What is the landscape like driving to the Sahara?

The drive to the Sahara is, for many guests, as memorable as the desert itself — and I always tell people not to think of it as "getting there" but as a huge part of the experience. Morocco's landscapes transform dramatically over the journey, and because the dunes are a long way from the cities, you pass through several entirely different worlds in a single day or two. A private car and an unhurried schedule are what let you actually enjoy it rather than endure it.

From Marrakech, the classic route climbs straight into the High Atlas Mountains over the spectacular Tizi n'Tichka pass — a winding road up to around 2,260m, with hairpin bends, Berber villages clinging to the slopes, terraced fields, and often snow on the peaks in winter and spring. It's genuinely thrilling scenery (and a place to take motion-sickness tablets if you're prone). Cresting the pass and starting the long descent down the far side, the green of the mountains gives way to the dramatic, arid south.

Soon you reach the kasbah country around Ait Ben Haddou and Ouarzazate — that iconic landscape of red-earth fortified villages, film studios, and wide rocky plains framed by mountains. From here the route to the dunes follows river valleys and gorges: the date-palm ribbon of the Draa toward Zagora, or the Dades and Todra gorges and their oases toward Erfoud and Merzouga. These valley sections are lush green corridors of palms and kasbahs threading between bare desert hills — a constant, beautiful contrast.

As you push further southeast, the land grows starker and more elemental: flat-topped plateaus, black volcanic-looking hammada (stony desert), scrub plains dotted with the occasional camel or nomad tent, long straight roads shimmering toward the horizon. There's a stripped-back grandeur to it — vast skies, distant mountains, almost no green. Then, often quite suddenly, the golden sand mountains of the great ergs rise on the horizon: Erg Chebbi near Merzouga, or the wilder, more remote Erg Chigaga beyond M'hamid. That first sight of the dunes after hours of stone desert is a genuine catch-your-breath moment.

My honest advice: don't rush it, and don't try to do it in one brutal day if you can help it. Break the journey with stops — the Atlas pass, Ait Ben Haddou, a kasbah lunch, a gorge walk, an overnight in the Draa or Dades — so the landscape unfolds at a human pace. Done this way, the road to the Sahara is one of the world's great scenic drives, not just a transfer. Tell me your timeframe and I'll pace the route so the journey is part of the magic.