The Sahara & Merzouga

Yes, the Sahara is in Morocco — the country holds its north-western corner. The dunes people mean are Erg Chebbi, at Merzouga in the south-east near the Algerian border, about 560 km and a full day’s drive from Marrakech. Two nights out there is the right amount.

Merzouga, Morocco, and what Erg Chebbi actually is

Merzouga is a village at the western edge of the dunes. Erg Chebbi is the dune sea itself: roughly thirty kilometres long, with crests reaching about 150 metres, sitting on an otherwise flat stony plain.

That contrast is the thing photographs never convey. You drive for hours across hamada — grey-brown gravel desert, entirely unlike sand — and then the erg simply starts, a wall of orange at the edge of the plain, with a clear line where one ends and the other begins.

The Merzouga dunes are the accessible ones. There is sealed road to the edge of them, a village with hotels, mobile signal, and a lot of camps. None of that is visible once you are over the first crest.

Erg Chebbi or Erg Chigaga?

Two dune seas, two different trips.

	Erg Chebbi	Erg Chigaga
Base	Merzouga	M’Hamid, beyond Zagora
Access	Sealed road to the edge	~60 km of piste, 4x4 only
Height	Up to ~150 m	Lower, but far more extensive
Traffic	Many camps	Very few
Time needed	Fits a 3-day crossing	Add a day

Erg Chebbi for a first visit, and for anyone on a fixed schedule. Erg Chigaga if you have the extra day and would rather see nobody. The route to Chigaga runs south from Ouarzazate down the Draa valley, which is a beautiful drive in its own right.

How to get to the Sahara: the route, in stages

There is no short way. The drive is the trip, and the stops on it are the reason to do it by road.

Leg	Realistic time
Marrakech → Aït Benhaddou	3h
Aït Benhaddou → Ouarzazate → Dades valley	2h 30
Dades → Todra Gorge	1h 30
Todra → Merzouga	3h
Fes → Merzouga, direct	8h

Split over two days that is a comfortable, interesting drive. Attempted in one it is ten hours in a car and people arrive too tired to enjoy the dunes. Anyone selling a one-day desert trip from Marrakech is selling you the Agafay, or a very long day to Zagora — not this.

Errachidia airport is about two hours from Merzouga and has domestic flights from Casablanca, which is the right answer if your time is short and your budget is not.

Two nights, not one

One night in the dunes gives you a sunset, dinner, a night sky and a sunrise. That is the photograph, and for a lot of itineraries it is all there is room for.

Two nights gives you a whole day inside the desert instead of driving into it and out of it: the nomad families still living in the hamada, the Gnaoua musicians at Khamlia, the fossil beds around Erfoud where 400-million-year-old marine creatures sit in the rock, and time to walk the ridgeline without a schedule.

If you have four days, take them. Our luxury Sahara escape does exactly that, and the Marrakech to Fes crossing does the three-day version.

The night in the dunes

Camps sit in the sand between the ridges, out of sight of the village. They range from shared tents with a communal bathroom block to walled suites with plumbing and rugs. The food is the same tagine either way, and so is the sky.

What people are unprepared for is the cold. Between November and February the temperature falls close to freezing within an hour of sunset, and the wind picks up. Camps hand out heavy blankets; you still want a warm layer of your own. We go into the detail in what a Sahara desert camp is like and what to pack for the Sahara.

Camels, honestly

The camel ride from the edge of the dunes to camp takes about an hour and a half and it is genuinely uncomfortable after the first twenty minutes. Everybody does it once and most people are pleased they did.

If you have back trouble, or you are travelling with small children or anyone elderly, ask to be driven in by 4x4 and to ride only at sunrise for half an hour. Nobody will mind, and it is a better version of the day. We arrange it either way and never treat the camel as compulsory.

The Agafay: the near alternative, and why it is not the same

Forty minutes from Marrakech there is a stone desert called the Agafay, with camps, dinners, quad bikes and Atlas views. It is genuinely beautiful at sunset and it is a good evening.

It is not the Sahara. There is no sand — it is dried clay and rock — and there are no dunes. If your trip cannot absorb the drive east, the Agafay is a fair substitute for an evening and we will happily arrange it. What we will not do is call it the desert.

When to go

October to April. March and October are the best of it.

June to August reaches 45 °C by mid-afternoon and the sand is too hot to walk on barefoot; camps do run, and the nights are pleasant, but the days are survival rather than pleasure. December and January are perfect by day and genuinely cold at night.

Sandstorms are possible in spring, when the wind can blow for a day or two and visibility drops. They pass.

Is it safe out there?

Yes. This is a settled tourist region with permanent camps and phone coverage, and southern Morocco is stable and well policed.

The hazards are environmental, not human: sun, dehydration, and how easy it is to lose your bearings in dunes with no landmarks. Take more water than you think you need, do not walk out alone at midday, and keep your camp’s direction in mind. Broader ground is covered in safety in Morocco.

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Merzouga is the far end of most of our routes, and the point of the drive rather than an add-on to it. See how it fits with everything else on our destinations page.

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