Three Weeks in Morocco -The Full Arc
Imperial Cities, Atlantic Coast, High Atlas & Desert Edge
Three weeks is a good amount of time to spend travelling through Morocco, it allows you time to explore . You can give the great cities the time they deserve, reach places that the shorter itineraries cannot accommodate, and venture off the beaten track.
This itinerary follows our two-week itinerary but extends significantly into the south and east — adding the Draa Valley, Ouarzazate and the edge of the Sahara — and includes several off-piste additions that most visitors to Morocco never encounter. Fly into Tangier or Casablanca, or better still catch the ferry from Spain. Fly out of Marrakesh.
Let me be your guide around Morocco for three whole weeks, let us have a great adventure!
Day 1 · Tangier — Arrival and Orientation
Arriving in Tangiers arrive by ferry from Tarifa or Algeciras in Spain, thirty-five minutes if you take the fast boat from Tarifa — is the best introduction to Morocco: the country appearing gradually on the horizon, the minaret of the medina visible above the port as you approach, the smell of the strait giving way to the smell of the city.
Alternatively if it better suits your plans you can Fly into Tangier Ibn Battouta airport
I would recommend staying in or immediately adjacent to the medina. Spend the first afternoon just walking, through the Petit Socco, up toward the kasbah, along the ramparts above the port.
The purpose of the first afternoon is to soak in the atmosphere and getting accustomed to the fact that you are in a very different place rather than actual sightseeing — letting your all your senses adjust to the stimuli that Morocco has to offer. Have dinner in the atmospheric medina rather than the ville nouvelle.
Tonight: Eat at a restaurant in the medina lanes rather than on the tourist-facing squares. Ask your accommodation for a recommendation, or just wander around. This principle of asking the locals, rather than consulting a guidebook, is one that I always follow and which will serve you well for the entire week.
Tangier by night
Day 2 · Tangier — The City in Full
After Breakfast spend some time in the kasbah and visit the Dar el-Makhzen museum: the Roman mosaic collection, the carved ceilings, the view from the ramparts over the strait. By mid-morning head over to the American Legation Museum in the medina — the oldest American public property abroad, now a cultural centre with an excellent collection documenting the city’s literary history. Have lunch in the medina.
After lunch take a taxi west to Cap Spartel, the headland where the Atlantic meets the Mediterranean. Walk to the lighthouse, look at the two seas from above, then descend to the Caves of Hercules below the cliff. Return to the city in time for the late afternoon light on the strait from Café Hafa — the clifftop café that has been serving tea to musicians, writers and travellers since 1921. This is a great place to sit for an hour and watch the ferries crossing below. This is the finest thing you can do in Tangier, and it costs the price of a glass of tea.
Alternatively you could go to Cap Spartel in the morning then take an afternoon excursion to the small coastal town of Asilah, forty-five minutes south by train. It’s a whitewashed Portuguese-walled town on the Atlantic that hosts an international arts festival in August and has an unusually high concentration of murals in its medina lanes. Small, beautiful, and a good way to spend the afternoon if you have seen enough of Tangier.
Spend the evening in the Grand Socco and the Petit Socco for a last walk through the city at night, when the tourists have gone and the medina belongs to its residents rather than its visitors. I would eat again in The Medina, but you might like to try the Ville Nouvelle.
Cave de Hercules
Day 3 · Tétouan — The Overlooked City, then South to Chefchaouen
Today I recommend an early start from Tangier. Take the bus or a grand taxi to Tétouan — an hour south and east through the Rif foothills. Tétouan is a half-day stop on this itinerary, which is not enough to do it full justice but is enough to understand why it deserves its own entry in this guide. The big draws are the medina — a UNESCO World Heritage Site that almost no tourists visit and the Andalusian architecture of the residential quarters, built by the Spanish Ensanche during the Protectorate years. Unfortunately on this tight schedule there is only time to spend two to three hours here before continuing south. But if you have the time you could easily turn Tétouan into an overnight stop
Click here to read our detailed guide to Tétouan
After lunch in Tétouan, take a CTM bus or grand taxi south to Chefchaouen. The journey takes around two hours, through the Rif Mountains, the road climbing through cedar forest and terraced hillsides. I would strongly recommend checking into a riad inside the medina —the city at night, when the day visitors have gone, is a different and better place, and you only experience it if you are sleeping inside the walls.
