Is a desert tour from Fes or Marrakech better?

This is one of my favourite questions because the honest answer surprises people: from Fes the drive to Merzouga is genuinely shorter — around seven to eight hours versus roughly nine from Marrakech. So if pure driving time is your worry, Fes has the edge. The Fes route climbs through the Middle Atlas, passes the cedar forests near Azrou where you'll often spot Barbary macaques, and crosses the high plateau through Midelt before dropping into the Ziz Valley with its huge palm oasis. It's a calmer, greener drive.

The Marrakech route is longer but, in my view, the more cinematic of the two. You cross the High Atlas over the Tizi n'Tichka pass, stop at the UNESCO kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou, and thread through the Dades or Todra gorges with their towering red walls. There's simply more famous scenery packed into the Marrakech side. So it's a fair trade — Fes saves you a couple of hours, Marrakech gives you more landmark stops along the way.

After years of routing these trips, the thing I push hardest is this: don't pick one city and drive back the same way. The classic, and best, format is a one-way 3-day tour — start in Marrakech, sleep in the dunes, and finish in Fes (or the reverse). You see the High Atlas, Ait Ben Haddou, the gorges, the desert, then the cedar forests and Midelt, all without driving a single road twice. It turns the transfer between Morocco's two great cities into the trip itself.

If you're already based in Fes and short on time, a there-and-back tour from Fes is the quicker option and I'm happy to run it. But whenever a guest's plan allows, I steer them to the Marrakech-to-Fes one-way. It's not really 'which city is better' — it's that the desert sits between them, and the smartest itinerary uses it as the bridge.