What is the longest part of getting to Morocco from far away, and how do I beat jet lag?

Across all the long-haul markets I plan for — Japan, China, New Zealand, Singapore, the Americas — the pattern is the same: the punishing part isn't getting into Morocco, it's getting to the connecting hub. Because there are very few nonstops to Morocco from outside Europe and Africa, almost everyone connects once. That first leg to a Gulf city (Doha, Dubai, Abu Dhabi), Istanbul, or a European capital (Paris, Madrid, Lisbon) is the marathon — often 7 to 14 hours. The second hop, from that hub into Casablanca, is usually short and easy, frequently under four hours. So mentally, brace for the long leg and treat the Morocco connection as the home stretch.

The other half of 'longest' is the time zone. Morocco runs on GMT+1 for most of the year (briefly dropping to GMT during Ramadan), which means very different jet lag depending on where you start. From India it's only about four and a half hours and barely registers; from Brazil and South Africa it's tiny; but from Japan, China, Singapore and Mexico you're shifting seven to nine hours, and from New Zealand it's a brutal eleven or twelve. Knowing your specific shift up front is what lets me plan a realistic first couple of days rather than over-scheduling them.

My number-one jet-lag tactic is the deliberate stopover. For the farthest origins — New Zealand, East Asia — I'll build in a night or two at the connecting hub so a single savage journey becomes two civilised ones, and your body starts adjusting mid-trip instead of all at once on arrival. Where a straight-through flight makes more sense, I aim for an overnight long-haul leg so you sleep across it, and I time arrivals into Morocco for daytime so you get natural light, which is the most powerful reset there is.

On the ground, the simple habits do most of the work: hydrate hard and skip the in-flight alcohol, shift your sleep an hour or two toward Morocco time in the days before you fly, get outside into daylight as soon as you land, and resist the nap that turns into a five-hour coma. I always design a gentle first 24 to 48 hours — a calm riad with a courtyard, an unhurried dinner, maybe a hammam — before the busier desert and city days begin. And this is the real argument for a longer trip: over ten to fourteen days, a day or two of jet lag is a rounding error, whereas on a rushed week it eats a quarter of your holiday.