Aim to arrive in Chefchaouen, mid afternoon, the perfect time to walk up to the Spanish mosque on the ridge above the city. The path is clear, the climb takes forty minutes, and the view over the blue rooftops as the sun descends is one of the genuinely memorable sights of a Moroccan journey. Time it for an hour before sunset and you will have the light exactly right.
Chefchaouen
Day 4 · The Rif
I suggest spending the day in the nearby Rif Mountains walking to Akchour and the Cascades waterfalls. The start of the walk is an hour’s drive east by taxi.
The walk to Akchour begins where the tarmac ends, at a cluster of tea stalls beside a river the colour of pale jade, and immediately the Rif Mountains close around you. The path follows the Oued Farda through a gorge of rose-red limestone, the walls rising steeply on both sides, the river audible below through the oleander and fig that colonise the banks. It is not a difficult walk — the path is clear, the gradient manageable — but it is a sustained one, and the gorge deepens as you go, the walls narrowing and the light changing from open sky to something more filtered and green.
The lower falls appear after about an hour: a curtain of water dropping into a natural pool of extraordinary colour, the limestone stained with mineral deposits in shades of copper and ochre. Most walkers stop here. The upper falls, another hour beyond, reward those who continue — a larger drop, a wider pool, and by the time you reach them, almost certainly no one else around.
Return in the late afternoon when the light rakes through the gorge from the west and the red rock goes briefly, brilliantly, the colour of embers. Bring water, bread and more time than you think you need.
Return to Chefchaouen and enjoy a meal in the medina, you’ve earnt it!
View from the Spanish Mosque over Chefchaouen
Day 5 · Chefchaouen , then South to Fez
Spend the morning in the medina: the Plaza Uta el-Hammam and the kasbah garden first, then simply walk. The medina of Chefchaouen is small enough to explore fully in a morning without rushing, just walk slowly, take the lanes that look interesting and allow the colour and the calm to do their work. The Ras el-Maa spring at the eastern edge of the medina, where the mountain water runs through stone channels, is worth finding.
After lunch it’s time to head off to Fez, it takes around 3 hours by bus or grand taxi. This time it might be better to catch a grand taxi as the buses all tend to come from somewhere else and are often full when they arrive in Chefchaouen.
Try to arrive in Fez by early evening. Again I would strongly recommend checking into a riad in the medina — Fès el-Bali rather than the ville nouvelle. Your first evening is for orientation: a walk through the lanes nearest your riad, have dinner close by, and you’re probably ready for an early night.
Chouara Tannery, Fez
Day 6 · Fez — The Medina
Fez or Fès is medieval city, with an amazing medina that is the largest in the world, it demands at least two full days, and even that is an underestimate, I could easily spend an extra day here.
On the first day, explore Fès el Bali (the medina) ideally with a guide — this is the one city in Morocco where the argument for hiring a good local guide makes a lot of sense. The lanes of Fès el-Bali number over nine thousand; without a guide who knows the city, you will spend significant time navigating rather than seeing. But if you don’t have a guide do make sure that you have a smart phone equipped with a mapping app, without it you could get lost for days!
Click here to read our detailed guide to Fez
I would start in the morning at Bab Boujloud — the Blue Gate and proceed down Talaa Kebira to the Bou Inania Medersa. Allow at least forty minutes here: the carved stucco, the cedarwood screens, the marble courtyard with its central basin are among the finest examples of Merinid architecture in existence and deserve careful attention. Continue through the commercial souks — the leather workers, the dyers, the weavers — to the infamous Chouara Tannery, you can usually smell it before you come across it. View it from the terrace of one of the surrounding leather shops.
