The dunes at the edge of the road

The word "desert" suggests a single kind of landscape, and the drive south from Marrakech spends several days proving that wrong. The road first climbs over the Tizi n'Tichka pass through the High Atlas, itself a serious piece of mountain scenery, before dropping into the pre-Saharan valleys: Ouarzazate's dry plateau, the palm groves and kasbahs strung along the Draa and Dades valleys, and the stark rock gorges of Todra and Dades themselves, cut deep enough that the sun only reaches the valley floor for part of the day. Only after all of that does the landscape finally give way to true sand, at Erg Chebbi near the village of Merzouga, where dunes rise to around 150 metres, tall enough to cast genuine shade and steep enough to be a serious climb on foot.

What the dunes are actually made of

Erg Chebbi is one of Morocco's two main dune fields, a relatively small, concentrated pocket of true sand sea within a much larger expanse of rocky and gravel desert, or hamada, that makes up most of the Sahara's northern edge. The sand's distinctive orange-red colour comes from iron oxide coating the individual grains, and it shifts constantly with the wind, which means the shape of any given dune on a given day is, in a very literal sense, temporary. Nights here drop sharply once the sun goes down, a detail that catches out visitors who have spent the day sweating through a warm afternoon and assume the evening will be much the same.

The camps, and the caravan trade they echo

Overnight stays at desert camps near the dunes, reached by camel or four-wheel-drive, are now a well-established part of most Sahara itineraries, and they draw, whether deliberately or not, on a much older tradition: this stretch of desert sat on trans-Saharan caravan routes that for centuries carried gold, salt and other goods, along with, in a history worth naming plainly rather than skirting, enslaved people, between West Africa and the Mediterranean coast. Modern camel treks are a considerably gentler undertaking than a historic caravan crossing, but the animals, the pace and much of the landscape itself have not changed nearly as much as everything else around them.

A slower way to cover the same ground

For travellers who would rather cover this stretch of Morocco under their own power for at least part of the way, a dedicated cycling route follows much of the same corridor from the Atlas down to the dunes, trading the coach window for a saddle and a considerably closer relationship with the changing terrain, gravel plain, gorge, palm oasis, sand, in between.

It is worth saying plainly that the drive itself, not simply the dunes at the end of it, is a substantial part of what any version of this route offers. The Tizi n'Tichka pass alone climbs to over 2,200 metres, switchbacking past roadside stalls selling Atlas mountain quartz and amethyst, and the valleys beyond it change character every hour or two: fortified kasbahs at Skoura, the dramatic narrow walls of the Todra Gorge, palm oases threaded along riverbeds that only run properly after rain. A traveller who treated Merzouga as the sole destination and slept through the rest would be missing most of the point.

A landscape families take on together

Several itineraries that reach Merzouga are built with younger travellers in mind as much as adults, pairing the desert nights with the more active stretches of the route, walking sections of the Atlas passes, a night in a kasbah rather than a hotel, that tend to hold a child's attention better than a long day in the car. The dunes themselves do a good deal of the persuading on their own: a landscape this different from home rarely needs much extra selling to a young audience.

When to go

The desert's daytime heat makes summer largely unworkable for this route; by July and August, midday temperatures at Merzouga regularly climb into the forties, uncomfortable even for a short camel ride. Spring and autumn bring warm, manageable days and cool, clear nights, good for stargazing once the camp's lights are out, while winter days are pleasant enough but nights can fall close to freezing on the open sand.