3 Days desert Tour Marrakech to Erg Chigaga

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. Enjoy the surprising hues of the rock and soil, the Berber villages and gardens, as well as the smaller kasbahs.

Almost at the end of the road, 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.

In the afternoon, you will be transferred to your guesthouse.

After breakfast, it’s time to visit Kasbah Tamnougalte, the oldest kasbah in the Draa Valley. A part is still inhabited, but the Jewish quarter collapsed after the departure of its inhabitants in 1963.

From there, we'll take the old caravan route between the river and the mountains which was used to transport goods from sub-Saharan Africa and Morocco. It passes between the mountains and the river, 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.

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.

In the afternoon, 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.

Continue to the dunes of Erg Chegaga (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, 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.

After breakfast, we head west through 90 km of the desert with varied landscapes including 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.

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