Our private Tangier To Marrakech Desert Tour offers an immersive Moroccan experience. This is the trip we take when relatives fly into Tangier and want to see the real Morocco on the way south. Our 5-day Tangier to Marrakech desert tour is a private, one-way journey from Tangier down to Marrakech — the Blue City of Chefchaouen, the ancient medina of Fes, the golden dunes of Erg Chebbi, and the kasbahs of the south, with no road driven twice.
You sleep one night in the Sahara at a camp run by people we know near Merzouga, ride camels out to the dunes for sunset, and wake for a sunrise you will be talking about for years. In between there is the Ziz Valley with its million date palms, the Todra Gorge where the walls close to a few metres, and the long, kasbah-lined road over the Atlas to Marrakech. Private 4×4, English-speaking Berber driver, and a pace set by you, not a schedule.
Want a slower version with Ait Ben Haddou added? See our 6-day Tangier to Marrakech tour.
Our private Tangier To Marrakech Desert Tour offers an immersive Moroccan experience. This north morocco tour covers the country’s greatest hits in 5 days, 4 nights.
Want one more day for slower desert immersion? See the 6 Days Tangier to Marrakech tour. Prefer a full week with a guided Marrakech finale? See the 7 Days Morocco Tour from Tangier.
| Day | Highlights | Overnight |
|---|---|---|
| Day 1 | Tangier → Asilah → Chefchaouen (the Blue City) | Chefchaouen |
| Day 2 | Chefchaouen → Volubilis → Fes | Fes |
| Day 3 | Fes → Ifrane → Ziz Valley → Merzouga (sunset camel trek) | desert camp at Erg Chebbi |
| Day 4 | Sahara sunrise → Todra Gorge → Dades Valley | the Dades Valley |
| Day 5 | Dades → Ait Ben Haddou → Tizi n'Tichka → Marrakech | Marrakech |
Pickup at 8:30 AM from your Tangier hotel, riad, or the port. We drive south along the Atlantic to Asilah, the little white-and-blue artist town with its Portuguese sea ramparts and the murals painters leave on its walls each summer. Time to walk the medina and have lunch over the ocean, then we turn inland and climb through the Rif to Chefchaouen. You settle into a blue-city riad and we take the evening slowly — the indigo lanes, the climb to the Spanish Mosque for sunset, a rooftop dinner.
Accommodation: riad in Chefchaouen (B&B).
A last morning wandering the blue medina, then south. We can stop at the Roman ruins of Volubilis — standing columns and floor mosaics out in the farmland — before reaching Fes in the afternoon and settling you into a medina riad.
Accommodation: traditional riad in Fes (B&B).
We give the morning to Fes el-Bali with a licensed local guide — the Chouara tanneries, the Bou Inania madrasa, the Al-Qarawiyyin, the Royal Palace gates, the souks. Then the long, beautiful drive south: the cedar forests and Barbary macaques around Ifrane and Azrou, the apple town of Midelt, and the palm-deep Ziz Valley. You reach Merzouga in the late afternoon, trade the car for a camel, and ride out over the Erg Chebbi dunes to a Berber camp run by people we know — tagine, drums, and a sky full of stars.
Accommodation: desert camp at Erg Chebbi (half board).
Up before dawn for the sunrise over the dunes, then camels back for breakfast. We drive on via the Rissani souk to the Todra Gorge, where you walk the cool floor between 300-metre walls, and into the Dades Valley with its famous hairpin road.
Accommodation: hotel or riad in the Dades Valley (half board).
We follow the Road of a Thousand Kasbahs west, with stops at the Skoura oasis and Ouarzazate, to the UNESCO kasbah of Ait Ben Haddou — the one you have seen in Gladiator and Game of Thrones. Then over the High Atlas at the Tizi n’Tichka pass (2,260 m) and down into Marrakech by early evening, where we drop you at your hotel, the airport, or the train station.
When you are ready to do this trip, send us a message — we will plan it around you.
Our private Tangier To Marrakech Desert Tour offers an immersive Moroccan experience.
Our private Tangier To Marrakech Desert Tour offers an immersive Moroccan experience.
Route: Tangier → Asilah → Chefchaouen → Fes → Ifrane → Azrou → Midelt → Ziz Valley → Merzouga (Erg Chebbi camp) → Todra Gorge → Dades → Ouarzazate → Ait Ben Haddou → Tizi n’Tichka → Marrakech
Total distance: ~1,500 km (one-way)
