Sahara Desert

The Moroccan Sahara is one of the great wonders of the natural world — and nowhere does it reveal itself more dramatically than at Erg Chebbi, the vast sand sea near the village of Merzouga in the south-east of the country. Here, dunes of volcanic-orange sand rise to over 150 metres, their razor-edged crests shifting with every desert wind, their slopes casting shadows of extraordinary depth and colour at dawn and dusk. The silence is total, broken only by the soft percussion of sand grains in the breeze and the occasional cry of a desert bird. For many travellers, the first sight of Erg Chebbi at sunrise is the defining moment of their Morocco journey.

But the Sahara is far more than its dunes. The region surrounding Merzouga and stretching westward through the Draa Valley is one of the most historically and culturally layered landscapes in North Africa. The ancient caravan routes that carried gold, salt and slaves between sub-Saharan Africa and the Mediterranean passed through this terrain for centuries, leaving behind a chain of fortified villages — ksour — built from the same earth-red mud brick as the desert itself. The most celebrated of these, Ait Benhaddou, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site: a towering complex of kasbahs reflected in the shallow waters of the Ounila River, its silhouette so cinematic that it has served as a backdrop for dozens of films and television productions.

The journey south from Marrakech to Merzouga is itself a journey through deep time. The road passes through the High Atlas via the Tichka Pass, descends into the Ouarzazate basin — sometimes called the Hollywood of Africa — and then winds through the Dadès and Todra Gorges, whose sheer limestone walls rise hundreds of metres above narrow river beds carpeted in green. These gorges are among the most spectacular geological formations in the world and deserve at least a night each for hikers and rock climbers.

At the heart of this landscape, the Amazigh (Berber) people — whose ancestors inhabited these valleys long before the Arab conquest — maintain a culture of extraordinary warmth and integrity. In the desert camps of Merzouga and the kasbahs of the Draa Valley, travellers are welcomed with the ritualised generosity of mint tea poured from a height, with slow-cooked tagines eaten by firelight, and with music that has carried the stories of this desert people across generations. To sleep beneath the Saharan sky, with no light pollution and the Milky Way arching overhead from horizon to horizon, is an experience that most travellers describe as genuinely transformative.