Deserts & Empires
Day 7 Includes
- Breakfast at riad
- Transfer from Marrakech to the Sahara
- Lunch en route
- Dinner
- Night at Hamada du Draa lodge
"Wonderful, surprising and exhausting."
"I had a wonderful, surprising and exhausting trip. I was swatted on my first day by a donkey cart driver when I didn’t get out of the way, I tried more unusual food than I probably should have (you can guess what that means), I experienced the odd but still relaxing feeling of a Marakshi women scrubbing and bathing me like a baby (at Les Bains de Marrakech), I rode a camel for 3 hours longer than I needed to, and I camped in the dessert without too much grumbling."
-Louisa S
Day 7: High Atlas and the Sahara
You'll be picked-up
at your accommodations and start south on an 8-10 hour drive to the Sahara. Length of the drive depends on the weather, road conditions, and your requested number of stops along the way. The oak forests and walnut groves of the Marrakech plains give way to rocky cliffs and steep drops as the road climbs into the mountains and you enter into the dramatic Tizi-n-Tichka Pass (2,260 meters high). Sharp drops, hair pin turns, mud slides, rock slides, snow, ice, and road side vendors that rush into the road to sell geodes make this an exciting ride with breathtaking scenery. All these provide little challenge to the drivers, local seasoned professionals with many years driving experience.
After descending the High Atlas, you'll take a quick detour to the Kasbah of Ait-Ben-Haddou. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, the ksar is a group of earthen houses crowded together within high defensive walls reinforced by corner towers. Ait-Ben-Haddou, in Ouarzazate province, is the most striking and best preserved example of the architecture of southern Morocco.
From
Ait-Ben-Haddou it's a short hop to Ouarzazate for lunch. If the region looks familiar, it's because it has been the backdrop for films such as Lawrence of Arabia, The Sheltering Sky, and more recently The Mummy, and Gladiator. After lunch you embark on the 4-5 hour drive to the Sahara, passing through the Tizi-n-Tinifft Pass and down the Draa Valley with its palmeraies, Kasbahs, and small villages. Looking like something out of a history book, people still live in these ancient Kasbahs, devoting their time mostly to agricultural work and crafts.
Along the way you'll make a brief stop to see the most famous craft of the
region, the green pottery from the village of Tamegroute.
At the end of the drive is the village of M'hamid. Located on the northern edge of the Sahara, it is the last oasis of the Draa valley and the end of the paved road. Just outside of the village is the Hamada du Draa lodge where you'll be spending the night. Offering a taste of the Sahara with some modern comforts, it gently eases you into the Sahara experience. After you get settled in, dinner will be served.
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