Day by day itinerary
1. Marrakech - Tizi n'Tichka - Aït Ben Haddou - Ouarzazate - Skoura - Rose Valley - Boumalne Dades (6h drive) / High Atlas Crossing, Skoura Oasis & the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs
Collection from your Marrakech hotel or riad at around 08:00. The road runs southeast and climbs to Tizi n'Tichka at 2,260 m, the pass that carries you over the High Atlas, with pauses for photographs, for coffee and at a traditional Berber village. Then Aït Ben Haddou, and its UNESCO ksar. Lunch nearby is quick, the stop in Ouarzazate short. East again to the Skoura oasis, where a local guide walks you round Kasbah Amridil, and onward through the Rose Valley. Boumalne Dades arrives late in the afternoon, and there is still time to be driven to the top for the view over the Dades canyons. You eat and sleep at a hotel in the Dades Valley, half board. An upgraded hotel in the same valley can be booked instead, for a 40 EUR supplement per person.
2. Boumalne Dades - Tinghir - Todgha Gorges - Erfoud - Rissani - Merzouga (4h drive) / Todgha Gorges, Desert Markets & Your Sunset Ride into the Sahara
Breakfast first, then the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs takes you east to the oasis village of Tinghir. From there a walk follows the riverbank past old Berber settlements as far as the Todgha Gorges, where limestone walls 300 m high stand over a flat riverbed. Today holds only about 4 hours of driving, so the canyon can be walked end to end and lunch happens at the gorge itself. Erfoud comes next, a town known for its date market and its fossilised marble, then Rissani, the place the ruling Alaouite dynasty came from. You reach Erg Chebbi by mid-afternoon and go up into the dunes on camelback for sunset. The night is a private ensuite tent at a luxury camp at Merzouga, with hot shower, real beds and electricity. Dinner is Moroccan, served outdoors beneath a sky worth staying up for, and Berber drums keep going round the fire afterwards. Sandboards are there at the camp if you want them. Half board.
3. Merzouga - Nkob - Draa Valley - Agdz - Ouarzazate (6h drive) / Sahara Sunrise, the Anti Atlas & the Legendary Draa Valley
Camels again before dawn, back across the Erg Chebbi dunes for sunrise, then breakfast at camp and a run down to Merzouga village, where your driver is waiting. Today does not retrace yesterday. It bears southwest into the Anti Atlas, over volcanic massifs, as far as Nkob, the village where the Draa Valley opens. From Nkob you follow the longest river valley in Morocco, past kasbahs, mud-brick villages and date palm groves, and through Agdz, once a caravan halt on the road between Marrakech and Timbuktu. Ouarzazate comes in the early evening. You check in at a riad in town, one of two the itinerary draws on, and dine there. Half board.
4. Ouarzazate - Aït Ben Haddou - Telouet Kasbah - High Atlas - Marrakech (5h drive) / UNESCO Guided Walk, the Hidden Fortress of Telouet & Home
Breakfast, then a short hop to Aït Ben Haddou for the walk this ksar deserves, guided, through its alleyways and up to the granary on the hilltop. UNESCO put it on the World Heritage list in 1987, and the screen knows it well: Game of Thrones was shot here, so were Gladiator and Lawrence of Arabia. Telouet Kasbah follows, standing where the old caravan road crossed the High Atlas, raised by the warlord Thami El Glaoui late in the 19th century, its zellige tilework and carved stucco ceilings still intact. The afternoon recrosses the mountains, and you are set down at your Marrakech hotel or riad, door to door.