Is a morning or afternoon desert departure better?

When clients ask me this, I almost always steer them to a morning start, and the reason is simple: the drive from Marrakech to the dunes is long, and you want to be doing it in daylight. An early departure — we usually leave between 7 and 8am — means you cross the Tizi n'Tichka pass with the light on the High Atlas, stop at Ait Ben Haddou before the midday coaches arrive, and still reach camp with time to settle in before sunset. The whole day becomes part of the experience rather than a race against the clock.

An afternoon departure has its place, but it's a narrower one. It works if you're only doing a fast Zagora overnight, or if you've spent the morning somewhere specific and genuinely can't leave earlier. The trade-off is that you compress the scenic drive into fewer daylight hours, you risk arriving at camp in the dark — which robs you of that first golden-hour walk on the dunes — and the mountain road is far less pleasant after sunset. I only recommend it when the rest of the plan forces it.

There's also a comfort angle people underestimate. A morning start lets you break the journey naturally: coffee in the Atlas, a proper lunch in the Dades or Draa valley, a stretch of the legs at a kasbah. Cram the same distance into an afternoon and the stops vanish, the driving feels relentless, and you arrive frazzled rather than ready to enjoy the camp. For families and anyone prone to car-sickness on the switchbacks, daylight driving with regular breaks makes a real difference.

The one honest exception is the traveller who hates very early alarms and is doing a two-night desert leg with a relaxed pace. In that case a mid-morning departure — say 9 or 10am — still gives you enough daylight buffer and a gentler start. But a true afternoon departure, leaving Marrakech after lunch and hoping to reach Merzouga the same night, is the one combination I'd talk almost anyone out of. Start in the morning, let the road be part of the trip, and you'll thank yourself when you walk onto the sand while the sun is still up.