How do I avoid over-packing my Morocco itinerary?

Over-packing is the disease of enthusiastic planners, and I say that with affection because I was one. The fix starts with a simple discipline: count your overnight bases, not your sights. A good rule of thumb for a relaxed Morocco trip is no more than one new base every two nights, and ideally some bases get three. Every time you change hotel you lose a half-day to packing, checking out, driving and checking in — string too many together and the trip becomes logistics with scenery in the gaps.

The second discipline is to be ruthlessly honest about driving hours. Write your route as a list of drive times, not place names, and total them. When people see "Marrakech to Fes via the desert" they imagine a line on a map; when they see "roughly 18–20 hours of driving spread over the days" they suddenly understand why they were exhausted. If the drive total is creeping past three or four hours on most days, your itinerary is too ambitious and something has to go.

Then comes the genuinely hard part: cutting. The phrase to be suspicious of is "while we are nearby, we should also…" — that instinct is exactly how a clean itinerary bloats into an exhausting one. Chefchaouen is lovely, but if it adds two long driving days to a one-week trip, it may not earn its place this time. I tell guests to make a "next time" list and move the marginal stops onto it without guilt. Morocco will still be here for a second visit, and most people do return.

Finally, build in deliberate emptiness. Leave at least one unscheduled day, and resist filling every morning. The best Morocco memories — a long lunch that turned into an afternoon, a souk you got pleasantly lost in, a sunset you stayed for — happen in the gaps, not the bookings. My honest test for any draft itinerary: if reading it makes me tired, it will exhaust the traveller. Pare it back until it reads like a holiday, and confirm drive times before committing.