What you actually do
Activities in the Moroccan desert
Every activity below is included in, or can be added to, one of our tours. Prices in brackets are what you would pay locally if it is not already part of your itinerary.
Camel trekking
An hour on a dromedary from the edge of Erg Chebbi into the dunes, timed so you arrive at camp for sunset.
The camel trek is how you reach a desert camp, and it is the image most people have of Morocco before they arrive. Mounting is the awkward part — the animal stands back legs first and pitches you forward, so lean back. After that it is a slow rolling walk with a handler leading on foot.
An hour is enough. If you have back trouble or simply do not enjoy it, ask to be driven in by 4x4 instead — it costs nothing and nobody minds. Wear long trousers; the saddle is wooden under the blankets.
Tours with this: 3 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 4 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour
A night in a desert camp
Private tents inside the dunes, dinner cooked on site, drumming round a fire, and a sky with no light pollution for a hundred kilometres.
Standard camps have private canvas tents with real beds and heavy blankets, a shared bathroom block, and dinner and breakfast included. Luxury camps add en-suite hot showers, heating in winter and larger tents.
The view, the silence and the sunrise are identical in both. In winter the heated tent is worth the supplement; the rest of the year we would rather you spent the money on a second night.
We wrote a full description of what a night in a camp is really like, including the things people complain about.
Tours with this: 3 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 4 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour
Stargazing
Erg Chebbi has no light pollution within 100 km. On a moonless night the Milky Way casts a shadow.
This is not an activity you book, it is one you stay awake for. Once the camp fire dies and the lanterns are out, pull a blanket off your bed and lie on a dune.
The best nights are moonless and in winter, when the air is driest — Orion and the winter Milky Way are overwhelming in January. Check the moon phase when you pick your dates; a full moon is beautiful in its own right but washes the sky out completely.
Tours with this: 3 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 4 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour
Sandboarding
Down the big dune behind camp on a waxed board. Thirty seconds of fun for fifteen minutes of climbing.
Boards are available at most camps and at the auberges at the dune edge. Nobody is going to teach you much technique; you sit or stand, you go down, you walk back up.
Go in the morning when the sand is cool and firm. In the afternoon the surface is loose and hot enough to burn bare feet.
Tours with this: 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour
Kasbahs and ksour
Aït Ben Haddou, Taourirt, Amridil — fortified earthen architecture that has been rebuilt by hand for a thousand years.
A *kasbah* is a fortified house; a *ksar* is a fortified village. The great examples sit along the old caravan routes south of the Atlas, built of *pisé* — rammed earth mixed with straw — which lasts indefinitely if it is maintained and dissolves in a decade if it is not.
Aït Ben Haddou is the UNESCO-listed one and worth the climb to the granary at the top. A handful of families still live inside it, so treat the occupied houses as homes rather than film sets.
Tours with this: 3 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 4 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour
Todra and Dades gorges
A walk along a riverbed between 300-metre walls, and the switchback road through the eroded rock of the Dades.
The Todra Gorge narrows to about ten metres wide with walls rising three hundred, and there is a paved path along the river you can walk in half an hour. Go early — by eleven the coaches arrive and the acoustics fill with them. It is also one of Morocco's serious rock-climbing venues.
The Dades is the other kind of spectacular: a valley of eroded limestone formations the locals call monkey fingers, and a road of tight switchbacks climbing out of it that is worth driving for its own sake.
Tours with this: 4 Days From Marrakech to Merzouga Desert 5 Days Marrakech to Merzouga Grand Desert Tour 3 Days Marrakech to Fes via the Desert
Quad biking and buggies
Tracks across the Agafay stone plateau or the flat ground around Merzouga.
Popular in the Agafay, where the hard ground and dry riverbeds suit it, and available at Merzouga on the flat *hamada* around the erg rather than on the dunes themselves.
Helmets and goggles are provided. Do not expect to ride over big dunes — that is not what these machines do, and the erg is protected.
Tours with this: Agafay Desert, Camels & Sunset Dinner
Berber villages and mountain walks
Walks between stone villages in the High Atlas, with a local guide and a mule if you want one.
In the Ourika Valley and the Three Valleys, the walking is as easy or as long as you make it — twenty minutes between two villages, or three hours up a valley side.
The irrigation channels you walk beside are close to a thousand years old and still allocated by hand, village by village. Ask your guide how the water is divided; the answer is more interesting than the view.
Tours with this: Ourika Valley & the Setti Fatma Waterfalls Atlas Mountains & the Three Valleys
Medinas and souks
Fes el-Bali, the Marrakech souks, and the grid-plan calm of Essaouira.
Fes el-Bali is the largest car-free urban area in the world and genuinely disorienting — take a local guide for your first day there and explore alone afterwards.
Marrakech's souks are easier but pushier. Essaouira is the gentle one: laid out on a grid in 1760, so you cannot get lost, and the pressure to buy is a fraction of what it is inland.
Tours with this: 6 Days Imperial Cities & the Sahara Essaouira (Mogador) on the Atlantic
Waterfalls
The seven falls at Setti Fatma, reached by a boulder scramble up the Ourika river.
The walk to the first fall takes about forty minutes over river rocks, with some hands-on scrambling and a few slippery sections. It is a proper little adventure rather than a stroll, and it is cool and loud when you get there.
The fitter can carry on toward the higher falls. Most people swim at the first and come back down. Shoes with grip matter more than fitness here.
Tours with this: Ourika Valley & the Setti Fatma Waterfalls
Want one of these added to your trip?
Most of them slot into an existing itinerary without adding a day. Tell us which one and we will say what it changes.