Camels in Mhamid, stars in Cheggaga

Camels in Mhamid, stars in Cheggaga





Marrakesh – Agdez Morning departure at 8 o’clock from your hotel or riad in Marrakesh to cross the High Atlas Mountains. After the Tichka pass, you leave the main road and take a side road to the Telouet Kasbah, which belonged to the Lords of the Atlas, the Glaoui family, and which now stands in ruins after the last Pasha fled the country following the departure of the French. From there you continue for lunch at Ait Ben Haddou along the newly asphalted connecting road. This is the most famous Kasbah in Morocco and is a UNESCO World Heritage site, which we visit after lunch. Later we continue south to Agdez, where the Dra’a Valley starts. We spend the night in a kasbah with swimming pool.


Agdez – Cheggaga After breakfast there is time to visit the rest of the Kasbah before taking the ancient caravan road between the river and the mountains. On the way, we pass many villages and gardens so that you can gain a better idea of the way of life along the oases. We drive to M’hamid, the gate to the desert, to Erg Lihoudi, where we stop for lunch. Here a two-hour camel ride is scheduled. Later we continue to the Erg Cheggaga dunes (300m) with 60km of off-road driving. This route passes different features of the desert; ‘erg’, ‘reg’, ‘hammada’, oases. These dunes are far away from civilization, in the desert proper ……. and the silence and the expanse of the sand are overwhelming. Dinner and a night’s sleep are in a bivouac of nomad tents.


3rd day: Cheggaga – Marrakesh After breakfast, the road takes us through another 90km of desert with varying scenery: Lake Iriqui, the mountains and fossils. Lunch will be in Foum Zguid, the first village after the desert, where it is also possible to freshen up with a shower. From here the drive back to Marrakesh is along paved roads via the village of Taznakht, famous for its Berber carpets and rugs. From there we cross the High Atlas again to reach Marrakesh in the early evening.





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Zagora holidays

 Zagora holidays

Departure in a 4x4 from your Marrakesh hotel or riad across the High Atlas Mountains and over the famous Tizi-n-Tichka (2260m) From these mountains, the views over the valleys and the Berber villages perched on the mountain sides, sometimes barely distinguishable from the mountains themselves, are spectacular.

Having crossed the pass, you continue to descend until you finally reach Ouarzazate where you stop for lunch. Afterwards, you will have a glass of tea with us at the office in the centre of town. From there you cross another smaller pass, Tizi-n-Tinfifite, before reaching the head of the Dra'a Valley at Agdez. We go off-road along the ancient caravan route between the mountains and the river, passing many villages and gardens so that you can gain a better idea of the way of life along the oases. You then reach Zagora and the dunes, where you will have a camel ride to watch the sunset and have dinner in the dunes at the bivouac of nomad tents where you spend the night.


 If you get up early enough to see the sunrise, you will be rewarded by the wonderful play of shadows across the sand. After breakfast you return north, taking another short off-road route. From Ouarzazate, you leave the main Marrakesh road to reach the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Ait Ben Haddou. This Kasbah, the most famous in Morocco, has been used as a backdrop for many Hollywood blockbusters and was one of the most important fortress strongholds on the old Salt Road caravan routes, where traders brought slaves, gold, ivory and salt from sub-Saharan Africa to Marrakech and beyond. From there, you continue along the new and truly magnificent road to Telouet Kasbah, which belonged to the Lords of the Atlas, the Glaoui family, and which now stands in ruins after the last Pasha fled the country following the departure of the French. The return to Marrakesh is along the main road, passing many Berber villages along the river and through the mountains. At times you come down into the valleys to drive alongside the river bordered by oleander and fruit trees. The gardens are full of olives, walnuts, pomegranates, apples, pears and quinces. Berber women and children tend goats and sheep and climb even the steepest slopes in search of fodder and firewood. We reach Marrakesh in the early evening.


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The Sahara's in morocco

The Sahara's boundaries are the Atlantic Ocean on the west, the Atlas Mountains and the Mediterranean on the north, the Red Sea on the east, and the Sudan (region) and the valley of the Niger River on the south. The Sahara is divided into western Sahara, the central Ahaggar Mountains, the Tibesti Mountains, the Aïr Mountains (a region of desert mountains and high plateaus), Ténéré desert and the Libyan Desert (the most arid region). The highest peak in the Sahara is Emi Koussi (3,415 m/11,204 ft) in the Tibesti Mountains in northern Chad.
The Sahara is the largest desert on the African continent. The southern border of the Sahara is marked by a band of semiarid savanna called the Sahel; south of the Sahel lies Southern Sudan and the Congo River Basin. Most of the Sahara consists of rocky hamada; ergs (large areas covered with sand dunes) form only a minor part.
People lived on the edge of the desert thousands of years ago since the last ice age. The Sahara was then a much wetter place than it is today. Over 30,000 petroglyphs of river animals such as crocodiles  survive, with half found in the Tassili n'Ajjer in southeast Algeria. Fossils of dinosaurs, including Afrovenator, Jobaria and Ouranosaurus, have also been found here. The modern Sahara, though, is not lush in vegetation, except in the Nile Valley, at a few oases, and in the northern highlands, where Mediterranean plants such as the olive tree are found to grow. The region has been this way since about 1600 BCE, after shifts in the Earth's axis increased temperatures and decreased precipitation.Then, due to a climate change, the savannah changed into the sandy desert as we know it now.


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