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Day 6: Cooking Sahara
 After breakfast at your
accommodations in Marrakech, you'll be picked-up
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.
 You arrive in Ouarzazate for lunch, 4-5 hours after departing Marrakech.
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 the ancient
Kasbahs, devoting their time mostly to agricultural work and crafts.
 Your
last stop before the Sahara 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. A brief stop at the Hotel Sahara (a
former French Foreign Legion Barracks) where you will be given an
opportunity to relax, refresh and repack for the desert trek before
dinner. After dinner at the
hotel, you will be taken by 4X4 vehicle to a camp on the edge of the
desert where you will spend the night in a Nomad style camp, sleeping in a
khaima (the traditional
nomad tent
about
6 to 7 meters per side and
made of woven wool) or on the dunes if you chose.
On
the ground, mats or light rugs are spread to insulate you from the sand.
The nights can be cold in the middle of the Sahara and the traditional animal hide coverings
have been replaced by manufactured blankets. Other than that,
the camp is designed to give an accurate taste of Nomad life with only a
few
conveniences
added for comfort.
In a traditional nomad camp, the meal involves simple
cooking and simple ingredients. But on the edge of the worlds largest
desert, even dinner can be an adventure when the wind picks up a
sandstorm flavors your meal with its fine dust, loving known as “Sahara
Salt.”
(Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner)
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