Is Erg Chigaga worth the extra effort over Erg Chebbi?

This is the connoisseur's question, and I love it. Both are true Saharan ergs — vast seas of dunes — but they offer genuinely different experiences and I match guests to one or the other carefully. Erg Chebbi, beside Merzouga, is the famous one: tall, sculpted dunes you can drive right up to, dozens of camps from basic to extraordinary, and a smooth, well-developed route in. It is iconic for good reason and it is the easier, more comfortable choice.

Erg Chigaga is the wild sibling. It sits far deeper into the desert beyond M'hamid, and there is no paved road — the last stretch is an hour-plus of 4x4 driving across open piste, navigating by landmark and instinct. That effort is precisely the point. Chigaga sees a fraction of the visitors, the camps are more spread out and remote, and the sense of genuine isolation is something Chebbi, for all its beauty, cannot quite match anymore. When I stand at Chigaga at dusk, there is often not another soul or light in sight in any direction.

The honest trade-offs are real. Getting to Chigaga is longer, bumpier, and more tiring; the camps tend to be a notch less developed (though excellent luxury options do exist); and the whole thing demands more time and a higher tolerance for rough travel. Chebbi gives you the same staggering dunes with hot showers an hour from a town, which for many travellers — especially first-timers and families — is exactly the right balance.

My candid recommendation: if this is your first Sahara trip, or comfort and convenience rank high, go to Erg Chebbi via Merzouga and you will not feel short-changed. But if you have done a desert before, you actively want remoteness, and the idea of an off-road journey into emptiness excites rather than worries you, Erg Chigaga via M'hamid is absolutely worth the extra effort — it is the closest most travellers get to the deep, untouched Sahara.