How to Visit the Sahara Desert in Morocco – Travel Guide

If you’re planning your trip to Morocco, you have to include visiting the Sahara desert too. I was actually debating between myself should I go or not, mainly because of the long distances from major cities like Marrakech and Fes. I decided to visit because it’s such a unique experience and I didn’t want to miss it because of the logistics! As soon as we arrived at our luxury desert camp, I knew I made the best decision of my life. And I want you to experience it too! Therefore, I created this travel guide on how to visit the Sahara desert in Morocco to help you plan your time there. And to give you a visual reason why you have to do this bucket list experience of a lifetime. ❤️

Are you ready?!

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How to Get to the Sahara Desert in Morocco

The Sahara Desert is the world’s largest hot desert spanning across North Africa. It covers large parts of Algeria, Chad, Egypt, Libya, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Western Sahara and Sudan, and parts of southern Morocco and Tunisia, which is 31% of the continent.

The closest inhabited place in the Sahara from other parts of Morocco is Merzouga, a small village only 50 km (31 mi) from the border with Algeria. Merzouga is the most popular tourist place in the Sahara due to its close proximity to Erg Chebbi dunes, large seas of dunes formed by wind-blown sand. They are truly incredible. 😍

While there is a small airport 2h drive from Merzouga (in Errachidia), it is definitely not the option I would recommend, mainly because you’d still have to organise yourself to get to the Sahara desert camp. And this can prove to be even more complicated than organising yourself from major cities (Fes and/or Marrakech).

Your 2 best and safest options are: renting a car or getting a guided tour.

Let’s discuss both of them!

Renting a Car

Personally, I think renting a car is the best way to get to the Sahara desert, especially if you’re in love with road trips like I am! The roads are great, it’s such a scenic drive and you have control over things you want to visit. The only con – Moroccan police. If you choose to rent a car in Morocco, just be prepared that you might pay a ticket for a ridiculous thing you may not have even done! Don’t fight with them, just have small tips of 5 euros (50 dirham) in case you get a fine, say that’s all you got and that’s it. I travelled almost the whole country with a car and only once I paid the ticket, so it’s not like this will happen all the time.

I always choose AutoEurope because they’ve proven to be the most reliable car renting platform with competitive prices and a lot of flexibility to amend your booking (even cancel it 24h before the trip!).

💡The drive from both Marrakech and Fes is 7h+, so really prepare to be in the car for most of the day.

We were driving from Fes and it took us 10h to get to Merzouga because we had a lunch and coffee break and several wee-wee breaks (mostly me! 🙈).

Getting a Guided Tour

However, I completely understand that maybe you don’t like driving (or don’t drive) or you simply want to have someone organise everything for you!

Luckily, there are many great guided tours that go from Fes or Marrakech to Merzouga. You can either take a circle tour, which means you start from Marrakech and you return from Marrakech. Or you can start in Marrakech and then be dropped at Fes.

📖 Read my Steal my 1 Week in Morocco Itinerary – The Best of Morocco blog post to help you plan your itinerary for Morocco.

Below you can see some of the best guided tours on GetYourGuide.

💡Definitely choose at least 2-day tour because that means you’d spend a night in the desert camp under the stars. And of course it will be less exhausting because it will take you pretty much the same amount of time to get to Merzouga as if you were driving (6h+), so there’s no avoiding that!

How to Get Around the Sahara Desert in Morocco

So, here’s the trick. Once you arrive in Merzouga, you can only explore the desert with a tour guide. It is simply impossible to do this part on your own because you need a jeep, quad and/or camels to move around. And obviously you can’t just wander around the sand dunes.

If you already booked a guided tour, then they have a program for you.

However, if you rented a car like me, then you have 3 options:

• 1st Option

Firstly, you’ll leave your car in Merzouga village. Each desert camp in the Sahara dunes has a house or riad in the village with a parking lot (because you can’t get your car to the desert). Then you can arrange with your hotel/camp to organise a tour for you (they all do that).

That’s pretty much how we’ve done it and that’s my top recommendation for you. We sat with hotel staff and discussed options and what we can do in the desert. Because we wanted to seize the day as much as we could, we opted for everything they offered and the tour cost €110 pp (details further in the blog).

• 2nd Option

Is to actually stay in Merzouga and book some of the guided day tours on Viator which happens to have better and more options in this particular case than GetYourGuide. You can either do a full day of activities with an overnight stay in the camp (my recommendation) or just do a full day of desert activities and return to your hotel/riad in Merzouga.

• 3rd Option

You can stay in Merzouga and instead of booking a tour on your own, you can still arrange a day of activities with your hotel. This is not really something I would recommend or do because if you’re already booking a tour with your hotel, you might as well do that with an accommodation that has camps in the desert because staying there is such a dream come true moment.

Where to Stay in the Sahara Desert in Morocco

I cannot recommend you more to actually spend at least a night in the desert camp (ideally 2!). I will include one hotel that is in the Merzouga town centre too, if that’s your preference.

