What is Dakhla (kitesurf lagoon)?

Dakhla is a destination unto itself, and I only send people who specifically want it — but for them it's extraordinary. It sits on a long thin peninsula about 1,500 kilometres south of Casablanca, deep in the Sahara where the desert meets the Atlantic, and it has become one of the three or four best kitesurfing spots on the planet. The reason is a near-perfect combination: a huge, shallow, flat lagoon sheltered from the open-ocean swell by the peninsula, plus thermal trade winds that blow steady and strong for the great majority of the year.

That flat, waist-deep, warm-ish water is what makes Dakhla magic for kiters. Beginners can stand up across vast areas and learn safely; freestyle riders get glassy flat water to throw tricks; and there are wave spots on the ocean side for the advanced. A cluster of dedicated kite camps and lodges along the lagoon handles everything — gear, lessons, accommodation — because there's essentially no other tourism infrastructure out there. People come for a week or two and do little but kite, eat and sleep.

It is genuinely remote, and that's part of the honest picture. You fly in (there are flights from Casablanca and Agadir) rather than drive — the road south is enormous. There's no medina, no souk culture, no classic sightseeing; the draws are the wind, the lagoon, the stark desert-and-sea landscape, the famous oysters and seafood, and excursions to the white dune that rises straight from the lagoon and the migratory flamingos. It feels more like an outpost than a town.

So Dakhla is not a 'Morocco beach holiday' in the normal sense and I never sell it as one. It's a specialist wind-sports and adventure trip for people who either kitesurf or want to learn intensively in ideal conditions. If that's you, it's world-class; if you want medinas and culture with your coast, Essaouira or the Mediterranean north is the better fit.