4-day tour from Marrakech to Fes

We depart Boumalene Dades for Merzouga and the largest windswept sand dunes in Morocco, Erg Chebbi. Via the Berber town of Tinghir, we reach Todra Gorge, where the 600-meter-tall cliffs are just 10 meters apart. We’ll leave Todra and drive through a variety of Berber villages on way to Tinjdad, where we’ll have lunch (or, if you want, you may continue on to Rissani, where you can have the local specialty, Berber Pizza, if you arrive before noon).

After lunch, we go to Merzouga to check into a hotel and store our luggage. We traverse the Erg Chebbi dunes on camels until we reach a Berber camp. These sand dunes are 20 kilometers in length and between 5 and 8 kilometers in breadth, making them the highest in all of North Africa. The setting is unique and diverse. We take a 1 hour and 30 minute camel ride from the hotel to the camp, where we retain our nomadic Berber identity. The dunes themselves offered part of the required infrastructure, so we added a restaurant and kitchen to our three Berber tents. We provide bedding, including beds, blankets, and pillows, for the tents. When the sun sets over the desert, we all congregate around the fire and listen to some music, with Berber drums.

We plan to spend the day learning about the local nomads, lakes, and wildlife in Erg Chebbi, since there is so much to see and do there. We drink tea and listen to the soothing sounds of Gnawa music in Khamlia, the black community. Perhaps we will have lunch at a hotel or a picnic among some Tamarix trees. In the late afternoon, you may unwind at the campsite while listening to live music performed by local musicians and watching the sun set over the horizon as the stars appear.