Marrakech to Merzouga: the 560 km road, stage by stage

The first day is the one that surprises people. You leave a city at 470 m and within two hours you are on a switchback climbing towards 2,260 m, with the High Atlas closing in on both sides. In winter there is snow on the tops. The road over the Tizi n’Tichka is the reason the whole journey takes as long as it does, and it is also the part passengers remember without being told to.

Ait Ben Haddou. On the far side of the pass the landscape turns red and dry, and the first real stop appears above the Ounila river: a fortified village of packed earth, listed by UNESCO, used as a filming location often enough that one operator description mentions Gladiator and Game of Thrones by name. Nineteen of the twenty listings on this site name it. It is the single most photographed point on the Marrakech to Merzouga drive, and it is worth the walk up rather than the photograph from the car park.

Ouarzazate. Half an hour further on sits the town the descriptions call the gateway to the desert, and one of them calls the Hollywood of Africa. The film studios are here, along with the Kasbah Taourirt that $80 names in its highlights. For most listings this is a stretch-your-legs stop rather than a visit, because the day still has hours to run.

Where day one ends. The descriptions do not publish hotel names and neither does this page. What they do say is the shape: a night somewhere between Ouarzazate and the gorges, so that day two starts close to the good scenery. $102 names premium rooms for that night, and $94 offers flexible pickup and drop-off in Marrakech, Ouarzazate or Fes, which tells you something about how far along the road that first stop sits.

Day two is the good one. The driving is shorter, the stops are longer, and the landscape changes three times before the sand.

The Dades valley. Red walls, a river on the floor, and a set of switchbacks that every description mentions and no photograph flatters. $256 adds the rock formations known as Monkey Fingers and the Rose Valley to this section, which is part of what the highest fare on the site is buying.

The Todra gorge. Spelled Todgha in some listings and Toudra in others, this is the narrow one: a canyon you walk into beside the water, with walls closing overhead. It is the only stop on the whole Marrakech to Merzouga run that cannot be done from a seat, and it is the one people rank highest after the dunes themselves.

Tinghir. Below the gorge the palm oasis runs for kilometres along the valley floor. $99 names a guided visit to it, as does $63. After the gorge it reads as relief: water, shade and crops between two very dry halves of the day.

Erfoud, Rissani and the end of the tarmac. The last towns before the sand are working places rather than sights, and $188 names Erfoud in its highlights on the way through. Past them the road runs out. The camps at Erg Chebbi sit behind the first ridge of dunes, and no ordinary car goes there: the last stretch is done on a camel or in the operator’s four-wheel-drive. That is the hour that turns a long drive into a desert night.

What day three is. On sixteen of the twenty listings, day three is the same road in reverse, and nobody enjoys it as much the second time. On three listings it is not: $100, $102 and $145 carry on north instead, through the Ziz valley, the cedar forest and Ifrane, and finish in Fes. $188 runs the whole thing backwards, starting in Fes and ending in the city this route is named for.

For the version most travellers have taken, book $137. Three days, 4.9 across 22,054 reviews, and every stage above in the order above.

For the lowest fare on the same road, book $63. 4.9 across 157 reviews, with the pass, the kasbah and the gorges all named.

For less road per day, book $190. Four days, two nights in the sand, 4.8 across 139.

To skip the return drive, book $100. It ends in Fes at 4.9 across 164 reviews, which is the single largest saving of time available here.

For a private tent at the far end, book $80. 4.7 across 2,411 reviews, and a large sample for this fare.

To run the route in reverse, book $188. It starts in Fes, crosses the desert and finishes here, at 4.7 across 140.

Put plainly: the Marrakech to Merzouga journey is a pass, a kasbah, two gorges, an oasis and a ridge of sand, in that order, for every fare in the table. The listings differ in how many days they give you, where you sleep and whether you drive the same road twice.