Local guide
Merzouga is a small village next to a very large sand sea, and almost everything worth doing sits within half an hour of it. This is the list we give friends, in the order we would actually do them.
The fastest way to understand the scale of the erg. In one hour you cross more dune country than a half-day camel trek reaches, and you get to the ridges the group tours never leave the road for.
No licence and no experience are needed, and the price is per quad rather than per person.
Slow, silent and completely different from the quad. Leave in the late afternoon, watch the sun go down from a high dune and sleep under more stars than most people have ever seen.
Do both if you can — the quad in the morning, the camel at sunset. They are not competing activities.
Included on our one-hour ride. The guide picks a slope that matches your nerve, from a gentle first run to something considerably steeper.
Seven kilometres south of Merzouga, Khamlia is home to descendants of Sub-Saharan communities who kept their music alive. An afternoon session with the Pigeons du Sable is the most memorable hour many visitors have in the region.
Free, and better than almost anything you can pay for. Walk out from the village edge before first light — twenty minutes of climbing gets you a horizon of nothing but sand.
A seasonal salt lake west of the dunes. After a wet winter it fills and draws flamingos and other migrating birds; in a dry year it is a white crust worth seeing for its own strangeness.
This desert was a sea. The workshops around Erfoud cut and polish 380-million-year-old marine fossils, and the Rissani souk on Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday is one of the last genuinely local markets in the south.
Families still move with their goats around the edges of the erg. Where they are camped nearby and happy to receive visitors, a stop for mint tea is part of our half-day route.
South of the erg the sand gives way to dark, stony hamada and the old kohl mines at Mifis. It is a stark, cinematic landscape that few visitors see.
If you have a spare day, the Todra Gorge is around four hours away, and the Ziz Valley palm oasis on the road north from Errachidia is worth stopping for on the way in or out.
Frequently asked questions
Two nights is the sweet spot: a full day for the dunes, a night in a desert camp and time for Khamlia or Rissani. One night works if you arrive early.
October to April. March and October are close to perfect. July and August are very hot in the middle of the day, though early-morning riding is still excellent.
Erg Chebbi is the largest and most dramatic dune field in Morocco and the easiest to reach. If you want the Sahara of the imagination rather than a stony desert, yes.
Send us your date and group size on WhatsApp. We usually reply within a few minutes.