📖 Read my Best 10 Sahara Desert Camps in Morocco for more.

When to Visit the Sahara Desert in Morocco

Maybe it’s easier to start when not to visit the Sahara desert in Morocco. And you’re probably guessing right – the summer months. From June to August (but even late May and early September) is quite an intolerable time to be in the desert. Daytime temperatures can be as high as 45 C (113 F), and the night doesn’t bring any breeze or refreshment at all as the temperatures are about 30 C (86 F).

Winter months from December to February may not also be ideal because the night temperatures can go as low as 5 C (41 F), sometimes even lower that that (locals have told us so!). And if you’re staying in the desert camp, there’s no heating there, only a few blankets to warm up. I was in the Sahara desert at the end of October and was freezing during the night. Actually, I was fine under a bunch of blankets, but if I had to go to pee, it was a nightmare. Also, the mornings were super chill too, so I can’t even imagine how it must be in the winter!

Spring months from March to May are generally pleasant, with daily temperatures that can go up to 28 C (82 F) and night temperatures up to 15 C (59 F). The temperatures in spring are the most balanced which makes it the best time to visit, but also with more crowds.

And finally we’ve come to autumn months which is when I went. On most days temperatures went up to 35 C (95 F), though the average is a bit lower than that. The night temperatures are about 15+ C (59+ F), but for me it was really cold at night. Still, it’s a great time to visit because the temperatures are tolerable and there are fewer crowds than in spring time.

How Many Days in the Sahara Desert Morocco is Ideal

I recommend you to book 2 nights in the Sahara desert.

And here’s why:

1. You will spend your first night there after a long drive to Merzouga, which means you won’t do anything else apart from having dinner, dance around the fire with berbers and watch the sky full of stars.
2. Your first full day in the Sahara desert will be full of different activities, such as camel sunrise, visit to the nomadic berber village, quad for sunset. So you’d want to spend another night at the camp, so you can have dinner, relax in the evening and watch the sky again (my fave activity 🥹).
3. After you spend 2 nights in the Sahara desert, there’s not much else to do really. If you want to go to some of the oasis or Ait Ben Haddou, well, realistically and logistically, going back to your camp won’t make sense because of the driving distance.

Sahara Desert in Morocco 2-Day Itinerary

With that, I will now share how you can spend your 2 days in the Sahara desert to have the best time of your life! 🤩

Day 1 in the Sahara Desert

As mentioned, your day 1 will mainly pass on driving/getting to Merzouga. Expect around 7h-8h of pure driving. We made a lunch stop and a few short ones, so the total time we spent in the car was 10h.

Getting to Merzouga

And yes, it may seem like a lot, but if you’re in love with road trips, you will really enjoy this one! My husband and I are never in a hurry and we always think of road trips as an activity, rather than something you have to do. We turn on the music on Spotify, sing, talk, do the drive in turns, make stops whenever needed and we just have fun! We enjoy the views, and on this road, you won’t lack them! If you’re coming from Marrakech, you’d pass by High Atlas Mountain, and from Fes, you’d drive around gorgeous lakes and oases. The beauty of a road trip is that you can make a stop if you spot something nice, like we did with this green oasis below.

Dinner at the Camp, Dance by the Fire & Watching the Sky

After you finally reach Merzouga and your camp/hotel, you’d have dinner and then chill. Most luxury camps will have different entertainment activities after dinner. At Merzouga Luxury Camp the berbers lit the fire and then they sang and danced, and us together with them. It was so magical and at times unbelievable. It’s like you ended up in a movie.

But the best part of our first evening was when we lay on the sand and just looked at the sky. It’s a pinch me kinda moment. 🥹

Day 2 in the Sahara Desert

Your second day in the Sahara desert is going to be the fun one!

Camel Ride for Sunrise

Firstly, I’ll start by saying that I am not a morning person and I extremely rarely wake up for sunrise or to be somewhere super early to beat the crowds.

But this time I knew I had to do it purely for the lifetime experience. The desert is very calm and quiet anyway, but for sunrise, when there’s almost no one around, beside a few berbers and camels, it gets really magical. We woke up around 6 am and started our camel ride at 6:45 am. It was dawn when he headed towards the dunes.

💡Before you ask: Camels are in a really good shape here (unlike in Egypt where we didn’t want to ride them!), and this is where they like to be. Berbers take good care of them, so I didn’t feel at all like this was something unethical. It was strangely normal, you can feel they’re the one with the desert. And somehow I was too.

On this tour it was only me and Slaven and three ladies with a little boy. So, it was super private. Oh, and some stray dog followed us. 🥹

The ride took about 20 minutes and we had some 5-10 minutes before the sunrise, so we got off the camels and climbed one dune where we’d watch the sunrise. The ladies with us went to the other one, so you can really be alone and at peace while watching the sunrise.

The feeling when it got up was just pure magic. And you could instantly feel the warmth of the sun (it was otherwise freeeezing in the morning, so dress accordingly!).

We enjoyed the sunrise for about 15-20 minutes and then got on our camels and rode another 20 minutes to the camp where we had breakfast.

