The Desert
~Journey to the Sahara~
On our last day in Fes, we arranged through the desert tour company we hired, Top Desert Tours, for a driver to pick us up from our Airbnb and shepherd us on the eight-hour journey to our desert camp.
Choosing a Desert Tour
There are a number of desert tour companies to choose from in both the Erg Chebbi and Erg Chigaga dunes. The Erg Chebbi dunes are in the southeastern corner of Morocco near the Algerian border, and are the orange, sandy type of dune you typically associate with the Sahara desert. The Erg Chigaga dunes, on the other hand, are in southern Morocco near the town of Zagora, and are stonier and grey. Check out this chart over here
for a more comprehensive comparison of the dunes. We chose the Erg Chebbi dunes, but I also found some top-notch camps in Erg Chigaga and plan to visit eventually.
If you're not sure where to begin your search for desert camps, this is the one we ultimately chose, though we also considered this one and this one. The one we went with ended up being the most expensive of the three, but this was the most highly anticipated part of the trip, so we allowed ourselves to splurge. We also found this highly-rated desert airbnb which would be much more affordable, though you'd be responsible for arranging your own transportation to and from the camp.
Erg Chigaga
Erg Chebbi
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Southern Morocco
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Southeastern Morocco
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Closest town: Zagora
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Closest town: Merzouga
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Closer to Marrakesh
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Closer to Fes
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Orange, sandy (more what you imagine the Sahara to look like)
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Grey, stony (like the moon)
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More popular and expensive
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Less crowded, more affordable
Arrival
If you have the means, I'd highly recommend picking a desert tour company that offers private transportation to/from Fes and Marrakesh. Not only is the drive long (over eight hours) and through stretches of rural, sparsely populated territory, but there are also a number of police checkpoints along the way at which you need to present documents including vehicle registration and passports. Even with a private guide who spoke Arabic (few officers spoke very good English) we were stopped at least three times. Not to mention, there are a number of places worth visiting along the way and having a guide ensures you won't miss out. Our guide, Jamal, was very attentive and stayed with us for the entire duration of the tour, bringing us to a number of cool spots along the way. Most notably, we stopped in Azrou on the way to Merzouga to feed the mischievous Barbary Macaque monkeys.
Sleeping in the Desert
Something I wish I had known ahead of time...
Everywhere I read online said the Sahara Desert gets cold overnight, and recommended bringing some warmer clothes to wear to sleep in the tent. Accordingly, I packed a single heavy sweatshirt specifically for this occasion.
You can imagine my dismay, then, when it was over 90 degrees in our tent, the heat exacerbated by stagnant air. I WhatApp messaged Jamal less than five minutes after getting into bed and asked if there were any fans available. There were not, but he offered to set up a mattress outside for me, as he and the camp staff also sleep outside in the summer months. As with all other aspects of service in the camp, they surpassed my expectations and laid out a hotel-standard bedspread atop a beautiful rug just outside our tent. The constant breeze of the desert after dark kept me cool and lulled me easily to sleep.
Keep that in mind when booking your desert tour, as you may not end up sleeping in your tent. Not to worry, though — there are few better places on Earth in which to sleep under the stars.
Top: The interior of our tent, which I quickly abandoned for...
After arriving to the camp around 7:30pm, we were welcomed by the camp attendant (whose name I apparently did not write down) with mint tea, orange juice, and an assortment of Moroccan cookies. In part because our tour was so shortly after Morocco reopened following the pandemic, we were actually the only guests at the camp the first night. While it was quieter than we would have preferred, we also got to indulge ourselves in the luxurious multi-course meal that was prepared, which included vegetable soup, Moroccan salad, stuffed peppers, spaghetti, sliders, and cinnamon oranges for dessert. Exhausted from the day's travel (and because the sun had set before dinner), we turned in early, excited for the day ahead.
Left: The accommodation arranged by the camp staff after I discovered the sweltering heat of our tent. Taken at sunrise.
~ A Day in the desert ~
Our one full day in the desert may have been my favorite day of the entire summer.
5:45am — Sunrise
Since I was sleeping outside, I woke up naturally as it gradually grew lighter, and decided to climb to the top of a large dune nearby to watch the sunrise. Although the sun was hidden behind a haze of clouds, it was still a beautiful spectacle, and the silence of the desert was refreshing. Shivering from the cool wind atop the dune, I retreated to our tent and went back to sleep.
