Marrakech

Your early departure for the Marrakech To Erg Chigaga desert trip is 8 hours from your hotel or riad in Marrakech to cross the High Atlas Mountains. After the Tichka pass, you leave the main road and take a secondary road to the Kasbah of Telouet, which belonged to the lords of the Atlas, the Glaoui family. Each addition to the building is today in ruins exposed to the wind and the rain, having been abandoned and looted after the fled of the last pasha of the country. Wait to be pleasantly surprised by the traditional interior decoration as you reach the far end of the Kasbah. From there you drive along the beautiful and awe-inspiring Ounila Valley, full of bends in the roads, surprised by the hues of the rock and soil, Berber villages and gardens, as well as smaller Kasbahs almost at the end of the road.

Ait Ben Haddou

you reach Aït Ben Haddou, where you stop for a delicious lunch. It is Morocco’s most famous Kasbah, one of Morocco’s seven UNESCO World Heritage sites. The architectural style is well preserved also the earthen constructions are perfectly adapted to the climatic conditions and in harmony with the natural and social environment. Probably from the 17th century, it is also famous as the backdrop for many Hollywood blockbusters.

Ouarzazate

After crossing Ait ben Haddou, we continue to your hotel Ouarzazate where you spend your first night.

Ouarzazate

After breakfast, it’s time to visit Kasbah Tamnougalte, the oldest Kasbah in the Draa Valley. Apart is still inhabited but the Jewish quarter has collapsed since the departure of its inhabitants for Israel, the last woman had left in 1963. From there, we take for a short time the old caravan route between the river and the mountains. which was used to transport goods from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco and passes between the mountains and the river, passing through many villages and gardens. This route allows you to get a better idea of the Berber way of life in the invigorating oases. Just before Tansikht Police Station the driver can stop and show you the dinosaur footprints right by the roadside. We then arrive in the village of Tinsouline, from where you can travel about a kilometer off-road to the fascinating rock carvings of long-extinct animals in Morocco at Foum Chenna, which is around 4000 years old.

Zagora

Zagora is everyone’s biggest city. region and here we will stop for lunch. Later we pass through Tamgroute, where a stop for the famous pottery for the green glaze, which you may have seen in Marrakech before. You can also visit the ancient Koranic library with exquisite hand-written Arabic texts.

M'Hamid

we drive further south, to M’hamid, the very gate of the desert and the end of the asphalt road. In the dunes of Erg Lihoudi, we stop for lunch. Alternatively, lunch will be at Ksar Bounou.

You continue to the dunes of ErgChegaga (300 m) with 60 km of off-road driving. This route passes different features of the desert; ‘Erg’ (dunes), ‘hammada’ (stony desert), an oasis. These dunes are far from civilization, in the desert itself, and the silence and the expanse of the sand are overwhelming. Once there, you can take a camel ride of about an hour and a half, you dine and spend the night in a camp with a private bathroom, king-size beds, beautiful Moroccan furniture, and lamps. tastefully arranged to enhance your enjoyment of the silence and the beauty of the dunes.

Foum Zguid

After breakfast, our Marrakech to Erg Chigaga desert trip takes us west through 90 km of the desert with varied landscapes: Lake Iriqui, where you may discover a large mirage in the heat, mountains, and fossils. Lunch will be in Foum Zguid, the first village after the desert. “Foum” means “mouth”, so the name is the “mouth/source” of the Zguid river.

From there, the road heads north along cobbled roads and past amazing rock formations to the small town of Taznakht, famous for its Berber rugs and carpets.

Marrakech

we cross the High Atlas again to reach Marrakech in the late afternoon.