3-Day Desert Tour from Ouarzazate to Merzouga

About This Tour

3 days - 2 nights · Ouarzazate

Starting in Ouarzazate rather than Marrakech takes the High Atlas crossing out of your trip entirely. You begin already on the desert side of the mountains, which means shorter days in the vehicle and more time actually standing in the places you came to see.

This private 3-day tour runs east along the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs, through the Valley of Roses and the two great canyons of southern Morocco, to the tall orange dunes of Erg Chebbi. You ride camels into the sand at sunset, sleep in a desert camp under a sky with no light pollution in it, and return through the Draa side of the country.

Tour Highlights

The best of this journey

Photo Gallery

3-Day Desert Tour from Ouarzazate to Merzouga

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Tour Itinerary

Day by day, 3 days

• Iti1

  Day 1: Ouarzazate → Skoura → Valley of Roses → Dades Gorge

  We collect you from your hotel in Ouarzazate around 8:30 am and head east along the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs. The first stop is Skoura, a palm oasis dense enough to lose a village in, where the Amridil kasbah still stands much as it did when it was printed on the 50-dirham note.

  Continuing through Kalaat M'Gouna, the centre of Morocco's damask rose growing, we climb into the Dades gorge in the afternoon. If time allows you will see the rock formations known locally as the monkey fingers. Dinner and overnight in a hotel in the gorge.

  Oggi la distanza si sente, ma ne vale la pena: la strada attraversa Ouarzazate, the desert film town behind the Atlas Studios and the Taourirt kasbah and the Skoura oasis and its scattering of old kasbahs among the palms.

  There is no schedule to hold to but your own, so the good stops get the time they deserve.

  Accommodation: Riad Paradise Dades, Dades Valley — or similar Meals: Breakfast & Dinner
• Iti2

  Day 2: Dades → Todra Gorge → Erfoud → Merzouga → desert camp

  After breakfast we drive to Todra, where the canyon narrows to a ten-metre gap between cliffs three hundred metres high. There is time to walk the floor of the gorge before we continue south through Tinghir and Erfoud.

  We reach Merzouga in the late afternoon. Your camels are waiting at the edge of Erg Chebbi, and the trek into the dunes takes about an hour and a half, timed so that you are among the high sand as the sun goes down. Dinner at the camp, drums around the fire, and a night in a private tent.

  The afternoon belongs to the desert. Camels are met at the edge of the dunes and the ride out to camp is timed so the sun goes down while you are among the sand.

  Dinner is served at the camp, the drums come out after it, and the stars over Erg Chebbi are the reason most people remember this night above the rest.

  The camp is far enough from any town that the Milky Way is visible to the naked eye on a clear night.

  The tents have proper beds and rugs rather than sleeping mats, and the larger camps have private bathrooms.

  Accommodation: Tawada Desert Camp, Erg Chebbi — or similar Meals: Breakfast & Dinner
• Iti3

  Day 3: Sunrise over Erg Chebbi → Rissani → Ziz Valley → Ouarzazate

  Wake early for sunrise over the dunes — the light moves fast and the colour changes minute by minute — then ride or take a 4x4 back to the village for breakfast and a shower.

  We return west with stops at Rissani, the old caravan capital, and at the Ziz valley viewpoint, and reach Ouarzazate in the late afternoon. We drop you at your hotel, or at the airport if you are flying out.

  A full day out in the Sahara: the nomad families who still live in the black tents around the erg, the old Mascara galleries where kohl was mined, the village of Khamlia and its Gnawa musicians, whose sung history came north with the caravans from Mali.

  The fossil beds around Erfoud were a shallow sea 400 million years ago, and the black marble cut there is full of orthoceras and trilobites.

  Sunset is watched from a high dune, and the sand shifts through gold, orange and finally a deep red as the light goes.

  The nomad families around the erg still move with their herds and still take visitors in for tea, which is a real household rather than a display.

  Departure: Departure day — transfer to the airport

What the Price Includes

Everything covered in the price

If this itinerary does not quite match what you had in mind, tell us your ideas and we will rebuild it around them.

Tour Map

Ouarzazate

Why Book This Tour

What makes it worth the time

A three-day trip that spends its time in the landscape instead of on the Tizi n'Tichka pass — the same Sahara, two fewer mountain hours each way.

Know Before You Go

Practical travel notes

• Pricing is per group rather than per person, so the cost per head falls as your party grows — tell us how many you are and we will quote.
• Every tour is private. The itinerary below is the shape of the trip, not a fixed timetable, and your driver will adapt it to how your day is going.
• Bring layers. Days are warm and desert nights are cold in every season, and mountain passes are colder again.
• Comfortable closed shoes matter more than anything else you pack, especially for the dunes and the gorges.
• Tell us at the time of booking about dietary needs, allergies, mobility limits or anything medical, so we can plan around it properly.
• Merzouga is about five hours from Ouarzazate each way; we break the drive so no single day is more than about four hours in the vehicle.