What is the Ziz Valley like?

The Ziz Valley is the kind of landscape that makes a transfer day unforgettable. Driving south from Midelt over the Tizi n'Talghemt pass, you cross a bleak, high, stony plateau — and then, almost without warning, the road reaches a viewpoint where the earth splits open into a deep canyon stuffed with date palms. That is the Ziz panorama, and below it the river threads a continuous green oasis between sheer cliffs of red and ochre rock. After the emptiness of the plateau, the sudden lushness is genuinely breathtaking, and I always make sure clients are awake for it.

The valley follows the Oued Ziz all the way down toward the Tafilalet and the dunes, and for kilometre after kilometre the gorge is carpeted with palmeries and dotted with old mud-brick ksour — fortified villages the colour of the surrounding stone, some inhabited, some slowly melting away. There are tunnels blasted through the rock, the Hassan Addakhil dam and its reservoir near Errachidia, and countless places to pull over and walk a few minutes into the palm grove, where the temperature drops and the irrigation channels gurgle between the trees.

The everyday rhythm of the valley is oasis agriculture: dates above all, plus alfalfa, vegetables and fruit grown in the shade of the palms, tended in small terraced plots. In autumn the date harvest is in full swing, and roadside stalls sell the sticky fruit by the kilo. The light through the fronds in late afternoon, the river glinting, the cliffs glowing — it is one of the most photogenic stretches in the whole south, and far less famous than it deserves to be.

For most travellers the Ziz is experienced as the beautiful approach to Erfoud, Rissani and the Erg Chebbi dunes rather than a destination to stay in, and that is exactly right — it turns the long Fes-or-Midelt-to-Merzouga drive into a highlight rather than a slog. My advice is simply not to rush it: stop at the panorama, walk into a palmery, and treat the journey as part of the desert experience, because the Ziz is the green doorway through which the Sahara announces itself.