Visit to the Nomadic Village

After breakfast, our local guide picked us up at the camp and we got into the jeep to do a number of activities. First one was to visit the Nomadic Village, which is between the dunes and Black Desert and very close to the border with Algeria (we actually saw the Algerian desert side when we were driving).

Previously this border was open, especially in the past when nomadic people travelled from one place to another. Right now they have a base, but they live a very simple life. Usually they have 4-5 tents. One is a kitchen, one is for baking, one tent that serves like a living room, one tent where they sleep during summer and one for the winter period built with stronger materials to keep them from cold. There are also 2 cages where they keep chickens and goats.

I was happy to hear that their kids go to the local school, so they get at least a primary education. And I was surprised by the fact that their life expectancy is about 75 years old, quite similar to the western standards.

They invited us to their tent to have mint tea (very strong btw!) and later they made us a vegetarian pie. We got both because we didn’t want to be impolite even though the hygiene rate might be questionable here. But we were fine and it was such a nice experience.

You can see more in my Instagram post:

Black Desert, Abandoned Village & Quartz Tunnel

Next up on our itinerary was to check some of the best views in Black Desert, especially where Black Desert meets the Sahara dunes.

The reason it’s called the Black Desert is because it’s mainly rock formation. This part is very popular with fossils. You can see a lot of fossil souvenirs that vendors sell, but I am not 100% how authentic they are.

Our guide then brought us to the Abandoned Village. Today these people live in Merzouga village.

And finally we’ve got to see the quartz tunnel where they excavate it to make souvenirs, jewellery etc.

Berbers Show, Rug Shop & Jeep Adrenaline Ride

It was starting to be very hot in the desert, so we went to Merzouga village to cool off a bit.

First stop was inside a restaurant where we didn’t eat, but instead we watched the berbers show – playing the instrument and singing.

It was a fun experience complemented by the mint tea after which we went to see the best rug shop in the village. We didn’t buy anything, but in case you’d be interested, they can also ship the rug to your home address, so you don’t carry it with you!

And then lastly was the time to go back to our camp, but before we had a crazy jeep ride through the dunes with our guide. And yes, it was intentional. 🤣

Lunch & Chill Time

Once we got back to our camp we had lunch and then had a few hours to kill before our last paid activity.

It was so funny to see that there were cats even in the middle of the desert – Morocco is really full of them! 😹

We played with them and tried to have a nap outside, but it was too hot. And inside our tent was unbearable, you can’t really breathe because it gets so heated by the sun! At this point we felt that it would’ve been great if we booked something with the pool, but we really wanted to be as connected to nature as possible, really like a Robinson style. It was still the right decision despite the heat we had to survive for 3-4 hours!

Quad Drive for Sunset

As we started the day with the sunrise, this only meant one thing – we had to end it with sunset!

Quad drive is the most popular sunset activity in the Sahara desert. This is the only time we actually saw people from other camps too because everyone seems to be doing it – not surprised because it’s super fun!

We opted for one quad – Slaven was driving and I was holding onto him.

💡The way we’ve done it is actually not recommended, so we had to sign a form that it’s our liability in case something happens. We almost fell once, so really be extra careful and only do it if you’re a good driver. I was surprised how fast this thing can go. And you’d be driving in the dunes, going up and down, driving on the very edge, so it’s definitely not for the beginners.

Plus, the only instructions we’ve got was how to start and stop the quad and our guides were 2 teenage boys! 🤣 (they were very good drivers though and helped us and the other 2 couples that were with us whenever someone got stuck lol!)

The quad drive filled us with adrenaline for sure! But the best part was when we got to one very high Erg Chebbi dune and watched the sunset. Another pinch me kinda moment. ❤️

P. S. Once you experience the sunset in the desert, no other one would ever be able to beat it.

Dinner Time & Watching the Sky

After the sun goes down and before it’s dark outside, you’ll get on your quad and drive back to the camp. Then it’ll be time for dinner, followed by the very same entertainment activities like the night before.

We skipped the dance by the fire this time and just lay on the sand again to watch the sky full of stars before us. ❤️

What to Pack for the Sahara Desert in Morocco

Is the Sahara Desert in Morocco Worth Visiting

I was asking myself that very same question. Because it takes a lot of effort to actually get to the Sahara desert, so obviously you need to make sure it will be worth your time, money and resources.

And honestly, the main con is the distance from other major tourist locations. But at the same time, it is also an advantage. Because it is very remote, it is not stormed by tourists. Plus the vast dunes of the Sahara desert will make you feel like you’re the only one there, even if there are other people close to you.

For me, spending 2 nights in the middle of the Sahara desert, among its dunes, was a lifetime experience. Which was topped by the gorgeous sunrise and sunset and fun activities we’ve experienced in 36h more or less.

It’s a place where you feel one with nature, where you breathe the fresh air and contemplate about your life, where you were, where you are and where you want to be.

So, yes, the Sahara Desert is very much worth visiting. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site for A REASON.

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