9:00am — Breakfast
Still the only guests at the camp, we walked to the communal dining tent for breakfast, which consisted of omelettes, a variety of breads and jams, pound cake, orange juice, and coffee.
10:00am — Sandboarding
We borrowed some gear from the camp staff and made our way to a nearby dune to try our hand at sandboarding. We proved to be remarkably terrible at it and struggled our way down the equivalent of a bunny slope, failing both to properly secure our feet on the board and to garner enough momentum to slide upright down the hill. We gave up after a short time. I'm still not convinced there is any difference between a sandboard and a snowboard, as I appear to be equally inept at both.
10:45am — Amazigh Nomads
We hopped in the car with Jamal and drove about twenty minutes through the barren desert to an Amazigh (a.k.a. Berber) nomad camp. Jamal showed us around the camp and we enjoyed mint tea while watching an Amazigh woman weave a rug by hand. These rugs, made from sheep wool, camel hair, and cactus silk, and dyed with saffron, alfalfa, indigo, thyme, and henna, have come to be treasured around the world. We were struck by how the Amazigh kids walked on the hot, dry, rocky ground without shoes, and more generally by how the nomads lived with few luxuries but also few wants.
12:15pm — Antimony mine
Jamal brought us to visit an abandoned antimony mine, where I bought an antimony bracelet which I promptly lost sometime within the next twenty-four hours.
12:45pm — Gnaoua musicians
Next, we visited the 405-person town of Khamlia, home to the world-renowned Gnaoua musicians. Khamlia's Gnaoua people trace their origins to Mali, Ghana, and Sudan, from which their ancestors were brought to North Africa as slaves. Bearing few possessions following their emancipation, the Gnaoua relied on music as a means of preserving their ancestral culture, the last relic of their homeland. We were privileged to enjoy a private performance from 'Les Pigeons du Sable' (The Desert Pigeons), one of the principal groups keeping this tradition alive.
1:45pm — Pool & lunch
We spent the next two and half hours resting at a hotel in Et-Taous, where we ate lunch and cooled off in the outdoor swimming pool, being sure to shade ourselves from the 95+ degree (F) heat.
4:30pm — ATVs
For an additional fee, we chose to supplement our desert experience with an ATV tour (because... why not? Note, though, that this is included with some other desert tours). For about an hour, we cruised through the desert on our ATVs, following behind our guides Mohammad and Hassan, who brought us to the top of a few tall dunes to admire the views and take photos. Besides being a highlight of the desert tour itself, this experience was one of the highlights of the entire summer.
6:00pm — Camel ride & sunset
We rode camels across the dunes back to our camp, stopping along the way to watch the sunset from a peak offering a panoramic view of the desert — an ocean of orange waves sprawling out endlessly in all directions. It was there that we finally felt the gravity of what we were doing, and of the months of planning and preparation that had culminated in a remarkable, once in a lifetime experience. Personally, I felt immense gratitude to be able to do such a thing, and a serene optimism reminding me it was only just the beginning.
9:30pm — Dinner
Upon arriving back to the camp, we were excited to learn that some other guests had arrived — a young couple from Canada — and enjoyed some refreshing lemon mint juice with them before heading back to the tent to shower and freshen up before dinner (much needed after a long day and few changes of clothes). Because the wind was much gentler than the night before, we ate outside. As we had watched the sunset from the dunes, we ate in the dark — save for the lanterns lining the carpeted walkways — which we didn't mind since it was much cooler. Dinner consisted of harira, Moroccan salad, potatoes au gratin, lemon chicken, turkey, and a dessert of bananas with cinnamon oranges.
11:00pm — Bonfire & drum circle
The camp staff lit a bonfire at the far edge of camp and invited us to join them for music, stories, and chit-chat. We danced around the fire as the staff played songs on their assortment of drums, enjoying the beer that our new Canadian friends were kind enough to share with us. As we all grew tired, the music gave way to stories, jokes, and riddles, until one-by-one we retired to our tents for bed. In my case, I settled in to my sand-caked mattress atop the rug that had been laid out for me outside, and counted the stars of the Milky Way until I drifted effortlessly to sleep. I hardly even reached ten.
