9-Day Tangier to Marrakech Desert Tour via Fez

Tangier to Chefchaouen

South via Tetouan, a UNESCO-listed medina largely rebuilt from 1492 by Andalusian refugees fleeing the fall of Granada, and into the Rif toward Chefchaouen, founded in 1471 as a fortress against Portuguese incursions. Its walls have been washed blue since at least the 1930s, a tradition most often traced to Jewish refugees who settled the Mellah quarter, with the afternoon free to walk the lanes.

About 2 hours on the road, roughly 110 km

Dar Echchaouen or similar, Chefchaouen

Chefchaouen to Fez

A relaxed drive south across the Sais plain, arriving in Fez by early evening.

About 3.5 hours on the road, roughly 200 km

Riad Fez Mahal or similar, Fez medina

Fez medina

A full day with a local guide through Fez el-Bali. The Chouara tannery has worked the same way since the 11th century, hides soaked in lime and pigeon droppings before being dyed by foot in vats of saffron yellow, poppy red, and indigo blue. The Bou Inania madrasa, carved in cedar and built in 1350-55, is the only madrasa in Morocco ever granted the status of a full Friday mosque, and Al-Qarawiyyin, founded in 859 by Fatima al-Fihri, is recognised as the oldest continuously operating university in the world, before the working souks.

No driving today

Riad Fez Mahal or similar, Fez medina

Fez to Merzouga

South through the Middle Atlas cedar forests around Ifrane, watch for Barbary macaques at the roadside, then down through the Ziz Valley's palm oases, a roughly 70-kilometre ribbon of date groves that once carried caravans north from the Sahara, to the dunes at Erg Chebbi in time for sunset.

About 7.5 hours on the road, roughly 460 km

Tiziri Desert Camp or similar, Erg Chebbi

In the dunes

A full day with no driving. Sandboard the ridgelines, visit Khamlia, a village whose families trace back to sub-Saharan communities brought north through the trans-Saharan trade and who still play Gnawa music on iron krakebs and the three-string guembir lute, or simply sit still. A shared tagine dinner and drumming around the fire follow after dark.

No driving today

Tiziri Desert Camp or similar, Erg Chebbi

Merzouga to Dades Valley

West across the flat hamada and into the Todra Gorge, cut by the Todgha River through the High Atlas, its walls rising up to 160 metres in a stretch barely 10 metres wide, then on into the Dades Gorge, switchbacking up the 'Road of a Thousand Kasbahs' past rock formations known locally as the monkey fingers.

About 4.5 hours on the road, roughly 260 km

Dades Paradise or similar, Dades Valley

Dades Valley to Marrakech

A stop at Ait Benhaddou, a fortified ksar on the old Sahara caravan route that has stood in rammed earth for close to a thousand years and become one of Africa's most-filmed locations, a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1987, before crossing the High Atlas on the Tizi n'Tichka, the highest major mountain pass in North Africa, cut by French military engineers along an old caravan trail in 1936.

About 6 hours on the road, roughly 310 km

Riad Aslal or similar, Marrakech medina

Marrakech

A full day with a local guide through the medina and the Bahia Palace, raised in 1866-67 for Grand Vizier Si Moussa, then enlarged by his son Ba Ahmed between 1894 and 1900 into the carved-cedar, zellige-tiled complex standing today, before the souks.

No driving today

Riad Aslal or similar, Marrakech medina

Departure

A final walk through the Jemaa el-Fna before the transfer to Marrakech airport for your flight home.

Just the transfer to the airport today