Morocco

Zagora isn’t the real Sahara. The locals will tell you so before you’ve finished breakfast — there’s a famous sign outside town reading “Timbuktu, 52 days” that gently mocks how far away you still are from the proper dunes. But…

Marrakech in summer is a city designed to defeat you. The medina walls trap 40-degree heat well past sunset, the souks are airless, and by 2pm the locals have gone indoors. That’s when Oasiria stops being a water park and…

Mount Toubkal is the highest peak in North Africa — 4,167 meters of granite and scree two hours south of Marrakech. Climbing it takes two days, doesn’t require technical gear in summer, and delivers one of the finest summit views…

Horseback riding in Marrakech is the underappreciated cousin of the famous camel ride. Smoother gait, more responsive animal, and a properly equestrian experience in the Palmeraie palm groves. If you’ve ridden horses at all before, the Marrakech tour will be…

The buggy is the underrated Marrakech adventure. It’s faster than a camel, more social than a quad (you can talk to your passenger), and safer for novice riders because of the roll cage. A half-day in the Agafay desert or…

Tangier is Morocco with one foot in Europe. You can see Spain from the coast on a clear day, the Strait of Gibraltar is 14km across at the narrowest point, and the city itself carries 2,500 years of mixed Phoenician,…

Marrakech’s Palmeraie is 15,000 palm trees just outside the city walls. For a thousand years it’s supplied dates, shade, and now — mostly — camel rides for tourists. It’s not the Sahara, but it’s the easiest camel experience you’ll find…

The Bahia Palace and Saadian Tombs combo tour is the cultural centerpiece of any Marrakech visit. Two hours, two sites, and the best architectural storytelling in the medina — painted cedar ceilings from the 19th century in one place, and…

The Ourika Valley is where locals go when Marrakech gets hot. An hour south of the city, the road climbs into the High Atlas, the air drops 10 degrees, and by the time you reach Setti Fatma the river is…

Agadir is Morocco’s beach resort — 300 days of sunshine, 10-kilometre Atlantic beach, 22°C average temperature, and a restaurant-bar strip that caters to Northern European winter escapees. It’s the least “Moroccan” of Morocco’s major cities, which is either a feature…

I got lost in Fez medina within 20 minutes of entering. My phone showed three different streets simultaneously. A local pointed me toward a landmark that wasn’t actually nearby. Another guide offered to lead me out for 100 dirhams. The…

Chefchaouen is the blue city. Every wall, door, step, fountain, and plant pot painted in some shade of blue — cobalt, cerulean, powder blue, indigo, turquoise. From a distance, nestled against the Rif Mountains, the whole medina looks like a…

Casablanca is the Morocco that Moroccans actually live in. Not the romantic medina labyrinth of Marrakech or the royal gardens of Rabat — Casablanca is a port city of 3.7 million people, the country’s economic capital, Art Deco buildings mixed…

By the end of the exfoliation I was convinced my attendant was trying to start a fight. She was not. She was just doing her job — scrubbing my back with a black gommage soap and a rough glove called…

The first time I saw Aït Benhaddou, I’d been in a van for 3.5 hours crossing the High Atlas. The kasbah emerged around a bend — a fortified ochre pile rising out of a riverbank, palms at its base, looking…

Youssef was our guide, a Marrakech native with strong opinions about bread. He led us through five medina streets to a bakery he said was “the only place still making real khobz,” ordered four loaves for a table of six,…

On my second walk through the Marrakech medina, I took a wrong turn and found myself in a silversmith’s alley that wasn’t on my map. The guide from my first visit hadn’t mentioned it. A man was hammering a 500-year-old…

The first thing that hits you at Majorelle isn’t the plants. It’s the blue. A shade of cobalt so saturated it looks artificial — painted on every wall, planter, fountain rim, and window frame. The rest of the world looks…

The alarm went off at 4:30am and my body asked what I could possibly be doing with my life. Forty minutes later, standing in a Berber camp an hour outside Marrakech with a glass of mint tea in one hand…

The wind in Essaouira has its own personality. It arrives from the Atlantic by mid-morning and doesn’t stop. It’s why the fishing boats return before noon, why the medina cafés have wind-blocking windbreaks, and why the city has been the…

The dune was maybe 80 metres high and I was climbing it in sand that slid out from under each step. Three steps up, two steps back. By the top, my lungs were burning, my legs were shaking, and the…

The quad bike kicked up a rooster-tail of ochre dust behind me and I leaned into the turn at maybe 35 km/h, which felt like 100. Palm trees on both sides, red earth underneath, Atlas Mountains on the horizon. I…

Our guide Mohammed stopped at a bend in the path and pointed up. “That is Toubkal.” The peak was 4,167 metres high and snow-covered even in April. Our objective for the day was rather less ambitious — a 6-hour walk…

Halfway down the path to Ouzoud, a barbary macaque stole a bag of peanuts from the German couple in front of me. The woman laughed. Her husband did not. The monkey retreated up a fig tree and spent the next…

I’d been told Agafay was “a taste of the Sahara without the twelve-hour drive.” What I didn’t expect was the moment around sunset when the light went copper, the Atlas Mountains stood up in the distance like a snow-capped punctuation…