What is the #1 thing to do in Morocco?

People always want one answer, and after years of designing these trips I give the same one: a night in the Sahara. Specifically, going out to Merzouga and the Erg Chebbi dunes, the tall golden ones in the southeast. The whole day builds to it — over the Atlas, past Ait Benhaddou, through Todra Gorge — and then you climb onto a camel and ride into the dunes as the sun drops and the sand turns from gold to rose to deep amber.

What makes it the number one is what happens after dark. The camps range from simple Berber tents to fully serviced luxury bivouacs with proper beds and ensuite bathrooms, but every one delivers the same magic: dinner under the open sky, drums and a fire, and then silence. I tell clients to walk fifty metres from camp, lie down on the sand, and just look up. With no light pollution for a hundred kilometres, the Milky Way is genuinely overwhelming.

Then comes the part nobody expects to love as much as they do — sunrise. You wake in the cold, climb a dune in the dark, and watch the first light spill across the ridgelines while the camp below stirs. Sandboarding down afterwards or simply having coffee as the desert warms up is the perfect close. It is the rare experience that lives up to every expectation and then exceeds it.

I am honest with people about the trade-off: getting to Merzouga from Marrakech is a long road, usually two days each way or a flight to Errachidia. But that effort is exactly why it feels earned. If you only do one thing in Morocco, do not let it be a city or a monument — do the desert. Everything else here is wonderful; the Sahara is unforgettable.