5-Day Morocco Tour from Casablanca: Imperial Cities to the Sahara

Start the morning with a local guide inside Fes el Bali, the old medina and one of the largest car-free urban areas in the world. You'll walk narrow lanes past the Bou Inania Madrasa, the Al Quaraouiyine mosque and university complex, and the leather tanneries, where the smell and color are exactly as intense as the photos suggest.

After lunch, the drive turns south. Ifrane looks almost out of place in Morocco, with its sloped roofs and alpine-village feel, a legacy of French colonial planning. Nearby Azrou sits inside cedar forest where Barbary macaques often show up right along the roadside. The landscape keeps changing as you head toward Midelt, where you'll spend the night before the final push to the desert.

This is the day most people book the trip for. Leaving Midelt, the road climbs over the Atlas via the Tizi n'Talghomt pass, then drops into the Ziz Valley, a long ribbon of palm groves squeezed between rock walls. Erfoud and Rissani mark the last towns before the dunes.

At Merzouga, you'll trade the vehicle for a camel and ride out into Erg Chebbi as the light softens and the dunes turn deep orange. Dinner and the night are spent at a desert camp, with drumming around the fire a common feature and a wide-open sky overhead. This is the core of the Sahara desert experience that most short Morocco tours simply don't have time for.

Set an early alarm for sunrise over the dunes, then ride back to Merzouga for breakfast. The drive west passes through Todra Gorge, where cliffs rise more than 150 meters on either side of a narrow road, popular with rock climbers and worth a short walk even if you're not one.

Continuing through the Dades Valley, sometimes called the Valley of a Thousand Kasbahs, you'll pass old fortified villages built from rammed earth that blend almost perfectly into the surrounding hills. The day ends in or near Ouarzazate, Morocco's film-industry hub, home to several major studios.

Before leaving the region, stop at Ait Ben Haddou, a fortified ksar that has appeared in Gladiator, Game of Thrones, and a long list of other productions. Walking through it, with its layered clay towers, is one of the more memorable stops on the whole trip.

From there, cross the High Atlas via the Tizi n'Tichka pass toward Marrakech. Depending on your flight or onward plans, you can spend a few hours in the city before the final drive or train connection back to Casablanca, where the tour ends with drop-off at your hotel, riad, or the airport.