Sahara They Come

The minibus arrived early in the morning to pick us up and we joined a nice group of people from different parts of the world. The journey first took us over the snowcapped peaks of the High Atlas Mountains which surround Marrakech, offering some beautiful vistas of the valley below. Our first real stop was at the stunning oasis and hidden village of Ait Benhaddou. The clay buildings melt in perfectly with their surroundings and if you didn’t know it was there you could easily miss it.

The tiny village has been in decline for a long time but got an unexpected boost from the movie industry with productions like Lawrence of Arabia, Gladiator and lately Game Of Thrones choosing this location as their backdrop. After the pitstop we moved through the town of Ouarzazate, the valley of the roses (which weren’t in bloom) and stopped just outside Dadès Gorge where we slept in a hotel. The following morning we visited the valley, some more villages before arriving in the desert town of Merzouga.

Here we all hopped onto our camels and travelled for an hour and a half to our Berber tentcamp in the middle of the Sahara. It was pretty basic, but our young guides managed to cook up a great Moroccan tajine which we could feast on before gazing at the incredible amount of stars next to our warm campfire. The weather for the whole trip was beautiful with clear skies, sunshine and temperatures around 23 C, however as soon as the sun sets the temperature drops drastically and at night we were sleeping with several blankets as it dropped below freezing. When we awoke we saw the sunrise and got back on our trusty ships of the desert, taking us at a very tranquil pace across the giant dunes back to Merzouga for some breakfast where I left the group and got a shared minibus for 9 hours to the ancient city of Fez.