Have lunch in Fès el Bali and start the afternoon at the Al-Attarine Medersa, immediately adjacent to the Al-Qarawiyyin mosque. The mosque itself is closed to non-Muslims, but the medersa’s rooftop gives a rare glimpse into the mosque’s courtyard. Then proceed to the Seffarine square — the coppersmiths’ quarter, where the hammering has continued since the medieval period — and the shrine of Moulay Idriss II.
In the evening I would eat in or around the medina, try the local Fassi food. I would suggest ordering pastilla, the layered pie of pigeon (or increasingly chicken), egg, almonds and spices, encased in warka pastry as fine as tissue paper, dusted with icing sugar and cinnamon. The combination sounds improbable and tastes extraordinary. Any riad or restaurant serious about Fassi cuisine will serve a version; the best versions take a day to prepare.
Click here to read our Moroccan Food Guide
Harira — the thick, tomato-based soup with lentils and chickpeas — is another Fassi staple, and makes a great starter, it is served throughout the medina and at its best in the small restaurants around the Rcif quarter. Mrouzia — lamb slow-cooked with almonds, raisins and spice in a honey-sweetened sauce — is another firm favourite and a dish that could only have come from this culinary tradition: patient, complex, the kind of cooking that reflects centuries of refinement.
Fès el-Bali
Day 7 · Fez — In Depth
The second day in Fez is for exploring Fès el Bali, letting yourself get lost in the medina ( as long as you have your smart phone to show you the way out should you need it) rather than a prescribed route.
The medina has nine thousand lanes; you have seen perhaps thirty. Go back to the places that stayed with you from yesterday. Find the neighbourhood outside the main tourist circuit — the residential quartiers of the Andalusian bank, quieter and less visited than the Kairouani side — and explore.
I would begin the morning at the Merinid tombs on the hilltop above the medina — the ruins of the royal necropolis are reached by a path behind the Borj Nord fortress. The ruins themselves are modest, but the view over the medina below is the best available perspective on the scale and density of Fès el-Bali. The tiled rooftops, the minarets, the smoke from the hammam chimneys: a scene that hasn’t changed for six hundred years.
Spend the afternoon exploring the medina at your own pace. If there is a workshop, a craft quarter or a street that interested you yesterday and that you passed through too quickly, return to it. If the tanneries were what stayed with you, go back at a different time of day and in different light. If a shopkeeper invited you to tea yesterday and you were in too much of a hurry return and see him today, he’ll be delighted to see you!.
Bab el-Mansour, Mèknes
Day 8 · Meknès and Volubilis
Meknès is sixty kilometres from Fez — forty minutes by train or taxi. Leave Fez early and arrive in Meknès by mid-morning. Check into a riad in the medina.
I would then head upto Volubilis, thirty kilometres north of Meknès, it is the best-preserved Roman city in Morocco, occupying a bowl of agricultural land with the Atlas visible on the southern horizon. Go as early as possible, ideally before the tour buses from Fez arrive. The mosaics — still in situ on the floors of the ruined villas — are extraordinary, and the triumphal arch, the capitol and the forum give sufficient sense of the city’s original scale to make the imagination do the rest. Two hours here is enough, but three is better.
Return to Meknès for the afternoon, see the Bab Mansour gate (at its best in afternoon light), the Mausoleum of Moulay Ismail, the Heri es-Souani granaries and the Agdal basin. The evening food market in the Place el-Hedim is the ideal place to enjoy North Morrocan cusine: unpretentious, local, completely genuine. Snails, Harira & Merguez are popular choices.
Rabat
Day 9 · Rabat
After breakfast catch the train from Meknès to Rabat: one and a half hours. The Moroccan capital is systematically undervisited and has a lot to offer. In the morning visit the Hassan Tower and the Mausoleum of Mohammed V — the great incomplete minaret and the finest example of contemporary Moroccan craft in the country.
After lunch I would suggest visiting the Kasbah of the Oudayas above the river mouth, the Andalusian Garden & stop for a refreshing drink at the Café Maure with its view over the Atlantic.
