazout/ Chichaoua- Marrakech ( 4- 5 hour drive).

Taroudant lies in the middle of a fertile agricultural plain that crashes into the foothills of the Anti Atlas while nudging the Sahara in the south. Also called sometimes ‘Petit Marrakech’ due to its similar looking walled old town, it is in fact older than its northern sister. Its walls were built by the Saadi sultans back in 16th century when the city was their capital and the main base to attack Portuguese invaders on the nearby Atlantic coast. In this quiet town where most folks go around on their bycicle, hop on a caleche and have a tour around the city walls or wander the souks best known for silver, honey and argan oil and imagine how Marrakech used to be 30 years ago. 

There are at least two ways to return to Marrakech. You can return via the highway from Agadir, after having enjoyed some time on the beach in Taghazout. Or, you can choose to take the highway to Marrakech and stop on the way to visit a 500 year- old apiary where the owner will introduce you to traditional bee- growing, have you taste the different sorts of honey (our favorite must be argan honey) and invite you for an organic lunch in his home. Arrive in Marrakech late afternoon.