5 Days Tour from Fes to Marrakech: Erg Chigaga Dunes, Free Day and Ait Benhaddou

We pick you up in Fes in the morning and head south into the Middle Atlas. The road climbs through Ifrane and into the cedar forest around Azrou, where the air turns cool and the landscape feels more like the Alps than Africa. From there it drops through Midelt, Rich and Ait Hani, with the High Atlas getting closer all day. By evening we reach the Todra Gorge, where the cliffs close in around the road. You have dinner and sleep in a hotel nearby.

After breakfast you walk a little of the Todra Gorge while it is still quiet, then drive on through the Dades Valley and its red kasbah villages. The road then leaves the tarmac and crosses the rocky plateaus of the Jbel Saghro, where the villages thin out and the horizon opens up. It is a long day, and a worthwhile one. Late in the afternoon the dunes of Erg Chigaga appear. You ride a camel across the sand at sunset to your nomad camp, where dinner and your first night in the desert wait for you.

This is the day the whole tour is built around. There is no driving and no schedule. You can climb to the highest dunes with your guide for the sunrise view, try sandboarding, or just sit in the silence with a glass of mint tea. In the evening we light a campfire, and after a Berber dinner, local music plays under a sky with very little light pollution. You sleep in the camp for a second night.

After breakfast we leave the dunes and follow desert tracks back toward the Atlas. The landscape changes slowly from sand to stony plains to palm groves. In the afternoon we reach Ait Benhaddou, the famous clay ksar on the hill, and you have time to walk up through its alleys before dinner. You sleep in a village guesthouse.

On the last day we cross the High Atlas by the Tizi n'Tichka pass. The road winds through mountain villages with views over the valleys below. We stop for photos at the top and reach Marrakech in the afternoon, where the tour ends at your hotel or riad.