Late in the afternoon head off to the Chellah necropolis — the Roman ruins and Merinid tombs where storks have nested on the towers for generations, and where the combination of antiquity and wildness is unlike anything else in Morocco.
Click here to read our detailed guide to Rabat
Stay overnight in Rabat, or take the train south to Casablanca if Casablanca interests you more than a night in the capital.
Casablanca
Day 10 · Casablanca — then Essaouira
Today we are spending the morning in Casablanca. The first thing to say about Casablanca is that it has nothing to do with the film. The city’s global name recognition comes entirely from a work of fiction, and the actual Casablanca — Morocco’s largest city, its economic capital, its primary port, the home of a third of its industrial output — is a very different proposition from the cinematic version.
Which is not to say it is uninteresting. Casablanca is the most modern city in Morocco, the most economically significant, and in some ways the most revealing
Visit the Hassan II mosque (to fully understand I would recommend the guided tour), then wander around the Art Deco district of the city centre, the Place Mohammed V & the Boulevard Mohammed V, not forgetting the medina.
Lunch down at one of the cafes or seafood restaurants overlooking the sea is to be recommended.
Click here to read our detailed guide to Casablanca
After you have finished looking around take the afternoon bus south to Essaouira (350km) from the main Casablanca bus station. But check the bus times and don’t leave it too late as it’s 6.5 hour journey on a comfy modern bus. You should arrive Essaouira by early evening. Check into a riad in the medina.
Fishing Boats, Essaouira
Day 11· Essaouira
Essaouira is a different Morocco entirely from the cities of the North. Small and intimate. A few days in Essaouira is a chance to recharge your batteries after a busy few days.
After breakfast in your riad explore the medina, get a feel of the place. Make your way down to the port by late morning. The fishing boats are in by now, the fish market is operating, and the stalls along the quay are grilling the morning’s catch. This is where to eat lunch: choose your fish from the display, watch it go over the charcoal, eat it at a tin table with bread and harissa. The prawns are consistently good. So are the sardines. It will cost very little and taste of the sea and the day.
Click here to read our detailed guide to Essaouira
After lunch walk the skala — the sea bastion — with its bronze cannons pointing at the Atlantic and the thuya woodworking workshops in the chambers below. The view of the medina from the ramparts and the offshore islands visible through the sea haze is very atmospheric. Then go back and explore the medina itself: the main commercial street, the gallery quarter (the standard of the galleries in Essaouira is the highest of any Moroccan city outside the major imperial cities), the mellah — the old Jewish quarter — which still carries the architectural character of the Sephardic community that made the city’s Atlantic trade for two centuries.
Evening in Essaouira has a particular quality — the wind drops as the sun goes down, the temperature cools, the medina lanes belong to the people who live in them. Find yourself a good fish restaurant and enjoy the Moroccan seafood.
Camels on the beach, Essaouira
Day 12 · Essaouira — The Wind and the Coast
A full second day in Essaouira. I would start early, straight after breakfast, and head to the beach — the wide Atlantic strand to the south of the city, it is best before the fresh Alizé wind rises around noon. The water is cold by Mediterranean standards; the beach is magnificent, wide expanses of sand as far as the eye can see.
I like to walk along the beach, past the old ruined place lost amongst the dunes, to the village of Diabat, where Jimi Hendrix and other hippies came to avoid the Vietnam war draft in the last 1960’s. Diabat itself in a quiet place although there is a Jimi Hendrix guesthouse where you can grab a drink and have a rest. The walk back along the road is a lot quicker than the walk out along the beach. This walk is all about the journey rather than the destination.
I would suggest lunch back in the medina, then spend the afternoon exploring the medina again at your own pace, stopping for a mint tea and spending time people watching. The souks here are more relaxed and generally have a higher quality of goods than those in Marrakesh: the argan oil is local and genuine, the woven textiles are Rif and Souss traditions, the thuya marquetry is made in workshops you can watch. The Gnawa music that appears in the squares and tea houses is the real tradition, not a tourist performance — the same tradition that influenced Jimi Hendrix when he came through in 1969.
