Note: We can adjust this trip to allow 2 days in the desert camp.

 Your driver-guide will pick you up with his 4x4 after breakfast at your riad. Drive through the High Atlas Mountains over the highest main road pass in Morocco at 2260 meters above sea level. Pass through traditional Berber villages to Telouet to visit the Glaoui Kasbah. You’ll then continue through the Ounilla Valley to the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Aït Benhaddou. 

Transfer early in the morning from your riad to visit Aït Benhaddou. This is an ancient ksar, or fortified village, along the traditional trade route, and has been the set for many international films, including Gladiator and Game of Thrones. You’ll have the chance to explore this living museum as you climb to the top of the imposing hill for a commanding view of the countryside. Continue the drive via Taznakht village, where you can visit a Berber carpet cooperative, then drive to Foum Zguid, a village outpost on the desert with Acacia trees, glorious palm trees and watermelon farms. You leave the paved road here for about 3 hours of off-road driving to Erg Chigaga. Along the way you will pass through Iriqui Lake National Park, a dried lakebed that occasionally becomes a wetland visited by migratory birds and is the site of millions of fossils. You will reach the camp in time for a sunset camel ride and a walk among the dunes. 

Wake up to a beautiful sunrise and have a delicious breakfast before you depart from the great dunes of Erg Chigaga toward M’Hamid el Ghizlane, where you rejoin the paved road. Travel through the Draa Valley, where the longest river in Morocco waters the lush oases and villages. Stop at Tamgroute, the site of Morocco’s famed green pottery, as well as a large library containing old books on physics, mathematics and the sciences. Then pass through Zagora and other villages on the way to Agdez for an overnight in your guest house. 

Transfer from your guest house to Marrakesh via the Aït Saoun pass with spectacular views of the High Atlas Mountains. You’ll have more opportunities to take pictures of the beautiful scenery before you reach Marrakesh in the early afternoon.