Day by day itinerary
1. Casablanca - Hassan II Mosque - Chefchaouen (5h drive) / Casablanca Arrival, Hassan II Mosque & the Blue City of Chefchaouen
Your driver will be at Casablanca Mohamed V Airport when you land, or at your hotel if you are already in town. The first stop is the Hassan II Mosque, second-largest in the world, built out over the Atlantic. You see it from outside and take your photographs. After that the drive north begins, into the Rif Mountains and Chefchaouen, where you arrive in the late afternoon and settle into a riad within the medina. Your evening is free: blue-washed lanes, the doorways everyone photographs, a rooftop cafe above it all. You eat at the riad. Half board.
2. Chefchaouen - Volubilis Roman ruins - Fes (4h drive) / Blue City Morning, Ancient Roman Ruins & Arrival in Fes
The morning is unhurried and spent in Chefchaouen: the blue medina in daylight, the viewpoint at the Spanish Mosque, artisan shops, blue stairways. Come the afternoon you drive to Volubilis, where the Roman ruins carry a UNESCO World Heritage listing and the well-preserved mosaics and columns go back to the 3rd century BC. From there it is on to Fes, arriving with time to eat at the riad, which sits right in the middle of the medina. Half board.
3. Full day guided Fes medina tour / Royal Palace, Al-Qarawiyyin, Tanneries & the Artisan Souks of Fes
The whole day goes to the Fes medina in the company of a local guide. This is one of the best-preserved medieval cities on earth, and the biggest car-free urban area in the world. You look at the Royal Palace from outside, then Al-Qarawiyyin University, which dates from 859 AD and is the oldest university in the world still functioning, then the Chouara tanneries, then the artisan souks and their metalwork, leather, ceramics and textiles. Lunch is at a traditional restaurant in the medina. Tonight dinner is yours to arrange, either out on your own or back at the riad.
4. Fes - Ifrane - Azrou - Midelt - Ziz Valley - Merzouga - sunset camel trek - luxury camp (7h drive) / Cedar Forests, Ziz Valley & Your Sunset Ride into the Sahara
You leave Fes for the Middle Atlas. Ifrane comes first, Morocco's "Little Switzerland", and then the cedar forest at Azrou where Barbary macaques live. Midelt is the lunch stop. The afternoon is a long descent of the Ziz Valley: date palms, fortified kasbahs, high cliffs, and the desert growing nearer all the while. At Merzouga a camel takes you out into the Erg Chebbi dunes for the sunset. You sleep at the luxury desert camp in a tent of your own, ensuite, with real beds, electricity and a hot shower, a Moroccan dinner served under the stars, Berber drumming and a sky with nothing in the way of it. Half board.
5. Merzouga - Rissani - Tinghir - Todra Gorge - Dades Valley (4h drive) / Sahara Sunrise, Rissani, Todra Gorge & the Valley of Kasbahs
Up before the light for a camel ride back across the dunes as the sun comes up, then breakfast once you are back at camp. Rissani is next, the town where Morocco's Alaouite dynasty started, and you look round its local dates market. Then Tinghir, with a walk in the oasis beside the river, and after that the Todra Gorge, 300 m of limestone standing over you; lunch happens at the gorge. The rest of the day follows the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs into the Dades Valley. You dine and sleep at a hotel there. Half board.
6. Dades - Rose Valley - Skoura - Aït Ben Haddou - Tizi n'Tichka - Marrakech (6h drive) / Rose Valley, Skoura, UNESCO Ksar, High Atlas & Arrival in Marrakech
The morning takes you along the Valley of the Roses and into the Skoura oasis, where a restoration has turned Kasbah Amridil into a private museum of Berber architecture. Ouarzazate follows. Around midday you reach Aït Ben Haddou, a ksar on the UNESCO World Heritage list that has stood in for Gladiator and Game of Thrones; a guide crosses the river with you and takes you round the village, and lunch is close by. Then the High Atlas, crossed at the Tizi n'Tichka pass, 2,260 m up, and Marrakech in the late afternoon, where you are dropped at your hotel or riad.