What can I do in Morocco in 12 days?

Twelve days is essentially the full two-week Morocco experience with a couple of days trimmed — and that's a happy place to be. You can hold four distinct landscapes (imperial city, Sahara, blue mountains, Atlantic coast) and give each enough time to leave a mark, rather than ticking them. By now we're past the question of what fits; the question is how slowly you want to go.

My twelve-day spine: three nights in Marrakech (city, gardens, an Atlas day), then the southern drive with a gorge night and two nights at Merzouga — sunset camel ride, camp under the stars, and a morning to simply sit in the dunes. Cross north to Fes for two nights with a guide, then continue up to Chefchaouen for two nights in the cool blue Rif. That's the country's full vertical range in one clean line.

The last two or three days I'd point toward the coast or the capital, depending on your flights. Rabat makes an elegant, low-key finish — Andalusian gardens, the Udayas kasbah, oceanfront calm — and Casablanca's airport is close. If you'd rather end on something more bohemian, double back to Essaouira for sea air, ramparts and the best grilled fish of the trip. Either ending lets the journey decompress instead of sprinting to the gate.

What I'd resist, even at twelve days, is trying to add the far south (Agadir, the Anti-Atlas) or the deep northeast on top of all this. Morocco is bigger than people expect, and twelve days spread over five or six regions becomes a driving holiday. Four regions, properly inhabited, with two genuine rest days built in — that's the twelve-day trip people come home raving about.