Head the ramparts at sunset. You won’t be alone, sunset here is a major attraction, for a very good reason. There is a spot on the northern end of the skala where the light falls on the ocean and the old Portuguese fortifications simultaneously, and the effect is one of those moments where the beauty of a place stops being backdrop and becomes the whole point. It is hard to take a bad photograph.
Djemaa el-Fna, Marrakesh
Day 13 · Marrakesh — Arrival
After breakfast catch the morning bus to Marrakesh( three hours). I would recommend booking into a Riad in the medina then having a late lunch at a café overlooking the Djemaa el-Fna and watch the juice sellers, the henna women, the snake charmers in the square. Spend the afternoon wandering through the souks and come back to the Djemaa el-Fna for dinner again in the evening, when the food stalls assemble and the gnawa musicians begin. The two visits to the same square in the same day are utterly different, during the day it is quite sedate, but at night it really comes alive.
Fountain, Bahia Palace, Marrakesh
Day 14· Marrakesh Sightseeing
On your second day in Marrakesh, now you have your bearings, I would suggest visiting the sites, the souks and the monuments.
My first stop would be the dyers’ souk — a lane strung with hanks of freshly dyed wool in shades of saffron, crimson and indigo, hung between the buildings to dry. If you find the dyers’ souk — and finding it involves taking a small lane that feels like you are going the wrong way, but keep going — stop and look up. The colours against the pale walls and the strip of sky above is one of the most photogenic scenes in the medina.
The next unmissable sight is the Medersa Ben Youssef, the ancient Islamic theological college which is among the finest Islamic interiors in Africa and should not be rushed. It has been restored in the last few years and is magnificient.
After a late lunch, I would suggest visiting atmospheric palaces; the Bahia Palace (painted ceilings of extraordinary quality) and the El Badi Palace ruins (the storks on the battlements, the sense of magnificent loss).
Finish the afternoon at the Saadian Tombs, discovered behind a wall in 1917 and preserved in the condition in which they were sealed: a jewel-box of carved marble and painted stucco containing the remains of the Saadian dynasty.
Marrakesh eating: I would suggest eating at a stall in the Djema el-Fna one eveing to experience the atmosphere and enjoy dinner at one of the restaurants overlooking the square for your second evening.
For lunch there are plenty of atmospheric places in the medina, although after the very generous Riad breakfasts, you may not be that hungry. There are also plenty of places to rest and enjoy a refreshing mint tea
Les Jardins des Majorelles, Marrakesh
Days 15 · Marrakesh – The Gardens
I would start the morning by catching a taxi to my favourite place in Marrakesh, indeed one of my favourite places in the World, Les Jardins des Majorelles. If you can, be there when it opens, first thing, before the crowds arrive. The cobalt blue against the bougainvillaea, the sound of the birds, the sheer exoticism is magical in the quiet of the early morning, especially without the crowds. Don’t forget to visit the Berber museum in Majorelle’s old studio that most visitors walk past.
I would stay for a couple of hours, there is a lovely, although rather pricey, café on site.
Then head to the Menara Gardens for a slower, more peaceful experience. It’s a vast olive grove — over a hundred hectares — surrounding a large reflective pool fed by an underground khettara system bringing water from the Atlas Mountains twelve kilometres away. The pool has existed in some form since the twelfth century; the pavilion at its edge was restored in the nineteenth.
These gardens were once the Sultan’s gardens but now they are popular with local Marrakshi families come on Friday afternoons to picnic and sit and do very little. The Atlas reflected in the still water on a clear morning is beautiful.
If it’s the weekend I would suggest that you make time to visit the Agdal Gardens. It is larger, older, and even less visited than the Menera Gardens. Four kilometres long, walled, planted with olive, fig, pomegranate and citrus of considerable antiquity, fed by the same khettara system it is open only at weekends.
It’s two large basins — the Grand Bassin and the Dar el-Hana — were used for royal boating parties and practical irrigation simultaneously, which tells you something about Moroccan pragmatism. On a Friday afternoon with the gates open and almost no one else present, the Agdal has a quality of silence and timelessness that the more celebrated gardens, with their entrance queues and audio guides, simply cannot match. Go there and enjoy the escape from the city.
