What can you do in Merzouga in two days?

Merzouga is the gateway to Erg Chebbi, Morocco's most spectacular sea of dunes — peaks rising 150 metres in waves of rose and gold — and two days is exactly what I recommend to do it justice rather than rushing in and out. Day one is usually an arrival day, since Merzouga is a long drive from Fes or Marrakech. In the late afternoon, when the heat softens, you mount a camel and ride out in caravan into the dunes as the sun drops. The light show over the Sahara at dusk is one of the great sights of my life's work, and I never tire of watching first-timers go quiet at it. You spend the night at a desert camp — these range from simple Berber tents to genuinely luxurious 'glamping' suites with proper beds and bathrooms — with a fireside dinner, Gnaoua drumming, and a canopy of stars with no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres.

Wake early on day two: sunrise over Erg Chebbi, with the cool sand and the long shadows, is even more beautiful than sunset and far less rushed. Climb the nearest high dune in the dark to watch it if you can. After breakfast at camp and the camel ride back, the second day opens up by 4x4, and this is the part day-trippers never see.

I send people to Khamlia, a village of descendants of sub-Saharan enslaved people who keep the hypnotic Gnaoua music tradition alive — sitting on cushions while they play for you, with a glass of tea, is deeply moving. From there you can visit a still-living nomad family in their tent (arranged respectfully, not as a zoo), see the seasonal Dayet Srji lake where flamingos gather, hunt for the marine fossils that prove this desert was once an ocean floor, and try sandboarding down the dunes.

Two days and one night is the minimum I'll build for Erg Chebbi, and it's also the sweet spot — long enough for sunset, a night under the stars, sunrise, and a proper exploration of the desert's human life, but not so long that the remoteness wears on you. It's the experience most travellers tell me, months later, was the highlight of their entire Morocco trip.