5-Day Morocco Tour from Casablanca to Marrakech (one-way via Sahara)

Today is on foot, with a licensed Fes medina guide who has grown up inside it. The medina is the largest car-free urban area on earth and one of the most intricate. You will not navigate it without help. You will get help.

The morning starts with the Bab Boujloud (the Blue Gate) and weaves through to the Bou Inania madrasa — fourteenth-century, still working, with carved cedar and zellij tile that takes time to read. From there to Al Quaraouiyine, founded in 859 AD by Fatima al-Fihri and the world's oldest continuously operating university and library. Non-Muslims cannot enter the prayer hall but we can see the courtyards.

By late morning you are at the Chouara tannery — the medieval leather-dyeing pits that have looked the way they look for nine hundred years. We hand you a sprig of mint to hold to your nose; you will need it. The view from the leather shop terraces above is the photograph everyone has seen.

Lunch is in a riad restaurant your guide knows. After lunch, the smaller workshops: the metalworkers of Place Seffarine, the woodturners, the henna market, the Attarine spice souk. The Royal Palace exterior in the late afternoon — the brass doors are a working postcard. We end at the rooftop of one of the riads or at a café terrace overlooking the medina, in time for sunset over Fes.

You spend a second night in your Fes riad. Breakfast is at the riad; lunch is at your guide's choice. Dinner is at your own choice — we recommend a couple of options nearby.

This is the long day. We tell you that honestly because the desert is genuinely far from Fes and there is no shortcut. We collect you at 7:30 AM (a little earlier in winter for daylight).

The first stop is Ifrane, twenty minutes off the Fes road — a strange, immaculate alpine town built by the French in the 1930s as a hill station, with stone-and-timber chalets and a famous stone lion sculpture. It is genuinely cooler here, often markedly so. A short stop, twenty to thirty minutes.

From Ifrane the road climbs into the cedar forest near Azrou — North Africa's largest cedar forest, with trees over 400 years old. Wild Barbary macaques live here, around 5,000 of them. We stop on a quiet road, not the bus-tour pull-in. Please do not feed them; we will explain why when we arrive.

Lunch is in Midelt, the apple capital of Morocco, sitting in the saddle between the Middle and High Atlas. The afternoon descent through the Tizi n'Talghamt pass and into the Ziz Valley is the visual highlight of Day 3 — a green river of date palm oasis cut into red sandstone cliffs, running for nearly fifty kilometres.

From there a long, mostly straight drive across the desert plain through Errachidia and Erfoud (the fossil town), and then the dunes appear on the horizon. We arrive at the edge of Erg Chebbi in the late afternoon and switch from the vehicle to the camel. The trek into the dunes takes about an hour. If you would rather not ride a camel, we drive you to camp by 4×4 — same camp, no negotiation needed. The sunset from the top of a dune is what it is. Bring your phone.

The camp is a permanent setup. Your private tent has an en-suite bathroom with a hot shower, a real bed with linens, and lighting. Dinner is around a communal table. After dinner there is Berber music around a fire, or you can walk fifteen metres into the dunes for the silence and the sky. The stars are extraordinary.

You spend the night in a private Berber tent with en-suite bathroom in the Erg Chebbi dunes. Breakfast at the Fes riad, lunch in Midelt, and dinner at the camp are included.

Sunrise over the dunes is the second reason people come. You can climb a dune for it, or stay in your tent doorway with coffee — both are valid. After breakfast at camp, you camel back to where the vehicle is waiting (or 4×4 if you took that yesterday).

The first stop is Rissani — an old Saharan trading town, the cradle of Morocco's Alaouite dynasty, and a working market town. The traditional souk runs Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday mornings; if your travel day falls on one of those, we time the visit for the market. From Rissani we head back through Erfoud (with an optional fifteen-minute fossil workshop stop) and west through the palm groves of Tinjdad and Touroug.

Lunch is in Tinghir or in the Todgha Gorge area. The afternoon is the Todgha Gorge — limestone walls rising 300 metres above a stream. We walk the floor of the gorge for thirty to forty minutes; you set the pace. There is a tea stop at a Berber-run café in the gorge if you want one.

By late afternoon we arrive at your riad in the Dades Valley. The riad sits in the valley with a terrace that catches the last light on the canyon walls.

You spend the night in a traditional riad in the Dades Valley with an en-suite room. Breakfast at the camp, lunch en route, and dinner at the riad are included.

This is the visual day. Most travellers tell us afterwards that Day 5 was their favourite — the variety, the iconic Aït Benhaddou shot, and the climb over the Atlas into Marrakech all in one day.

After breakfast we leave Dades and drive the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs west. The first stop is the Skoura palmeraie, where the seventeenth-century Amridil Kasbah still stands — it is the kasbah on the back of the 50-dirham banknote, if you want a reference. We cross the Valley of Roses at Kalaat M'Gouna, which produces most of Morocco's rose water (in season, late April and early May, the air smells of it).

By late morning we reach Ouarzazate, sometimes called the Hollywood of Morocco for the film studios that have made everything from Lawrence of Arabia to Game of Thrones here. A stop at the Taourirt Kasbah on the edge of town is included; the Atlas Studios visit is optional and we will tell you honestly whether to bother.

Lunch is in Ouarzazate or shortly past. The afternoon highlight is Aït Benhaddou — the UNESCO-listed earth-and-clay kasbah you will recognise from Gladiator, Game of Thrones, Lawrence of Arabia, The Mummy, and a dozen other films. We cross the riverbed (or take the bridge in winter) and walk up through the village. If you want a local guide for the kasbah itself, we arrange one for €3 per person. The view from the top — back across the village to the High Atlas behind — is one of the iconic photographs of Morocco.

From Aït Benhaddou we climb the Tizi n'Tichka pass at 2,260 metres, the highest road crossing in North Africa. The descent into Marrakech in the late afternoon takes you past Berber villages clinging to mountainsides.

We drop you at your Marrakech hotel or riad in the evening, around 5:00 to 7:00 PM. Or if you have a flight out tonight, we drop you direct to the airport.

Breakfast at the Dades riad is included. Lunch and dinner on Day 5 are at your own expense.