In the evening I would suggest spending your last evening in Marrakesh in a restaurant overlooking the Djemma el-Fna, enjoying the food, the view and reflecting on your Morrocan experience so far, before you venture into the High Atlas
Aït Benhaddou
Day 16 The High Atlas — Aït Benhaddou and the Mountain Road
Today, is a road day. The journey east of Marrakesh is best done with a hired car and driver, which gives the flexibility to stop at the viewpoints and villages that make the Atlas crossing more memorable and enjoyable. I would strongly recommend organising this in Marrakesh, rather than just taking a shared taxi from the bus station.
East of Marrakesh the road over the Tizi n’Tichka pass — the main Atlas crossing at 2,260 metres — is one of the great mountain drives in Africa: the landscape changes from red earth and argan trees below to cedar forest and then bare rock as the road climbs, the views over the southern plateau appearing and expanding as you crest the pass. In winter, snow can close the road; in spring, the verges are full of wildflowers and the Atlas villages below are a patchwork of cultivation and stone.
Stop at Aït Benhaddou, thirty kilometres west of Ouarzazate — the great mud-brick ksar on its hillside above the river, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the backdrop for more films than any other location in Morocco. Go late afternoon for the best light on the towers. Cross the river, climb the ksar, look back from the top at the valley and the desert landscape extending south.
I would recommend staying here overnight. But if you are a Star wars or Gladiator fan you may want to head on to the beautifully located city of Ouarzazate, home of possibly the World’s largest movie studios ( by area), where parts of these films were shot.
Click here to read our detailed guide to Ouarzazate and the Draa valley
Driving note: The Tizi n’Tichka road is well-maintained and entirely manageable by car. Do not attempt it in ice or fog without local advice. A driver who knows the road is worth the cost for the pass section, even if you prefer to drive yourself on the plateau.
Taourirt Kasbah, Ouarzazate
Day 17 The Draa Valley
Today we are heading off the beaten tourist track and that, in my experience, produces some of the most lasting memories of a Moroccan adventure. Public transport is infrequent and inflexible and a driver and car are really the only way to travel.
Head south from Ouarzazate, the road enters the Draa Valley — two hundred kilometres of date palms, ancient kasbahs and ksour ( villages fortified with thick earth walls), Amazigh villages and desert-edge agriculture that constitute one of the great landscape drives in Africa.
Stop at the ksar of Aït Isfoul, it is less visited than Aït Benhaddou, less touristy, but it is inhabited, and as such is a genuine Ksar, rather than a sight.
Continue through the palm oases of Agdez and Tamnougalt — the latter a remarkably preserved ksar whose family has been welcoming visitors for generations with authentic hospitality. Overnight in a guesthouse in Tamnougalt.
Draa Valley
Day 18 The Draa Valley to Zagora
Today we are continuing our trip through the Draa Valley south to Zagora.
The road from Tamnougalt to Zagora runs south for about forty kilometres through the heart of the Draa Valley, and it is forty kilometres of sustained, quiet revelation. The Draa River — or rather its presence, since the river itself is often invisible beneath the canopy — organises everything. To the east and west of the road, the palm oases extend in dense green corridors that feel improbable against the arid plateau rising on either side, the bare rock of the Anti-Atlas and the pre-Saharan hammada framing the valley in shades of ochre and grey.
The road passes through or alongside half a dozen ksour in various states of inhabitation and decay. Some are still lived in, their towers repaired, children visible in the lanes. Others are returning to the earth they were built from — the mud brick dissolving slowly back into the ground in shapes that are still legible as architecture. Palmeries give way to argan scrub and then to palmeries again. The light changes as the valley narrows and widens. Donkeys work the irrigation channels.
