Ten days, two nights in the desert and a Berber family whose table we share.
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Morocco will throw you on the first day. On Jemaa el Fna square ten people an hour will tug at your sleeve, and the noise is loud enough that you cannot hear each other. By day three you stop noticing and by day seven you will miss it. This is not a trip for anyone who wants quiet and a hotel beach.
The route runs from Marrakesh over the High Atlas via the Tizi n Tichka pass, 2260 metres and nothing but bends. If you get carsick, bring tablets. We are not joking. Beyond the pass the country changes: green valleys give way to clay, stone and palm groves. Aït Ben Haddou is a mud brick fortress used for Game of Thrones and Gladiator. Five families still live in it.
We spend two nights in the Erg Chebbi dunes. You reach the camp by camel, an hour and a half, and after twenty minutes the gait stops bothering you. The camp has tents with beds and dry toilets; the shower is cold and there is only one. In return you get a sky you will never see over Kysuce and a silence you can hear. Hassan, our Berber host, cooks tagine over charcoal and after dinner the drums come out. Nobody makes you dance. Our guide Tomáš has been coming to Morocco since 2016 and speaks enough Arabic to keep you from paying double in the souk. The tour ends in Fez, whose medina has around nine thousand lanes and where you will be lost within ten minutes without a guide. With one, you will still be slightly lost. The drives are long, one day runs to 380 kilometres and the roads twist. In return you sleep two nights in the desert, one in a riad with a well in the courtyard and one in a kasbah built of clay. Alcohol is sold only in hotels and supermarkets; you will not find it in the souks or in most restaurants.
Flight from Vienna via Madrid, landing at 16:20. Transfer to a riad in the medina, a traditional house built around a courtyard. In the early evening we go to Jemaa el Fna, where the food stalls go up at seven. Dinner on the square, where a main dish costs about four euros.
The medina in the morning: the Ben Youssef madrasa, the Saadian tombs and souks divided by trade, leather in one lane, metal in another. The afternoon is the Majorelle garden and time for coffee. Tomáš will explain the ground rules of bargaining, which are less about price than about patience.
We leave at eight and cross the Tizi n Tichka pass at 2260 metres. The road has around two hundred bends, so if you get carsick, take a seat at the front. In the afternoon, Aït Ben Haddou, where the walk up to the kasbah takes 40 minutes. We sleep in Ouarzazate.
We drive the Dades valley past clay kasbahs that are repaired every year because rain dissolves them. In the afternoon, the Todra gorge, where the walls rise 300 metres and the floor narrows to ten. Dinner with a Berber family in Tinghir.
We drive to Merzouga and at five in the afternoon set off by camel into the Erg Chebbi dunes. The ride takes an hour and a half and we watch the sunset from the crest of a 150 metre dune. Dinner and drumming at camp. You sleep in a tent with a proper bed under a sky full of stars.
Sunrise at half past five is worth getting up for. During the day we take four wheel drives to Lake Dayet Srji with its flamingos, visit a nomad settlement and hear the Gnaoua musicians in Khamlia. Sandboarding on the dunes in the late afternoon. A second night at camp.
A long drive, 380 kilometres through the palm groves of the Ziz valley and across the Middle Atlas, where macaques live in the cedar forest. We stop in Ifrane, a town that looks like a Swiss resort and gets snow in winter. We sleep in Fez.
A full day in the medina, some nine thousand lanes and the largest car free urban area in the world. The Chouara tannery still processes leather exactly as it did nine hundred years ago. The smell is strong and you will be handed a sprig of mint. The afternoon is free for shopping.
The Roman ruins at Volubilis, whose mosaics have lain in the open for two thousand years. Then Meknes and the Bab Mansour gate. In the afternoon we take the train back to Marrakesh; it is a seven hour ride, but the train is comfortable and direct. We sleep in the riad.
A free morning for last purchases; spices and argan oil are the souvenirs that survive the trip, and Tomáš will come along to bargain. Prices in the souk drop to a third if you have time and patience. Airport transfer at 13:00, departure at 15:55 via Madrid, landing in Vienna at 23:10.
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