Is a sunrise or sunset camel trek better in the Sahara?

After more dawns and dusks on a camel than I could ever count, my honest verdict is that they're genuinely different experiences, not just the same ride at two ends of the day. The sunset trek is the one nearly everyone does, and for good reason. You set off in the late afternoon as the heat finally breaks, the dunes glow that impossible apricot-gold, your shadow stretches forty feet across the sand, and you arrive at camp as the first stars appear with a tagine waiting. It's the postcard, and the postcard is real. The downside is that it's also when every other camp sends its riders out, so on the big dune fields near Merzouga you'll see strings of camels in every direction.

Sunrise is the secret I push on travellers who'll listen. You're woken in the dark, it's properly cold — bring layers, people never believe me about desert cold until they're shivering — and you climb a dune or ride out as the eastern sky goes from grey to pink to molten orange. The light at dawn is, to my eye, even better than dusk: cleaner, sharper, the sand still cool and rippled with no footprints. And crucially, almost nobody else is out there. Most tourists are asleep. You get the Sahara to yourself in its quietest, most cinematic hour.

The practical reality is that if you do an overnight desert camp — which you absolutely should — you don't have to choose. You ride in at sunset, sleep under the stars, and ride out at sunrise, getting both. That's how I build nearly every desert trip, because the contrast between the two is part of the magic: the warm, social golden hour of the evening and the cold, solitary, almost spiritual stillness of the morning.

If you genuinely can only manage one — a flying overnight, a tight schedule — I'd steer most people to sunset for sheer atmosphere and the gentler logistics of riding out rested rather than rolling out of a cold bed. But the travellers who come back most moved are almost always the ones who dragged themselves up for the dawn ride. It asks more of you, and it gives more back.