Zagora is a town that lives primarily in the shadow of its own mythology. The famous sign — Tombouctou 52 jours — points south toward the Sahara and references the old camel caravan route to Timbuktu, fifty-two days through the desert on a good camel with favourable winds. The town itself is a modest administrative centre strung along a single main road, functional rather than beautiful, with a Thursday and Sunday market that draws the surrounding Amazigh communities and has genuine local character. Its value is it’s location: it is the last proper town before the desert, the place where you provision, orientate and decide how far south you are willing to go.
If you have a couple of extra days I would recommend an overnight excursion into the Erg Chegaga — the sand dune field accessible from M’Hamid, the southernmost town on the tarmac road. Erg Chegaga is smaller and significantly less visited than Erg Chebbi near Merzouga, and for that reason offers a more solitary Saharan experience. A night in the dunes — in a proper desert camp, an hour by 4WD from the road — can be added on as a two-day excursion from Zagora.
Off-piste note: The Draa Valley between Ouarzazate and Zagora is one of the genuinely less-travelled experiences available in Morocco without going very far off the main road. Most tour groups go directly to Merzouga for the dunes; the Draa gives you the same pre-Saharan landscape, the same kasbahs and palm oases, with considerably more space.
Taroudant with the High Atlas
Day 19 · Crossing the Anti Atlas to Taroudant
Today we are crossing the Anti-Atlas via the Tizi n’Tinifift pass rather than retracing our steps — a longer but spectacular alternative that brings you down into the Souss plain and west to Taroudant.
The road west from Zagora toward Taroudant is one of the least-travelled and most rewarding drives in southern Morocco, and the fact that almost no itinerary includes it means you are completely off the beaten track. From Zagora, the road climbs initially through the tail end of the Draa Valley, the palms thinning as the valley narrows and the landscape ahead begins to announce the Anti-Atlas in the way mountain ranges do — a darkening on the horizon that gradually turns into a mountain range
The Tizi n’Tinifift pass crosses the Anti-Atlas at around 1,660 metres through a landscape of stripped, ancient geology — this is some of the oldest exposed rock in Morocco, geologically speaking, the mountains worn to their bones by time in a way that the younger, snowier High Atlas is not. The colours are extraordinary: deep red ironstone, pale quartzite, the occasional flash of green where a spring feeds a cluster of argan trees in a valley fold. The road is paved but narrow, the bends serious, the views from the crest over the Souss plain to the north genuinely vertiginous.
The descent into the Souss is a revelation — the plain opening suddenly below you, green and agricultural, the High Atlas appearing on the northern horizon, Taroudant invisible but implied somewhere in the warm flatness ahead. You should arrive Taroudant by late afternoon, head to your riad to check in, before heading to the see the ramparts at dusk, followed by a good meal in the medina. You’ve deserved it!
Taroudant City Walls
Days 20 Taroudant
Taroudant is the city I recommend to people who ask me where in Morocco they should go to get away from the tourist circuit without actually leaving Morocco’s best landscapes and history. It is the city I would go to if I wanted to spend a week reading and eating well and walking in medina lanes where I was not the most unusual thing in them. It is, in the quietly genuine sense, a secret
Click here to read our detailed guide to Taroudant
After breakfast at your riad, head to the ramparts, before the heat builds — walk or ride the circuit in the early morning light when the pisé is pale gold and the Atlas is clear to the north. Then head into the Berber souk, see the jewellery quarter first, then the spice merchants, then wherever curiosity takes you.
I recommend lunch in the Place Assarag at one of the simple restaurants facing the square — harira, kefta, bread.
The afternoon belongs to the Palais Salam gardens if you need shade and stillness, or to the Arab souk’s leather and textile lanes if you do not. As the sun drops, return to the ramparts. The evening light on the pisé walls — deep rose, then amber, then something approaching red — is the thing you will remember forever.
Have dinner in the medina, early, and then head to the square again after dark when the tourists have gone back to their hotels and the city belongs to the locals. It is a good time to order a mint tea and people watch. Taroudant at night is one of the most genuinely unhurried places in Morocco.
Crocus Harvest, Taliouine
Day 21 · The Souss Valley
On your final day I recommend a trip to Taliouine, the heart of Saffron production in Morocco. It looks particularly amazing in the Autumn when the crocuses are flowering.
