What is it like to drive through the Atlas Mountains?

The drive that most people mean is the Tizi n'Tichka, the high pass that climbs the High Atlas south of Marrakech on the way to the desert, and it announces itself fast. Within an hour of the flat red plain the road starts to twist and rear up, and you're into a relentless series of hairpin switchbacks, the engine working, the car leaning into each bend. Out the window the land falls away into enormous V-shaped valleys, and clinging to the far slopes are these earth-coloured Berber villages that seem to grow out of the rock, flat-roofed houses stacked above terraces of green that look impossibly precarious.

It is genuinely beautiful and genuinely a little nerve-racking, and I won't pretend otherwise. The drop-offs are sheer and the guardrails are often absent or symbolic, the road is shared with overloaded trucks grinding up in low gear and the occasional flock of goats, and Moroccan overtaking on blind mountain bends is a sport not for the faint of heart. The weather shifts too — you can leave Marrakech in heat and find cloud and even snow at the top of the pass (around 2,260 metres), the temperature dropping as your ears pop. If you're prone to carsickness, the constant winding will find you; sit in the front and take something before you start.

What makes it special is everything you stop for along the way. There are roadside viewpoints where you pull over and just stare back down the valley you've climbed. There are stalls selling fossils, amethyst geodes, and bottles of saffron and argan, and little cafés perched on the edge where you have a mint tea with a thousand-foot view. The road famously passes near Aït Benhaddou, the honey-coloured fortified kasbah that's been in a dozen films, and the whole route is the so-called 'road of a thousand kasbahs.' The driving is the experience, not just the means to it.

My honest, practical steer: this is the one stretch where I really earn my keep arranging a good local driver. Doing it yourself is possible if you're a confident mountain driver and unbothered by exposure, but most clients are far happier in the back of a comfortable 4x4 with someone who knows every bend, drives it weekly, and can pull over for the photos while you actually look out the window instead of gripping the wheel. Either way, build in time — it's slow, you'll want to stop, and rushing the Atlas is a waste of one of the great drives anywhere.