The 11 Days Desert Tour from Casablanca is for travellers who want the standard circuit without the standard compromises. Chefchaouen gets a free day instead of an overnight. The Sahara gets two nights and a full day. And the return from Merzouga follows the Draa Valley through Nkob and Agdz, a road most itineraries never touch.
The Draa is the longest oasis in Morocco, a thin green line of date palms and mud-brick ksour cut into otherwise bare country along the southern flank of the Jbel Saghro. It is a completely different landscape from the Todra and Dades gorges to the north.
The trip closes on the Atlantic at Essaouira, with a free day for the harbour, the ramparts and the beach, before the coast road north to Casablanca.
Pickup at Casablanca airport, port or hotel. The Hassan II Mosque comes first if your arrival time allows.
North to Rabat for the Kasbah of the Udayas above the river mouth, the Hassan Tower and the mausoleum of Mohammed V.
Then into the Rif to Chefchaouen, arriving in time for the walk up to the Spanish mosque and the view over the blue town at sunset.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Chefchaouen
A full day with no driving. The medina is compact, steep and painted in lime blue, and the best way to see it is without a plan.
The small kasbah in the main square has a garden and a tower with a view. Above the town, the Ras el Maa spring is where the local women still wash clothes, and the path continues into the hills.
With a full day you can also drive out to the Akchour waterfalls or the God Bridge, a natural rock arch about an hour away, which makes a good half-day walk.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Chefchaouen
Down out of the Rif to Volubilis, the Roman provincial capital, where mosaic floors, the basilica and the triumphal arch stand in farmland below Moulay Idriss.
A stop in Meknes for the Bab Mansour gate, the walls and the royal granaries built to feed twelve thousand horses.
Arrival in Fes in the late afternoon, with the evening free in the new town or the medina.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Fes
A full day inside Fes el Bali, the ninth-century medina with no cars and around nine thousand lanes.
You see the Bou Inania and Attarine madrasas, the Nejjarine fountain and woodwork museum, the Al Quaraouiyine mosque and library, and the Chouara tanneries.
A licensed guide is recommended. The afternoon is free for the souks, the potters quarter or the Merenid tombs at sunset.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Fes
South over the Middle Atlas through Ifrane and the Azrou cedar forest, where Barbary macaques gather by the road.
Lunch at Midelt, then down into the Ziz Valley with its palm groves and gorge viewpoint.
Arrival at Merzouga in the late afternoon, then the camel ride into Erg Chebbi to reach camp at sunset, with dinner and drums under the tent.
Accommodation: Berber desert camp, Erg Chebbi
Sunrise from the dunes, camel ride back, breakfast and a shower.
The day is a 4×4 circuit: tea with a nomad family, the seasonal lake at Dayet Srji, the black volcanic desert, and the abandoned kohl mines at Mfis.
Late afternoon at Khamlia for Gnaoua music, then a second sunset at the erg before dinner.
Accommodation: Hotel or kasbah in Merzouga
West by the southern road, which almost no group tours use. First Rissani and its covered market, then Alnif, a small town at the foot of the Jbel Saghro known among fossil hunters for trilobites.
The road skirts the Saghro massif, bare volcanic country with almost no settlement, before dropping into Nkob, a village with more than forty kasbahs above a large palm grove.
You continue into the Draa Valley and follow the river through oases and fortified villages to your overnight stop near Agdz.
Accommodation: Kasbah or guesthouse in the Draa Valley
A morning walk into a palm grove or a visit to one of the old ksour along the Draa before the drive north over the Tizi n Tinififft pass.
Ouarzazate for lunch, with the Taourirt Kasbah and the film studios, then Ait Ben Haddou, where you cross the riverbed and climb through the ksar to the granary at the top.
Over the High Atlas by the Tizi n Tichka and down into Marrakech in the evening.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Marrakech
A guided morning in Marrakech: the Koutoubia minaret, the Saadian tombs, the Bahia Palace and the Ben Youssef Madrasa, with time in the souks.
After lunch the road runs west into argan country, where cooperatives press the oil by hand and the trees grow nowhere else.
Arrival in Essaouira in the late afternoon.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Essaouira
A free day in the old port. The medina is walled, flat and easy, the harbour is full of blue boats and gulls, and the Skala ramparts look out to the Purpuraires islands.
The beach runs for miles south of town, and the wind that makes Essaouira a kitesurfing centre also keeps it cool in summer.
Camel rides on the sand, boat trips and cooking classes can be arranged locally.
Accommodation: Riad or hotel in Essaouira
The coast road north, with a stop at Oualidia and its lagoon, known for oysters, and at El Jadida, where the Portuguese cistern under the old town is one of the strangest interiors in Morocco.
Arrival in Casablanca in the afternoon, with time for the Hassan II Mosque or the Corniche.
Drop-off at the airport, at the port or at your hotel.
Because eleven days is long enough to see both kinds of southern landscape, and the Draa is the one most itineraries skip. If you would rather have Todra and the Dades, we can swap the routing at no extra cost.
Yes, unless you ask for the swap. The twelve and fourteen day tours include both roads.
The medina itself takes a morning. The Akchour waterfalls and the God Bridge are about an hour away and make a good half-day walk. Transport there is easy to arrange locally.
Morocco runs from the Mediterranean to the Sahara and is larger than it looks on a map. Eleven days is comfortable rather than generous.
Breakfast daily, plus dinner at the desert camp, in Merzouga and in the Draa Valley, where restaurants outside the guesthouses are scarce.
Yes. Starting with the Atlantic and finishing in the north works equally well and sometimes suits flight schedules better.
Eleven days buys the two things travellers most often say they wished they had: a free day in Chefchaouen and a second night in the desert. It also swaps the busy gorge road for the Draa, which is quieter and, for many people, more memorable.
The whole tour is private and runs as a loop from Casablanca, so one return flight covers it.