The road east from Taroudant to Taliouine takes about two hours and earns every minute of them. It leaves the Souss plain gradually, the flat agricultural land giving way to foothills as the road begins to climb into the territory of the Sirwa massif — the great extinct volcano that dominates the landscape between the High Atlas and the Anti-Atlas, its flanks terraced and cultivated to a height that makes you understand why people have been farming here for centuries.
The approach to Taliouine announces itself in October and November by colour: the hillsides around the town are planted with Crocus sativus, and the harvest — which happens at dawn, the purple flowers picked before they open fully in the morning light — briefly transforms the landscape into something that does not look entirely real. The saffron grown here is among the finest in the world; the altitude, the soil and the particular quality of the Sirwa light produce a product that serious cooks and spice merchants seek out specifically.
Outside harvest season the cooperative is still worth visiting — the drying rooms, the separation of the crimson stigmas from the flower by hand, the extraordinary concentration of labour that explains why genuine saffron costs what it does. Buy here rather than anywhere else in Morocco. The provenance is unimpeachable and the price reflects a local rather than a tourist economy. The drive back to Taroudant, with the Sirwa behind you and the Souss plain glowing in the late afternoon, is the day’s final reward.
Enjoy your final evening meal in the Place Assarag, enjoy the food and reflect on your Moroccan adventure .
Transfer the following morning to Agadir (one hour) for onward flights, or back to Marrakesh (two and a half hours) for wider international connections.
Dried Flower Petals for Sale, Marrakesh
Practical Notes — Three Weeks
The Ferry option from Tarifa or Algeciras in Spain to Tangier port is in my opinon the best way to start your Morrocan journey. Otherwise fly into: Tangier Ibn Battouta (TNG) or Casablanca Mohammed V (CMN) then catch the train north to start in Tangier.
Fly out of: Agadir (AGA) or Marrakesh (RAK).
Getting around:
Grand taxis between Tangier, Chefchaouen and Tétouan. Hired car or bus Tétouan to Fez. Train for Fez–Meknès–Rabat–Casablanca (Morocco’s rail network is excellent on this corridor — clean, punctual, comfortable, inexpensive). Bus for Casablanca–Essaouira and Essaouira–Marrakesh
Hired car with driver strongly recommended from Marrakesh southward — the flexibility for the Atlas, Draa Valley and Taroudant section is essential. A 4WD is required only for the Erg Chegaga excursion; for the main Draa Valley road, a standard vehicle is fine.
Best season:
April–May and September–October. The Rif Mountains are beautiful in spring when the hillsides are green and the wildflowers are out. Avoid July and August in Fez & Marrakesh which is genuinely hot and crowded.
The Draa Valley and the pre-Saharan areas are at their best in spring (February–April) when the temperatures are warm but not extreme and the vegetation in the palm oases is green. Avoid July–August in the south: the heat is serious.
Accommodation:
I would always strongly recommend staying in a Riad for an authentic and atmospheric visit. Specifically I would recommend;
Tangier; Hotel or small guesthouse in medina or kasbah quarter.
Chefchaouen; Riad inside the medina walls.
Fez; Riad in the Fès el-Bali medina.
Meknès; Riad or small guesthouse inside the medina walls,
Rabat / Casablanca; Hotel or Guesthouse, it is probably worth not booking this in advance as you may change your mind about which city you wish to stay in.
Essaouira & Marrakesh; Riad or small guesthouse inside the medina walls
Guesthouses in Aït Benhaddou village, Tamnougalt in the Draa Valley, and the Palais Salam or a medina riad in Taroudant.
Desert camp in Erg Chegaga for the Sahara night — book through Zagora-based operators who have long-standing relationships with the camp families.
Pacing: Three weeks is a good amount of time for this itinerary, but the Draa Valley section in particular requires a willingness to slow down. The journey through the valley will be enriched if you take the time to stop at the lesser-known ksours and ask to look around rather than just driving through taking photographs.
Slow down and enjoy the experience.