Is Morocco good for repeat visitors? What do I do the second time?

Repeat visitors are a joy because the pressure's off — you've done the headline circuit and now you can travel for depth instead of checklist. The first trip almost always follows the golden triangle: Marrakech, Fes, and a desert overnight near Merzouga, maybe with Aït Benhaddou and the Atlas pass in between. It's the right first trip. But it's perhaps a fifth of the country, so there's an enormous, less-trodden Morocco waiting for round two.

My favourite 'second Morocco' is the Atlantic coast, which most first-timers skip entirely. Windswept Essaouira with its fortress walls and grilled-sardine port; the surf-and-yoga belt of Taghazout and Tamraght further south; the wild, empty beaches between. The light, the seafood and the relaxed coastal dress code make it feel like a different country from the inland medinas. Pair it with the Souss valley and the Anti-Atlas — argan groves, Berber market towns, the painted village of Tafraout amid pink granite — and you've got a trip almost no first-timer ever sees.

The north is the other big reveal. Chefchaouen's blue lanes get the Instagram fame, but the wider Rif, the Roman ruins at Volubilis, the holy town of Moulay Idriss, and Spanish-flavoured Tangier and Tetouan make a rich northern loop with a completely different character — more Andalusian, greener, cooler. And for desert obsessives, there's life beyond Merzouga: the Erg Chigaga dunes near M'hamid are wilder and emptier (a proper 4x4 expedition), and the Drâa Valley palm oases reward slow exploring.

But the advice I give most returning guests is counterintuitive: go slower, not further. Instead of touring, pick one region and live in it — a week in the Atlas walking valley to valley and sleeping in village guesthouses, or a fortnight just being a temporary local in Essaouira or Fes. The first trip is about seeing Morocco; the second is your chance to actually feel it. I'll happily build either — a deep-cut explorer's loop or a single-region slow stay — depending on which itch the first trip left unscratched.