What is the Marrakech to the desert and back route like?

This is the route I drive more than any other, and it is the trip most people picture when they imagine Morocco. The honest framing: Marrakech to the big dunes at Merzouga is around 560 kilometres and roughly nine hours of pure driving, which is why I steer guests away from the punishing two-day version that some agencies sell and towards three days, where the journey becomes the holiday rather than a means to an end.

Day one is the great climb. We leave Marrakech and ascend the Tizi n'Tichka, the High Atlas pass that tops out above 2,200 metres — switchbacks, Berber villages clinging to the slopes, and viewpoints where everyone wants to stop. About four hours brings us to Ouarzazate, the film town, and just before it the fortified earthen city of Ait Ben Haddou, which I prefer to visit in the soft afternoon light. We often overnight near the Dades or Skoura.

Day two threads the oases. The Dades valley and gorge, the Todra Gorge with its sheer thousand-foot walls where you can walk the cool canyon floor, palm groves and rose-growing villages — then the long, hypnotic run east through Erfoud and Rissani out to the sand. We arrive at Merzouga in the late afternoon, swap the car for camels, and ride into Erg Chebbi for the night in camp. The silence and the stars out there are the reason people come.

The return on day three retraces the spine of the route but feels completely different in reverse light, and we usually break it differently — a longer stop at Ait Ben Haddou, lunch in Ouarzazate, or a detour to the Fint oasis. You roll back into Marrakech in the evening, dusty and happy. If you can spare a fourth day, sleeping a second night near the dunes turns a good trip into an unforgettable one.