How do I get from Marrakech to the Sahara desert (Merzouga)?

I get asked this more than any other route, and the honest answer is: Merzouga is not a day trip. It is about 560 km from Marrakech, and the road climbs over the High Atlas before dropping into the pre-Sahara, so the drive runs 8 to 9 hours of actual moving time. I always plan it as a two-day journey, because trying to do it in one sitting means you arrive exhausted and miss everything worth stopping for.

Day one is the High Atlas. We leave Marrakech early and climb the Tizi n’Tichka pass — a winding mountain road that tops out around 2,260 m, all switchbacks and Berber villages clinging to the slopes. I stop at Ait Ben Haddou, the mud-brick ksar you have seen in a dozen films, then push on to Ouarzazate and overnight near the Dades or Todra gorges, where red canyon walls rise straight out of the riverbed.

Day two runs east through the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs and the palm groves of Tinghir, then out across increasingly empty desert to Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi dunes. We time it so you reach the camp in the golden hour, climb onto a camel, and ride out as the dunes turn copper. That arrival is the whole reason you do the long drive instead of flying somewhere flatter.

Could you do it faster? A private vehicle is the only sensible way — there are no trains east of the Atlas, and public buses to the desert turn a scenic crossing into a 12-hour ordeal. Some travellers fly Marrakech to Errachidia and drive the last stretch, but you sacrifice the Tizi n’Tichka and the kasbah valleys, which to me are half the trip. Give it three days and you arrive having actually seen Morocco, not just endured it.