What are the best day trips from Ouarzazate?

Ouarzazate is the gateway to the Sahara, but it’s also a superb base in its own right, ringed by kasbahs and oases. The unmissable trip is Ait Benhaddou, a 30-minute drive northwest. This fortified mud-brick ksar rising out of the riverbed is the most famous in Morocco for a reason — it’s UNESCO-listed and has stood in for Jerusalem, Egypt, and Game of Thrones’ Yunkai. Go early or late to dodge the tour buses, cross the river, and climb to the agadir granary at the top for the view back down. A handful of families still live inside.

Heading the other way, east toward the Dades, the Skoura oasis is about 40 minutes along the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs. The star here is Kasbah Amerhidil, one of the largest and best-preserved earthen kasbahs in the country, set among a dense palmeraie laced with irrigation channels. You can walk the palm grove on foot or bike, and a couple of the kasbahs have been turned into lovely lunch stops. It’s a gentler, greener counterpoint to the desert.

My personal favourite is the Fint oasis, about 40 minutes south on a rougher road. It’s a hidden ribbon of green in an otherwise lunar, black-rock landscape — a few Berber villages, a small river you sometimes ford by car, and almost no other tourists. Have lunch with a local family, walk between the hamlets, and you’ll understand why so many films use this valley. It feels like the edge of the world.

In Ouarzazate itself, the Atlas and CLA film studios are worth a couple of hours if you’re a cinema fan — you’ll wander past sets from Gladiator, Kingdom of Heaven and countless others, though it’s admittedly touristy. Most people combine Ait Benhaddou and Fint, or Skoura, into single days. If you’re continuing toward Merzouga, you can knock off Skoura and the Dades on the way rather than backtracking.